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If you ever take a VFR flight from the Anchorage or Upper Cook Inlet area into the Bristol Bay drainage aera west of the Alaska Range, chances are you will fly through Merrill Pass. Because the highest point in Merrill Pass is only about 3200ft it is a major VFR air route connecting these two areas.
This scenery puts cabins and landing areas at the two lakes that are at the entrances at either side of this pass. On the east side of Merrill Pass is Kenibuna Lake, here you'll find an abandened trappers cabin. This cabin is in a serious state of disrepair, but the roof doesn't leak too bad. The old grass strip is overgrown and the dock is in poor condition, but if you need a place to hold up and wait for the weather in the pass to clear, this spot is a good option.
On the west side at Two Lakes you'll find Grovers Homestead. Ed Grover came to Alaska in the mid 70s, bought this homestead and became somewhat of a recluse. He is well known throughout the region for his hospitality to travelers that stop by. If you stop at Grovers place, expect to stay awhile, Ed has some great stories, great home-cooking and some really great homebrew. When you leave expect to have a list of supplies that you could in bring the next time you pass through, Ed doesn't get to town much.
There is no strip at Two Lakes but there is a nice beach in front of Grovers place that should present no problems for landings or take-offs and Ed has an excelent boat dock where you can tie up your floatplane.
I have found that it is best to place all addon sceneries outside FS2002. I have created a folder on my main drive, named "2K2Scenery", for all addons that I download for FS2002. The address is C:\2K2Scenery. Of course, your drive may be other than C:\ and you can name this folder anything you want.
Unzip merrill.zip and move the Merrill Pass folder (with all its contents) from the temporary folder over to 2K2Scenery or whatever you have named your new folder. C:\2K2Scenery\Merrill Pass
Start FS2002. Under 'World', choose 'Scenery Library', then 'Add Area'. Under 'Look in', browse to the location of Merrill Pass, click on it, and Merrill Pass should show up in the Scenery Area Title box. Check the option 'Use this scenery directly', then OK. The title of the scenery will appear on top of the Scenery Library list. Click OK to go back to the sim.
Method 2; (Easy)
Move the contents of the Merrill Pass\Scenery folder into the FS2002\ADDON SCENERY\Scenery folder and the contents of the Merrill Pass\Texture folder into the FS2002\ADDON SCENERY\Texture folder.
Open the FS2002 Scenery Library and make sure the Enabled box for the Addon Scenery area is checked. Then click OK.
The drawback of installing scenery by method 2 is that, if you ever want to remove the added scenery you won't be sure of what files to delete unless you keep very good records. There is also the possibility that different scenery designers will use different textures with the same name, then texture files will be overwritten and some sceneries won't display correctly.
IMPORTANT... For the great smoke effects to show up, make sure you open the smoke effects folder and follow the instruction in the read-me file that is included.
Merrill Pass will be listed on the FS2002 airport menu and will also show up in the add-on scenery menu.
This scenery would not be possible without the hard work and efforts of a lot of people with far more talent than myself.
First, thanks to Derek Leung for the "FS Scenery Creator", this is a great program that's very easy to use.
And thanks to Matthias Bruckner for the "Easy Object Designer". All of the custom Macros in this scenery were created using this tool. EOD is a great freeware program that is getting better all the time.
Thanks to The following people for their Macros and Textures
Doc George - Many of the textures that were used in macros that were created for this scenery
Jim Jackson - Anamated Smoke
Rafael Sanchez - FX files that make the anamated smoke possible.
I would like to thank also other bush scenery designers who's work I admire and have tried to emulate. This list includes, but is not limited to: Don Moser, Ken Nelson, Ron Ackerly, Jim Jackson, Dave Erickson, Dave Gillespie, Joe Watson and Mathieu Tremblay.
This scenery is released as freeware, so don't try to make any money off it! If this scenery is uploaded to any site for redistribution this read me file must be included.
Some of the texture files for this scenery came from my FS2000 texture folder and I don't know their origin, If I have violated anybody's copyrights let me know and I will take immediate steps to resolve the problem.
Use this scenery at your own risk. I am not responsible for any damage done to your computer, real or imagined.
Tom Fica
tcfica@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/tcfica/VFRAlaska.html?992399996060
