At Monday, August 16th 2010, vACC Switzerland is organising an alpine VFR groupflight on VATSIM. This groupflight will start at Bern, Belp (LSZP) to Locarno (LSZL). During your flight you'll enjoy one of the most amazing areas of the alps. You will enjoy the panaramic of Berner Obeland, the impressive Vierstätter See. Furthermore you navigate over beautiful cities like Bad Ragaz and Chur. After crossing the stunning Rheinschlucht you finally pass the alpine Lukmanierpass and Arbedo to approach at Loarno. For some parts of the standard route even more sophisticated alternatives are available....


More Details about the tour you'll find here:
http://www.vacc.ch/uploads/Events/Swiss-Events/alpine-groupflight/SWISS-VFR-1,0100808.zip Official Announcement(in german): http://board.vacc-sag.org/65/43620/#post528229

Requirements on your knowledge:
All in all this tour is a quite challenging flight which will improove all your aviation skills. So, some knowledge about navigation in mountainous terrain would be very helpful. As you'll fly online you'll need some some general knowledge about VFR flying on VATSIM. Furthermore you should be familiar with VFR traffic control procedures. Here you can find a short introduction (in german/english).

Requirements on your flightsimulator, FSX:
To enjoy this flight you should consider to install the following addons.

Mesh Scenery:
To enjoy flying in the mountain it is required to install a adequate digital elevation model (mesh) to your FSX. As the standard elevation model of flightsimulator X is not such precise, we advise to install a HQ Mesh like the free FSX Digital Elevation Model for Alps region (LOD11), which can be found here: http://c30s.alpes.gratisim.fr/ Alternatively you could install the openVFR mesh (75) which represents a significant improvement from previous SRTM3 meshes, you might have used before. This mesh is available for most European countries already. It allows a 75m grid resolution with a vertical error of less than 16m for Europe! Its new base data was created by use of new interpolation algorithms and better data auxiliary DEMs of CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information. It is reprocessed from voids and spikes and optimized for FSX. We are confident that this data is already one of the highest quality SRTM dataset available:
http://openvfr.freyt.de/magento/index.php/downloads/openvfr-mesh-75.html

Landclass Scenery:
For every VFR flight it is essential to identfy landmarks on the ground. openVFR Terrain Switzerland will improove the presentation of forests, cities, highways, roads, railways, lakes, rocks, and many more based on selected data of OpenStreetmap! Due to the highly realistic terrain information openVFR Terrain sets new standards for VFR flight navigation in Microsoft FSX. This is what we call: Enjoy flying over the real landscape! Of course, we advise to install newest version always, but an older freeware version is available, too:
http://openvfr.freyt.de/magento/index.php/downloads/openvfr-terrain.html

Objects Scenery:
The FSX addon "openVFR Objects" will add hundreds of 3D objects on the ground. So, enjoy tons of 3D landmarks like windmils, wind generators, churches, castles and ruins,... as they are located in real world. Again the location of these objects are taken from Openstreetmap.
http://openvfr.freyt.de/magento/index.php/downloads/openvfr-objects.html

Don't waste your time and enjoy your flight! Your openVFR crew