Iranian Stratovolcano

 Tonight's flight  took me back to a place I first visited in another video game, Battlefield 3.

Mount Damavand

Just over 40 miles north east of Tehran lies Mount Damavand, a dormant volcano that rises above the other peaks of the Alborz range like a king of the mountains. It is well worth a flypast -- flying over it is certainly possible in the bigger, more powerful GA aircraft, although you'll spend longer climbing and descending than you really need to. 

Route


OINJ Bishe Kola Air Base is a good starting point, setting your destination as OISI Sharifabad Aiport, 80 nautical miles to the south. This route will take you right up to the mountain.


Bishe Kola is a military airbase. In real life you'd need to write a very persuasive letter to the Iranian government to get permission to depart from here.

I completed the flight in the Cessna 208B Grand Caravan. This was my favourite aircraft for exploration in FSX, it's like an SUV of the air. It's very slightly dihedral high-wing configuration makes it really stable and, maybe a bit boring to fly, but this is for when you want to take more time looking around rather than attending to aeronautical concerns.


Weather was set to "Broken Clouds", providing a rich "cloudscape" to fly through. Quite the most exquisite clouds of any simulator, when set to fire on all cylinders, the weather system delivers extreme realism, with endless possibilities for interplay between light and atmospherics.


While the southern slopes of the Alborz Mountains are usually semiarid or arid, with irregular and low precipitation, the northern slopes of the range are usually humid, especially in the western parts of the Central Alborz.


The mountain range rises higher, but Mount Damavand is usually sticking up, behind them with a year-round snowy coat. 


You'll get to the mountain about half way to the destination. It's a tiny bit off the track, but not enough that you really ever need to leave your path. Note the busted airspeed indicator. That's ice!


I encountered ice en-route. This was quite a big problem as I had no idea how to operate the de-icer system. While searching for the right button I broke my airframe. Doh! [Flight Restarted]


On the second flight attempt, I managed to mostly dodge the ice problem by pressing "h", which turned on the heating. Bye bye big fella!


Beyond the mountain is an amazing striped landscape in the lands to the east of Tehran.


To be honest, I've struggled to locate this provincial  airfield on western maps. Flight Simulator records its IATA Location Code as OISI, which actually belongs to Dehbid, which as far as I can is nowhere near here.


Back on the ground. Yes, that is the runway. Without the Flight Simulator planting a huge label on the horizon I doubt I would ever have found it.

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