Introduction
Flight Simulator X is filled with hundreds of Certificates, Trophies, Medals, Badges, and other special rewards. These rewards are meant to be earned organically as you take lessons, complete missions, and spend time in free flight.
You can view all of your rewards in the Pilots Records section of Flight Simulator X.
Some rewards are easy to get and will be awarded quickly as you start to fly. Examples would be your First Landing Badge and your 10 Total Hours Badge.
However, some rewards take literally thousands of hours to earn, like 4,000 Landings Badge or the 10,000 Glider Hours Badge.
And then there are some "undocumented" rewards that if you know where to go, you can very quickly snap them up making you appear like an expert Sim Pilot even if it's your first day in the cockpit.
The six badges that are shown later can be picked up simply by landing on a specific runway in any aircraft.
How To Get Badges
You can earn each badge in about 5 minutes. Simply go to Free Flight and pick one of the smaller aircrafts. Although you can earn the badge by using any aircraft, some of the runways you will need to land on are too short for faster aircrafts like the 747 or the F/A-18 Figher Jet.
Recommended Aircraft:
If you are using flight simulator to practice for your pilots license, then pick a Cessna 172. It's the most widly used aircraft for training private pilots. However, if you just want to do a quick take off and landing to get a badge, then go for the ultra-light.
To make things easier, you can set the Current Weather to Clear Skies and the Current Time and Season to Daytime and Summer.
Next select the Current Location by using the Airport ID. The first airport you will visit for a badge is Mataveri International Airport. It's airport ID is SCIP. The airport is located on Easter Island (way off the coast of Chile) and it's the most remote airport in the world. When you land on the runway you will be awarded The Most Remote Airport Badge.
After you have selected the airport you want to fly from, click the Fly Now button. You will automatically be lined up on the active runway ready for takeoff. Then simply take off, fly a basic traffic pattern, and land.
Before you take-off, make a note of your heading and runway altitude, because on approach you will be using the same heading and landing at the same altitude.
The Six Badges
#1 Most Remote Airport Badge
#2 Lowest Airport Badge
#3 Highest Airport Badge
#4 Northernmost Airport Badge
#5 Southernmost Airport Badge
#6 Shortest Runway Badge
Here are The Six Badges...
As described earlier, the Mataveri International Airport is the most remote airport in the world, and Flight Simulator X will reward you with a badge for landing at this airport.
Airport ID: SCIP
Location: Easter Island (Pacific Ocean)
Active Runway: 28
Altitude: 227 ft.
The Bar Yehuda Airfield is a small desert airfield just west of the Dead Sea. It holds the honor of being the world's lowest at an elevation of 1,266 feet below sea level.
Airport ID: LLMZ
Location: Israel
Active Runway: 01
Altitude: -1,266 ft.
At 14,422 feet above sea level, the San Rafael air strip is the highest airport in the world. This is the hardest badge of the six because at this altitude, there is not a lot of air. Lack of air affects both the engine fuel mixture and the vital air needed to give airplanes lift.
At just under 15,000 feet you are operating at the maximum altitude that a Cessna 172 can fly. However with some practice you can adjust the mixture of your fuel to a more lean mix by pulling the red mixture control knob (on a Cessna 172) towards you, and with some luck get the power you need to take off. Or you can adjust the aircraft's realism settings to enable the engine auto-mixture.
Since the odds are slim you will ever take off in real life at 14,422 feet, you can cheat and take off in a small jet like the Bombardier Learjet 45. Then after you gain a few hundred feet in altitude switch back to the Cessna 172. At 60 knots the Cessna can pretty much maintain the altitude and easily manuveur for approach.
Airport ID: SPRF
Location: Peru
Active Runway: 30
Altitude: 14,422 ft.
The Alert Airport in Northern Canada is world's northernmost airport. Be sure to set your Current Time and Season to Summer because it is night time for most of the year.
Airport ID: CYLT
Location: Nunavut Canada
Active Runway: 05
Altitude: 100 ft.
It's time to head to Antartica. The McMurdo Station is located in southern Antartica and the runway is made of ice, so give yourself plenty of room to brake. Or you can try out an aircraft with skis.
Airport ID: NZPG
Location: Antartica
Active Runway: 15
Altitude: 18 ft.
Near North Cape Wisconsin is a little patch of grass surrounded by trees that someone thought would be a great place to put a landing strip making it the world's shortest runway. It's called Potts Field and it's pretty easy to land here in an ultra-light and not to hard in a Cessna 172. The hardest part is finding it again once you take off. So get your bearings before and after take-off.
You may want to try taking off and landing with full flaps because of the trees on both departure and approach.
Airport ID: 0WN5 (ZERO-WN5)
Location: Wisconsin
Active Runway: 28
Altitude: 815 ft.
Hints And Tricks
There are many things you can do if all you want to do is get awarded a badge.
1. If the runway is long enough it's possible to take off, get 100+ feet off the ground, then land again on the same runway. This can be done at a low speed with full flaps.
2. If you want to "earn" a badge in just a few seconds, simply hop in a helicoptor that you are most familer with and take it up at least 100 feet off the ground (straight up), then back down on the runway and you will have your badge. Easy Peasy.
3. You don't have to land in the same plane you took off in. If you are flying and can't find the runway, you can always switch to a plane like the Cessna 172SP Skyhawk G1000 Glass Cockpit and use the easy to read screens to locate the airport and runways.
4. Just like you can change planes mid-flight, you can also change the time of day. So if you are flying during the day and can't visually locate an airport, you can swith to night time and look for the runway lights.
About The Author
MadSpy007 earned his private pilot's license at the age of 16 many years ago.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=363018708
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