PSA 22 Feb '23: At some time in the last six months an MSFS update removed the airfield which ends Leg 1, so this bush trip no longer works.

This bush trip is a 4-State, 27-leg, 1262-mile journey through the U.S. Southwest. The emphasis is on navigation and sightseeing, with a bit of pop culture and history thrown in. There are some mild challenges to do with elevation changes, or following a specific route, and these are folded organically into the trip. Though it's a bush trip, there's not much in the way of super-challenging landings, though 90% of the runways are grass strips.

It hits a lot of the big sights in the Southwest - Zion, Bryce, Shiprock, Mesa Verde, the Painted Desert, the Grand Canyon etc - and takes you through some striking landscape changes, from desert to canyonlands to high mesa to forested mountains to volcanic fields and back. And if you want to find out who does the best cheeseburger in the Rockies, this trip has you covered.

The default version of the trip can be done in the XCub, if you like a plane with GPS. I've also included a version which can be done in the Savage Carbon, if you want to get away from the tyranny of the magenta line. Note that you will need to install the Savage Carbon separately to do this trip; it is not included in these files.

Installation
Either unzip both files to your Community folder, or:
Unzip swusa-bush-trip to your Community folder if you only want the XCub experience
Unzip swusa-sc-bush-trip to your Community folder if you only want the Savage Carbon experience. NB you will need to download and install the plane separately, see link below.

Mods to enhance the experience:

Essential
Mappamundi's Scenery Glitch Fix - https://flightsim.to/file/5167/scenery-glitch-fixes-for-update-1-12-13-0 - this removes many ugly giant spikes from the landscape. I guess Asobo will eventually fix these but in the meantime this is a wonderful fix.
Savage Carbon - STOL Realism Mod - https://flightsim.to/file/3723/savage-carbon-stol-realism-mod - if you want to do the Savage Carbon trip.

Non-essential:
Scenery
Zion - https://flightsim.to/file/2028/zion-canyon-national-park-utah by Jeppeson2001
Bryce - https://flightsim.to/file/1781/bryce-canyon-national-park-utah by Jeppeson2001
Monument Valley - https://flightsim.to/file/1836/monument-valley-arizona-utah-border-work-in-progress by Jeppeson2001
Very Large Array - https://flightsim.to/file/4659/vla-very-large-array-radiotelescope by longastrino

Airports
Navajo Mountain Airport - https://flightsim.to/file/2161/04ut-navajo-mountain-airport by bagolu
Flagstaff Pulliam - https://flightsim.to/file/746/flagstaff-pulliam-airport-kflg by JustOkayPilot

Of the above, I'd consider Bryce and the Very Large Array very close to essential. Because the scenery files can cause long loading times, you should only activate them for the leg they are needed in. These legs are:

Leg 2 - Zion
Leg 4 - Bryce
Leg 7 - Monument Valley
Leg 20 - Very Large Array

Credits

A huge amount of credit goes to f99mlu for his Bush Mission Generator at https://flightsim.to/file/3681/bushmissiongen. I've created bush trips manually before, so I really appreciate what an incredible tool this is, and the massive time-saving impact it has had.

I'd also like to credit Alexander Barthel for his LittleNavMap - http://albar965.github.io/littlenavmap.html, which was invaluable for flight planning the trip.

Thanks to GotGravel for permission to create a bush trip around the Savage Carbon. The trip hopefully holds up equally well whether you're using GPS or relying on navigational instructions.

Finally, a lot of the airports in MSFS are obsolete or have been closed down in real life. I'm indebted to Paul Freeman and his website, Abandoned and Little-Known Airfields - http://www.airfields-freeman.com/index.htm, which covers all 50 states and provided a wealth of interesting background reading; and for giving permission to use a photo of his. I wish I could have used far more photos. Check out the website if you're interested in that kind of thing at all.

Most images used are creative commons-licensed. There's a full list of image and source material credits in the Credits text file included, done by Leg, if you're curious about anything in the trip.

Nice, thanks!

2 years ago

fStopper

I'm about half-way through the bush trip. This is SO well-done! As luck would have it, my wife and I hiked Bryce Canyon, Cascade Falls, and Valley of Fire about 10 days before I found this bush trip. It was great flying over the roads and hikes that we had just experienced. The included images and historical facts have been priceless. This exceeds the built-in bush trips for me. Can't wait to finish it!

3 years ago

glhillman

Thank you for bring me such a good trip!

starwolf

This trip needs more downloads! I've been loving it

storm92jk

Excellent bush trip. Perfect in both route planning and navlog explanation. No time to be bored.
Thank you very much for your wonderful job!

mjson

This is awesome! I'm using the carbon and, not gonna lie, I definitely ran into some navigational challenges. But that's part of the fun!

westhest6

Great job, thanks. You may want to change the landing strip for the last trip. the msfs map shows half of the landing strip has been plowed under for crops. Difficult to determine if I was to land or plant a crop.

fixento

This is an excellent trip. I flew 3 legs so far and the writing is superb. I really appreciate that. I am flying it with Rex activated so that it injects live weather into the sim instead of the default one (it's pretty much what I do with all Bush Trips that don't have Live Weather option enabled, though it sometimes creates hairy scanarios with not much to be seen due to cloud cover. Sometimes icing conditions get in the way too - such was my experience with Hungarian trip - there wasn't much to see cause the weather sucked when I was doing it, but it added a challenge of not falling out of the sky due to icing and no de-icing capabilities in small planes.

