SloveniaTour (one-way)

Dinaric Spine Glider Tour - Postojna to Berane

5.0(1)

9 legs·372 nm·shortest runway 2,359 ft·7h 23m (DG Aviation LS8-18)

Recommended Aircraft Class

Glider

Description

Welcome to this nine-leg, ten-airfield glider tour of roughly 370 nm (about 690 km) down the whole strike of the Dinaric Alps, from the Slovenian karst through Croatia's Kvarner, Lika and Dalmatian hinterland, across the high plateaus and canyons of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and on into the Montenegrin ranges at the edge of the Prokletije. Almost every stop is a small aero-club field, mostly grass and mostly without fuel, so this is a sailplane tour in the real sense: ridge lift on the long limestone walls (Snežnik, Dinara, Kamešnica, Prenj, Bjelasica), thermals over the flat karst poljes, bora and valley winds to respect, and very few forgiving outlanding fields outside those poljes. The legs are deliberately shorter than a modern glider could manage in a day. The point is to slow down, work the ridges between fields and look at the terrain, with a couple of long descents to sea level thrown in. Real-world airspace restrictions are ignored and there's an international airport (Mostar) included, because Mostar and the Neretva Canyon are must-haves in the Balkan Alps!

Recommended add-ons & settings

This is a long sequence of cross-country flights. MSFS excels in ridge soaring, but not so much on thermal simulation. It's recommended to install free 3rd party add-ons before starting this tour.

Use a 3rd party glider

Do not attempt with any of the stock gliders. The free Discus 2C Standard is an excellent alternative, which is available from Got Friends. Make sure to switch the launch method to the pack-in plane of the add-on (use Configure Aircraft for this).

Prefer MSFS2020 over MSFS2024

MSFS2020 seems to have stronger and more consistent updraft under cumulus clouds. I struggled with MSFS2024.

Use SSC's weather pack

SSC's soaring weather pack is generally a must when soaring the virtual skies. Get it, pick a preset that works with the runway alignment of the leg at hand, and don't forget to use summer weather.

Legs

County: Primorje-Gorski Kotar
Departure closest city: Postojna
Arrival closest city: Rijeka
A short opener of about 26 nm from the Slovenian karst to the Adriatic side of the divide. Postojna is a 750 m grass strip, runway 02/20, at roughly 530 m elevation, run by the local aero club and a long-standing gliding site, with the Postojna cave system and Predjama castle a short drive away. The track runs south-southwest over the Snežnik massif, the highest peak of the Slovenian Dinaric karst, a wooded plateau with almost nowhere to put down, before dropping toward the Kvarner coast. Grobnik is the old Sušak airfield, later taken over by the army and given a 1600 m concrete and asphalt runway 07/25 at about 308 m. The Krila Kvarnera club still tows gliders from it, though the club itself says the local geography rules out big distances, and the bora comes down from the ridges to the north-east with little warning.