Scenery for FS2002
Elma Municipal Airport - Elma, Washington
The Project:
About halfway between Olympia, Washington and the Coast, you'll find the small town of Elma, Washington. It's about 20 miles east of Bowerman Field. The cooling towers of the Satsop Nuclear Power plant serve as a landmark, they're just to the southwest of the airport. The airport at Elma has some minor services and a restaurant.
Included in this project is custom terrain phototextures that depict the fertile valley of the Chehalis River. The river is a geologically old one, showing characteristic wide curves. You can see "oxbow" lakes in a few spots, formed as the changing river path cuts off one of its wide turns.
I always try to learn new techniques in scenery design, and my projects generally show something I hadn't been able to do before. New (for me) in this scenery is an animated beacon, made with a combination of keyframe gmax animation and linked "landing lights". While the buildings look similar to my fs2000 version of Elma, they are totally new, built with improved textures and built with GMAX. They are made from photographs I took three summers ago. The ground textures are made from USGS aerial photographs.
Introducing a new scenery designer!
If you downloaded one of my previous projects, Bowerman Field for 2002, AND if you're very observant, you may have noticed an image of two folks on the sail of the sailboat. I am forced to admit that the ugly one is I, but the cute one is my youngest, Joey (8). Joey has shown a remarkable aptitude for computer programs (recently taught himself html), and loves to fly fs2002. Having watched me design scenery for years, and having enjoyed flying around buildings he's seen me take pictures of, he's getting the design bug himself. He's studied the GMAX tutorial from the SDK, and we proudly include his house with this upload. Joe is pretty interested in working with me on my next airport, and you can image how exciting this is for both of us. So, send Joey encouragement! You can see his initial GMAX structure located by one of the small lakes northwest of the airport.
Airport Details (thanks to www.airnav.com):
Airport Communications
CTAF: 122.8
UNICOM: 122.8
Radio aids to navigate to the Airport
VOR radial/distance VOR name Freq Var
------------------- ----------------------- ------ ---
OLMr254/21.7 OLYMPIA VORTAC 113.40 19E
HQMr066/29.5 HOQUIAM VORTAC 117.70 19E
NDB name Hdg/Dist Freq Var ID
-------------------------- -------- ---- --- -------------------
MASON COUNTY 203/20.9 348 19E MNC -- -. -.-.
CARNEY 204/34.9 274 20E CAN -.-. .- -.
LACOMAS 248/35.8 328 20E LAC .-.. .- -.-.
TOLEDO 301/39.9 219 20E TDO - -.. ---
Airport Services
Fuel available: NONE
Parking: tiedowns
Bottled oxygen: NONE
Bulk oxygen: NONE
Other services: flight instruction, aircraft rental
Runway Information
Runway 7/25
Dimensions: 2275 x 30 ft. / 693 x 9 m
Surface: asphalt, in good condition
RUNWAY 7 RUNWAY 25
Traffic pattern: right left
Markings: NSTD NSTD
Markings condition: fair fair
DISPLACED THRESHOLD: no yes
DT distance: 180 ft.
Touchdown point: no no
OBSTRUCTIONS: TREES TREE
Height: 14 ft. 25 ft.
Distance from threshold: 200 ft. 200 ft.
Distance from centerline: 60 ft. 0 ft. both
Airport Operational Statistics
Aircraft based on the field: 30
Aircraft operations: average 33/day
Single engine airplanes: 28
62% local general aviation
Ultralights: 2
38% transient general aviation
Installation:
I've tried to make this installation VERY easy. I recommend you create a new folder somewhere on your hard drive. Call it anything you wish. Unzip elma2k2.zip into this folder. Then run the batch file called install.bat. Run this by opening windows explorer, and open the folder with the unzipped files. Double click on the file "Install.bat". If you wish, you can also run this file from a dos window, or from the start/run option from the windows start button. That's it!
Then open flight sim 2002, and add the area using the world drop down menu. Click on the "scenery library" button, and then "add area". Browse to the folder you created, and click ok. Enjoy flying at Elma Muni.
Thanks and Appreciation:
Ken Meier thanks for beta testing and constant morale boosts. Also, thanks for finding the link to Gimp...neat program.
Thanks to Terry Hanson, a new friend and beta tester. Also a budding designer, watch for his version of Griffith airport!
Thanks to Richard Goldstein, while Richard and I haven't worked for a few years, his continuing contribution to scenery design is an inspiration. Visit Richard's masterpiece, "EMMA field", only a hop skip and a jump from "ELMA".
Thanks also to Arno Gerretsen, D_FAST, and Nick Whittome from Ireland .. for your assistance as I struggled with intricacies of GMAX.
And many thanks to the tool makers:
Manfred Moldenhauer - SCASM
Discreet and Microsoft - GMAX
Microsoft for SDK tools, resample.exe, tmf2bgl.exe, and autogen annotator
And finally a MAJOR thank you to the freeware designers out there, you have made this hobby great, and have been a great influence.
Finally the STUFF:
This scenery is freeware and is copyrighted. You may not include this scenery in any pay-ware in any form, no matter what, no way, no how...without my written consent.
Of course, you use this freeware with no guarantees, or warrantees of any kind. Its been tested and will undoubtedly work great, but if it were to cause a problem for you, you have only my sympathy.
If you'd like to upload this to any other sites, that's fine, just include this file completely and let me know, it's fun to follow where it's uploaded.
Please share your comments and suggestions, my email:
bob.bernstein@attbi.com
