Continuing my trip to the North Cape in MSFS.

This post belongs to my Microsoft Flight Simulator North Cape adventure series: Part 1, Part 2

The second leg of my journey starts at general aviation parking at Rotterdam The Hague Airport (EHRD). It was actually raining when I loaded into the plane, but the rain soon stopped and once I reached runway 24 and was cleared for take-off once again, the weather was improving.

I took off and flew a lazy left hand turn, reversed course to the north and flew between Den Haag and Rotterdam towards the North Sea coast. You can see Rotterdam in all its glory just over my right wing tip in this screenshot:

I then flew north along the shore until I reached the north-westernmost tip of the Dutch mainland at Den Helder.

From there, I continued in a northeastern direction along the North Seas islands into Germany. I overflew the two islands of Borkum and Norderney, which both are very beautiful and popular tourist destinations in the summer.

From Norderney, I headed north-east into the German Bight towards Heligoland. I had some high clouds and some wind over the Netherlands, but the weather steadily improved and by the time I approached Heligoland, it turned into a crystal clear autumn afternoon. On approach of the island, the North Sea and the island itself looked absolutely stunning in the low sun.

I slowly descended on approach and flew a circle over the main island, being afforded an excellent view of the little town, rock cliff formations and the huge crater from the 1947 explosion. Fun fact: Heligoland is the only German municipality where cars are outlawed. Even bicycles are illegal. There’s even a special regulation for this in the German traffic code.

After flying over the main island, I circled around and approached the smaller Düne island where the airport is located. Helgoland-Düne airport (EDXH) is a bitch to land at. It took me an afternoon of trial and error to manage it in my XCub and I was very happy that I didn’t need to use it with the Goose, especially as the wind was pretty unfavourable. Instead, I just landed in the water off Düne island and slowly coasted to a stop in front of the beach at the little lighthouse. Then I sat there in the water and watched the beautiful sunset.

So far, total flight time for the trip is 3 hours, 30 minutes and 30 seconds.

Next, I’m off east towards Hamburg. I will report as soon as I continue this journey.