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Brest became Denver's first Sister City in 1948. "In 1947, East High School teacher, Ms. Amanda Knecht, visited the city of Brest, France. It had been bombed extensively over a six week period during World War II. Upon Ms. Knecht’s return to Denver, she told her students about the devastation. Over the next year, these students raised $32,000 in change to rebuild the children’s wing of the Brest City Hospital."[1] The relationship was formalized the following year.
Denver and Brest are very different. However, like Denver, Brest has ten Sister Cities: Denver, United States (1948), Plymouth, England (1963), Kiel, Germany (1964), Taranto, Italy (1964), Yokosuka, Japan (1970), Dún Laoghaire, Republic of Ireland (1984), Cádiz, Spain (1986), Saponé, Burkina Faso (1989), Qingdao, China (2006), Brest, Belarus (2012). We'll be visiting one of those cities next week.
| Start | 1st stop | 2nd stop | 3rd stop | Last stop |
| LFES | LFRQ | LFRL | LFEC | LFRB |
| Guiscriff Scaer | Quimper Pluguffan | Lanveoc Poulmic Navy | Ouessant | Brest Bretagne |
Cruise: 90 knots indicated (approx) at 2000 ft max (low and slow). (105 mph; 165 km/h.)
Aircraft: Something appropriate for that speed. Fixed and rotary wing both OK. :eagerness:
‣ Some suggestions for non-default FSX aircraft here.
Scenery: Default is OK. However:
‣ Free ORBX scenery available for LFES and LFEC via FTX Central.
‣ Free XP11 3D scenery available for all five airports, downloadable here.
Server: SimLink AU server: 101.165.150.139
Weather: Real-life forecast is for showers, low cloud and a brisk westerly. Feel free to set Fair Weather instead! For those sticking with live weather, we'll take off and land on westerly/southwesterly runways (20 through to 31).
Simulators: All welcome: FS9, FSX boxed, FSX Steam edition, Prepar3D, X-Plane.
Extra notes for X-Plane pilots unfamiliar with SimLink:
- To connect to SimLink, you need X-Plane plugin XSquawkBox current release version 1.3.3, pointing it directly to the SimLink server's IP address. (The FSD proxy is not needed.)
- The .FMS flight plan file can be used with your GPS. Put it in X-Plane 11\Output\FMS plans\
- The .PLN flight plan file can be used with Plan-G. Plan-G doesn't support X-Plane 11 data format at present so use old XP9/XP10/FSX/P3D data. You can track your own aircraft on Plan-G if you install X-Plane plugin XPUIPC.
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The overall idea
We depart from nearby our 'focus' city for that week and fly around its local airports and exploring its landmarks, typically in two, three or four hops, using SimLink as our multiplayer platform. I'll choose the following week's focus city from the official list of "Sister Cities" for this week's city. (They're usually listed in Wikipedia near the end of a city's entry.) We just carry on around the world, hopping between Sister Cities, trying not to repeat ourselves.
What's a Sister City anyway?
Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_city and http://www.sister-cities.org/ or http://sistercities.org/
Why SimLink?
I want to maximize the number of simulators pilots can choose to participate. SimLink is a proven and reliable technology for us and currently allows pilots on the greatest number of different sims to fly together: FSX boxed, FSX Steam edition, FS9, P3D and XP11.
What aircraft?
Each week I'll publish the target cruise speed (which most weeks will be fairly slow, though not always). The speed will depend on how much distance we have to cover in two hours. You choose something appropriate for that speed and then select one of our standard SimLink codes accordingly.
Won't SimLink's five second delay cause problems?
For most flights, ground speeds will be just 25-50% of some of our other group flights (viz. cargo props or airliners) so the five second SimLink delay will be less significant. We'll all still appear in close range of one another (if not in true formation).
For more details, see the opening post of the first Sister City flight.
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