The city Lugano in the south of
Switzerland, a short 10 minute flight in a small propeller plane
away from the Italian metropolitan area of Milan, is a city with
a population of around 60 000 people. It’s located on the
northern shore of Lake Lugano inside the valley of the Lugano
Prealps, and to be honest a more or less black spot on the map
for me (honestly, if it wasn’t for the fact that the local
hockey team had a Swedish head coach a few years back, which
meant it was mentioned in the sports pages, I would probably
never have heard of it before).
The airport serving the city has been modeled in great detail
for FSX (and X-plane) by developers Fly Logic and the scenery
was published by Aerosoft in April 2012.
Download and installation
The download version comes in a 202 mb zip-file (the scenery is
also available as a boxed product), and once installed it will
occupy just over 300 mb of hard drive space.
Download speeds from the Aerosoft server are fast, and even on
my fairly slow ADSL connection the download didn’t take long to
finish. The installation process follows the standard Aerosoft
installation procedure, and as long as you follow the on-screen
instructions and have your key-code ready, it won’t take you
long to get the scenery installed. It’s worth noting that the
scenery doesn’t require activation within the Aerosoft Launcher,
in fact it doesn’t even show up in it.
After installation you will find a new entry in your start menu
called Fly-Logic where you can find the documentation, charts
and a small utility for enabling/disabling traffic in and around
the airport.
Documentation
The documentation comes in two PDF-files, the first is a manual
consisting of 44 pages that, in four different languages, covers
some history of the airport, which planes are certified for
operating in and out of Lugano, the area that the scenery covers
and where to go for support. The second document is an 11 page
PDF with all the charts you need if you want to fly “by the
book”.
The manual doesn’t really cover anything important as to how to
use the scenery, but on the other hand there aren’t really
special features in it which need explaining. The charts on the
other hand are most essential if you want to fly anything larger
than a Twin General Aviation airplane in to the airport.
The scenery
Let’s start with what the airport looks like by default in FSX.
The two images found below are from the default scenery, one is
the representation of the AFCAD as seen in FS Commander and the
second is taken from the south side of the airport just above
the shores of the lake. At this point I should also inform my
readers that in addition to the scenery up for review I also
have FS Global, UTX Europe and FScene X installed.
FSC LSZA Default |
LSZA Default comparison |
FSC LSZA Lugano X |
LSZA Lugano X comparisson |
Terminal area landside |
Terminal area airside |
Tower car parking terminal |
Shed for airport vehicles |
Judging from the documentation and what I can see in the simulator the scenery is limited to the airport and the areas in close proximity, but the city itself isn’t enhanced in any way. Whilst I didn’t expect to see the whole city modeled in the scenery it would have been nice if the scenery had extended a bit further out from the airport boundary.
There are however a few objects placed further out of the airport, and these are very important if you didn’t do you flight planning correctly and arrive here after the sun has set. On the peaks of most of the high hills surrounding the airport you will find a red light to warn you where not to fly. At least five of them are visible in the image below.
Night approach |
Flying into Lugano
The Approach into Lugano is a tricky one. The approach is always made from the south, regardless of what runway you will land on. The localiser takes you over a 3,700 feet high chunk of land, and once you pass over the ridge you only have about 4 nm to get yourself down to the runway at 915 feet elevation.
During the course of this review I tried the straight in approach for runway 01 in both the PMDG BAe J4100 and the Majestic DHC Dash 8 and both attempts ended with a Go-Around.
On approach |
On approach 2 |
I didn’t even dare try the circle to land procedures for runway 19 in anything bigger than a Cessna 172, and while it’s not as tight as the one into Innsbruck it’s still a challenge to get right.
View to the north summer |
View to the south winter |
I found Airport Lugano X to be a very nice rendition of a small regional airport in a stunning setting. The quality of the models and ground textures are good, as are the night lights. The setting in a deep valley also makes it a difficult place to fly to if you do it by the book.
I shall certainly revisit Lugano in the future and I hope you will join me.
Verdict:
• Level of detail
:
8.0/10
• Performance :
10/10
• Scenery
coverage:
7.5/10
• Quality of
buildings:
8.0/10
• Documentation:
8.0/10
• Value for money:
8.0/10
Mutley’s Hangar score of
8.3/10, with an "Highly Recommended" and a Mutley's Hangar
Silver Award!
Mikael Stockfors
Review machine Spec:Intel Core i7 860 @
2.8GGhz | 16 gb DDR III Ram @ 1600 mhz |
GTX 560 TI OC 1GB Graphics |Windows 7 64bit Pro