THIS FILE IS BEST READ IN WORDPAD - turn word wrap on.
RAF FAIRFORD - FOR FS2000.
By: John Young
E-mail john.young@btinternet.com
INTRODUCTION
RAF Fairford is located about 8nm North of Swindon in the UK. It is operated by the United States Air Force as a forward staging airfield and at times of European crisis, when it deploys B-52 and B-1b bombers there as well as KC135s refuelling tankers. Its 10,000-foot runway is ideally suited to this purpose and during the Concorde test flight years it also served as the home of the British prototype aircraft too. It is the venue for the world famous International Air Tattoo, but is currently undergoing a major refurbishment.
I decided to build the scenery at the request of Team Mildenhall (Virtual 3rd Airforce) as the airfield is not included in the FS2000 default - it's just a plain green desert. I am grateful to Andrew Hopwood from the team who supplied me with videotape and a few photographs to work from. The result is a detailed scenery that is hopefully, reasonably accurate too.
I wanted to populate some of the dispersal stands with B-52s and B-1bs, but in the case of the former I could not make e-mail contact with the author of the only example that I could find on the net that would convert with M98toBGL. Although there were several "Bones" to choose from, all of them converted, but because the model contained two sets of wings - one swept set and one forward set, unfortunately, both appeared together in the static conversion, so I abandoned that idea too. I have however included a detachment of KC135Rs from Mildenhall in the dispersals north east of runway 27. The user can of course populate the base with other aircraft using FS Traffic and produce some dynamic aircraft tracks.
INSTALLATION
Create a folder under FS2000\Scenery, call it Fairford or EGVA, or whatever you like. Create two sub-folders, one called Scenery and the other Texture. Unzip the files in the archive and place the scenery (.bgl files), including the exclude file in the scenery folder. Place all the texture files (.bmp and .R8) in the Mildenhall_Lakenheath\texture folder. You will also need the standard Airport2.10 textures for the runway and trees. These are included as a separate .zip file in this package and should be placed in your main FS2000 texture folder if you do not have them already.
Go to the scenery library from the drop down menu and click on "add scenery". Navigate to the folder where "Fairford" was placed and the directory name should appear in the window. Give the scenery a title and make sure the enable box is ticked. The exclude file will take care of the visible default VOR.
IMPORTANT
You need to flatten the elevated Microsoft mesh surface where Fairford is placed. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to your main FS2000 folder. In it you will find a file called scenery.cfg. Double click this to open it - It should open automatically in Notepad or Wordpad. If it does not, open either of these two standard Windows programs from the Accessories folder and navigate to your scenery.cfg file and double click it to open it. Find the block of information that refers to your newly installed scenery - probably at the bottom of the list.
Copy and Paste the following line at the end of the block as a new line:
You can select Fairford from the FS2000 Airports menu because the new version of Airport 2.6 includes a facility to add non-default scenery to the library. Unfortunately, while your aircraft will be correctly positioned at the threshold of runway 27, you will still be facing in the same direction (273 degrees) if you select runway 09. The facility is useful though because the data for the airfield is also accessed by the GPS display. You can also load Fairford from the "Scenery from FS95 and before" menu and I have included 3 start-up positions, which do face the correct way.
PICK AND MIX
The scenery files (.bgl) provide choices of scenery item details that can be left out to help match PC power to frame-rates. The content is as follows:
Fairford_01.bgl: All ground polygons - runway, taxiways, grass, concrete, hills and Nav aids. (you must include this file)
Fairford_02.bgl: The airfield perimeter fence
Fairford_03.bgl: All airfield buildings
Fairford_04.bgl: Grass covered bunkers
Fairford_05.bgl: Trees
Fairford_06.bgl: 4 x KC135R static aircraft
Fairford_07.bgl: 4 x KC135R static aircraft
Fairford_08.bgl: Vehicles
NB: The Fairford_01AFD.bgl file provides the data for the Airports library.
GROUND SCENERY SHADOWS
Turn scenery shadows off - they play havoc with the transparency of the
perimeter fence. Very few buildings have been designed with shadows in any
case.
FLYING IN AND OUT OF FAIRFORD
Runway headings are 273 degrees (27) and 093 degrees (09)
ILS 27 is 110.1 I-FFD
ILS 09 is 110.1 I-FFA
VOR/DME is 111.50 FFA
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Rafael Garcia Sanchez for Visual Object Designer 3.0
Manfred Moldenhauer, for SCASM and Pascal Meziat, Brian McWilliams and
Tom Hiscox for Airport 2.6
Trevor de Stigter for M98toBGL (to create static aircraft)
Major Alan at USAF Scenario for his KC135R. See his web site at
www.usafscenario.com - an extremely useful resource.
LEGAL
This scenery is freeware. It has been designed for the benefit of the flight sim community worldwide. That means I own the copyright and you don't. It may not be uploaded or placed on any medium that may cause money to be made. Please also respect the copyright of those designers who have given permission to use their aircraft as static objects.
This software is provided "as is" with no guarantees or warranty of fitness and you use these files at your own risk.
OTHER SCENERIES BY ME
London Stansted - highly detailed and accurate scenery of this Essex UK airport. (EGSSJY3.Zip from SurClaro)
Mildenhall and Lakenheath - highly detailed and accurate scenery of these two RAF (USAF) airfields in Suffolk UK. Less so for Lakenheath at this stage.(EGUNJY1.ZIP from SurClaro)
FINALLY
If you like the scenery, please tell me - it takes many hours to put scenery together and it is great to know that it has been appreciated (or not). If you have a problem that you can't fix or suggestions for improvement, then also e-mail me. I will try to respond by next day.
John Young
Essex UK
E-mail: john.young@btinternet.com
February 2000
