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Report:
After
spending some time in Dublin, no departure would
be complete without a traditional gaelic toast,
“Slainte!” If only our Murphy’s
Irish Red we as cool as that, but that’s
a different web page.
 With
a desire to reach Paris just after dark, we spent
our last daylight hours enjoying what Ireland
had to offer and made it back to the airport around
8pm. Not wasting anytime at the airport, we did
a quick push back and contacted the Dublin Tower.
Again, we opted to use the technology built into
the flight sim and let progressive taxi guide
us to the runway. Throughout the flight thus far,
we’ve been quite impressed with all of the
little bells and whistles of the latest incarnation
of Microsoft Flight Simulator, and truth be told
progressive taxi is damn cool, especially at big,
unfamiliar international airports. Except for
tonight’s flight in which we were guided
directly over a large grassy field and through
a few terminals to the other side of the airport.
For obvious reasons, we opted to not follow progressive
taxi, and instead headed the long way around the
airport.
 This
time around we decided against a multiplayer flight
in order to enjoy the high volume of dynamic traffic
made available by Flight1's
Ultimate Traffic add-on. High volume indeed!
By the time we made it to the appropriate taxi
way, we found ourselves number eight in line for
take off. The line didn’t appear to be moving
too smoothly as we gradually made our way to the
front. We did notice one Ryanair Airbus land while
we were waiting, but otherwise it was slow for
no apparent reason. I never really noticed any
jets proceed from holding short of the runway
to taking off. They just sort of disappeared from
sight. With a waxing crescent moon in the sky,
shadows growing longer and patience getting thin,
drastic measures were in order.
We
cancelled our IFR flight plan, kicking it to VFR,
and took off on RWY 28 from Dublin. Once airborne
we climbed rapidly to FL230 (23,000 ft) and headed
out over the Irish Sea again. At this point, our
astute readers out there are probably beginning
to wonder to themselves something like:
 "Hold
on. You two gonzo pilots are making your way around
the world in search of beers. You’ve spent
time in Scotland and Ireland but you're completely
passing up England? Have you lost your bloody
minds?"
Too
late for that. No, we're not influenced by terror
bombings or avoiding anything like that. It;s
all in the calendar! We're headed south so that
we can spend some time in France around Bastille
Day. We'll be back to England before you
know it, sampling some of the finest beers in
the world, don't you worry!
 En
route to Paris, we noticed quite a bit of air
traffic, most notable a 737 that left an awesome
contrail behind that we flew directly over, check
out the screenshot! A few minutes later as we
again enjoyed a fabulous sim sunset courtesy of
Flight 1’s Flight Environment we noticed
that the sunset itself was rather odd. Once the
sun just barely touches the horizon, its next
“move” is that it completely disappears,
this occurred for us just a few minutes after
crossing the English Channel.
Flying
into Paris at night is exquisite, the entire city
is lit up. One can clearly see the River Seine
as it meanders through the city. We found ourselves
imagining what it was like for Lindberg in 1927,
destined for his own landing at Le Bourget, exhausted,
exhilarated, and lifted into immortality on the
arms of a million Parisans.
 No
such greeting was awaiting the crew of The Hopper
in 2005. For us, the millions of city lights would
have to do. The Eiffel Tower was quite visible,
yet we had some trouble locating the Arc de Triomphe.
I guess this is understandable considering the
amount of air traffic above Paris - something
old Lindy didn't have to deal with! There were
scattered clouds, and numerous airports below.
Although we were heading to Le Bourget, we received
clearance to fly over Charles de Gaulle, which
is without question one of the coolest airports
we have flown over to date. Plenty of lights,
excellent terminal architecture and stellar texture
mapping.
 A
few minutes later at 11:40pm local Paris time
we had landed at Le Bourget on RWY 7. We are certainly
looking forward to spending some quality time
in Paris as well as the rest of France. We might
even make a few day trips down to the south of
France and holiday with some of our European friends.
Next
Hop: Portugal?
Or Ibiza?
GB
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