ROCHESTER AIRPORT, Kent(U.K) version1.0
by Charles Watson


This version of Rochester airport is for use with FS2002. The airport itself is shown in detail. I have included the Medway Bridge which carries the M2 motorway over the river Medway, and the Rochester road bridge carrying the A2 road across the river from Rochester to Strood.

Unfortunately, a couple of the default FS roads are wrongly placed. The A229 Maidstone to Rochester/Chatham road is wrongly oriented and heads too much to the Northeast, instead of running South to North along the Eastern edge of the airport. I have drawn in this road where it should be, but have not managed, as yet, to cover-up the default road.

The default A228 has been shown to cross the river in a couple of places, west of Rochester, where in fact there are no crossings in real life. Another default road(which in real life does not exist), has been drawn further to the west of the river. I have attempted to redraw the roads and widen the river in this area to get everything ,(as near as I can), to reflect reality.

Another limitation of FS2002 is that the City of Rochester itself has not been shown in the default ground texture. Let's hope that it will soon become possible to change this sort of thing in FS2002.

HISTORY:

Although very small, Rochester airport has a long and distinguished history. Shorts used to have a factory in Rochester, beside the river. Here they built flying boats and during the Second World War, Blenheim bombers. The fuselages and wings of the latter were transported by road,through the narrow streets of the City of Rochester and up the hill to the airport. Here they were assembled and flown out. One of the airport hangars was hit by a bomb, destroying I believe, two Blenheims.
Since those days, the airport has been leased by G.E.C. Avionics and B.A.E. Medway Aircraft Preservation Society, who work in a hangar on the airfield, have to the best of my knowledge, managed over the years, to restore several classic aircraft to an airworthy condition, including at least one Spitfire and a Hurricane. There is a flying school and a flourishing flying club operating from the airport.
The local council would like to see the land sold for redevelopment, despite howls of protest from both the flying community and local residents alike. Thanks to a recommendation made recently, that an airport facility should always be present here, the redevelopment plans may, hopefully, be scaled down.

INSTALLATION:

1. Create a folder such as C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\FS2002\My Scenery\
Rochester.

2. Within the C:\..\..\..\Rochester folder, create two subfolders called Scenery and Texture.

3. Unzip RCHCWv1.zip

4. Extract all .BGL files to the C:\..\..\..\Rochester\Scenery folder

5. Extract all .R8 and .BMP files to the C:\..\..\Rochester\Texture folder

6. Enable the scenery, either by editing your FS2002 Scenery.Cfg file or from the FS Scenery Library whilst running Flight Simulator.


CREDITS:

This scenery was built using ASDv2.1 and FSDS from Abacus.

I shall be eternally grateful to those at Rochester Airport who were so kind and helpful, when I walked over to the tower, early in 1995 for information, which I needed for my first version of the Medway scenery I did for FS5. Not only did they answer my questions but fished the 1994 Pooley's Flight Guide out of the wastepaper basket and handed it to me as a gift. Noone could have asked for a better start!!

TEXTURES:
Textures named xxxxcw.bmp/r8 and RCHxxxxxx.bmp/r8 are my own,created using Paintshop Pro 7 by JASC Software.
Textures named Abxxxx.bmp/r8 are provided by Abacus
I believe the others are standard Microsoft textures, but I am unsure about this so have included them for safety's sake. If this is incorrect, I do apologise to the real authors.
Carsrow.bmp is courtesy of Ralph Sanchez


COPYRIGHT:

This scenery is released strictly as Freeware. Copyright Charles Watson. As Freeware you are permitted to distribute this archive, subject to the following conditions.
-The archive must be distributed without modification to the contents of the archive. Redistribution of this archive with any files added, removed or modified is prohibited.

-the inclusion of any individual file from this archive in another archive(unless distributed as Freeware), without the prior permission of the author is prohibited.

-No charge may be made for this archive, other than that to cover the cost of its distribution. If a fee is charged it must be made clear to the purchaser that the archive is Freeware and that the fee is to cover the distributor's costs of providing the archive.

-The author's rights and wishes concerning this archive must be respected.


Kind regards,
Charles Watson
E-mail: charles.watson1@btinternet.com 13th March 2002