BostonJeremy77

Great bush trip. Fantastic scenery and wonderful routes following valleys, rivers etc. This is what VFR bush trips are all about.
I took the liberty to mod your files a bit to take the trip in the new third part WYMF-5 (payware). It's not really a bush plane, but I was getting a bit bored with the x-cub.
Also a changed the weather in the FLT file to

[Weather]
UseLiveWeather=True
WeatherCanBeLive=True

In that way you can freely set time and weather. For the first trip I chose a 6.15 am departure just before sunrise and flew the route in a wonderful light towards the rising sun. Sunrises and sunsets really are beautiful in this sim.
It would really enhance the bush trips if it was possible to set the different legs at different times of day and in changing weather.
Anyway, thank you for your great work and effort.

horstunger

Is this still worth downloading? Seeing the inability to complete leg 1, is it possible to start from leg 2 and still enjoy the scenery? If it is, how would you go about changing the aircraft, I’ve been flying the simpler savage cub lately and would quite like to fly that instead of the savage carbon. Thanks

5 months ago

SafetyThird

Leg 1 done but no trigger.

Where does the plane have to be to get this trigger?

I've been all over the runway with no luck and no way to continue the mission...

1 years ago

Lund - see reply to Diniz.

Chopper

LundFisherman

I cannot end the first leg anywhere on the airfield. Where is the trigger. How can I proceed to the next leg without being able to find the first leg end trigger?

ctimbermont

@Chopper, first of all, congrats! Seems to be a work very well done! However, i'm having a problem on the very first leg. After USR08 the GPS / flight plan give me a waypoint UT27, heading 026º and 230 nm north of what is supposed to be the first stop of the journey. I have tried to delete the waypoint, ignore it, even flying there and coming back but, after landing on the first stop, nothing happens. I must say that i have changed the .flt file to be able to use the C172 instead of the XCub. Not sure if that's messing the whole thing or maybe it's just not compatible with MSFS's lastest version but, even with the original file the problem persists... do you have any idea? I really would like to finish the trip. Your navlog details are great! Thanks!

I have the same persisting problem. Nothing happens after landing the first leg. Anybody any idea?

1 More Antwoorden

DinizJr

Thanks for the kind words, and I’m glad you’re enjoying it! It’s actually loosely based on a road trip I did myself a few years back, and it was a lot of fun for me too to revisit those places.

Thanks, happy to see people still enjoying this :)

I agree ;) Happy that you're enjoying it!

Thanks mjson, glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks westhest! I spent a lot of time on the navigation instructions, hoping that they could stand on their own. Given the size of the trip, I'm sure there are some uneven parts, so let me know if there are any legs which are poor in that regard. I might be able to learn a few lessons for next time.

2 More Antwoorden

Thanks, fixento! You mean the very last airstrip for the final leg? It was like a bowling green for me, dunno what is up with that :)

Shortly before reaching the Monument Valley airfield, the engine dies. I flew this section twice and each time the same thing happens at the same place. Can anyone help me further?

Hey StefanM; I think you're out of fuel in that tank. See the red knob at your left knee? Switch that over to the other tank and you are good to go. You should also go into the controls menu, display all the settings (not just the assigned ones) and find Repair and Refuel. Bind this to a key (I use CTRL + R) and you can refill your fuel any time, even in flight. Hope this helps.

StefanM

Thanks Jeremy, glad you're having a good time with it. I think you can get up to around 12,000ft later on for a short while, so it'll be interesting to see how that goes with the weather. I think not restricting the weather settings is the way to go in the future, for sure.

6 More Antwoorden

Hi horstunger, Good to hear you enjoyed it and I appreciate the feedback. Glad to hear you were able to change it to suit your preferences. I've done this myself with other mods. I thought about the time of day and weather while I was making it. Most of the time, you're travelling east or west (ish), so I wanted the default experience to not be flying into the sun, and I set the time to 2pm so the sun would be 'out of the way' in the south. This does mean that sometimes the landscape looks pretty harsh in the daytime sun, not ideal. For the weather/cloud cover, it was something similar. Because you are up on the Colorado Plateau, you're anywhere between 3,000 and 10,000 feet above sea level, before you add the 1,000 feet or so you are flying at. So getting a consistent experience meant Clear Skies, basically. Which isn't too bad as it matches the conditions in that area, mostly. It also kinda increases the chances that people will see what you want them to see. That's all for the default experience of course, and I totally get why setting your own weather etc is a good thing. If I was doing another trip I would absolutely adopt those suggestions, thanks!

I'm enjoying the bush trip. It's clear you put a lot of effort into it and I appreciate the historical information and trivia you have included along the way. I'm stuck, however, at Mission 10 (the one with the cliff houses). I can not find the airport at the end. Either I don't understand the last instruction or I'm just not doing it right. The only airport I can seem to find in that vicinity is 00C (Animas). Since I can't complete the trip, I can not move forward. (Savage Carbon, so no GPS)

Glad to hear you’re enjoying it. Yes, that’s the leg I was most worried about, there’s not much in the way of landmarks. You are quite close. If you follow the road north from animas air park, past Durango, the airstrip is in a valley just a few miles north of Durango. It’s hard to spot also but the river in the pic of the airport should help. Good luck!

FlightBoy

Ontdek

Southwest U.S. Bush Trip

Chopper

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Chopper

Welkom terug!