A Flight Simulator Odyssey

by Charles Gulick

Far Away Places 5. Adriatic Vistas

Chart: None
Title: ADRIATIC VISTAS En Route Coordinates:
   Aircraft: N13812, E19167
   Tower: --
Altitude:
   Aircraft: 1835
   Tower: --
Heading: 305
Time: Daylight

Sometimes, when you're flying this simulator, you can re-ally believe in what you see. By luck or chance, land and water and sky merge into a picture for which you have no words. And, like clouds, the light and the shapes change moment to moment--the last moment gone forever, the next unknown. But thanks to the simple act called SAVE we can capture the best moments, and go back to relive them when the mood strikes us.

For such going back, I give you sunny southern Italy, about at Brindisi, along the shores of the Adriatic Sea.

I won't tell you where to fly now, or how far, or where to land. Like the pilots of early days, you can wing where your instincts point or your mindset dictates. As long as there's fuel sloshing around in your tanks, there's no telling where your imagination can take you, or how long it might take to get where you want to be. Too, at the last, you can set your airplane down anywhere that strikes your fancy in that remarkable world below you, like old-time pilots used to land on farms and meadows and cornfields, on strips of deserted beaches, or on roadside fields where maybe they spotted a gas station so they could fill her up.

This is, after all, your airplane. Those are your resplendent wings out there. When you unpause and fly, your engine lends its lyrical baritone accompaniment to your very heart-beat. If you listen carefully, you can hear voices in its rich pistons and in its throaty, muffled explosions, far-out voices talking to you, saying:

Your airplane, your wings, your world.

Good flying, my friend.

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