I waited years for someone to release a scenery file of Pancho's ranch, a place that has attained an almost mythical reputation in the aviation world, but to no avail, so I finally downloaded FS Scenery Creator and had a go myself.
I was hampered by two big problems. Firstly, I had no experience of scenery design and secondly, I could find virtually no information about the ranch. I only had a vague idea of where it was and no idea of what it looked like. At first I didn't even realise it had an airstrip.
My lucky break was coming across a fascinating website called 'Abandoned & Little Known Airfields'.
http://members.tripod.com/airfields_freeman/index.htm
On this site I found a page that had an aerial photo of the ranch dated 2001 that showed the runways and the site of the ruins of the ranch. It said that the field was called 'Barnes', had the lat/long co-ordinates, the orientation of the runways and the length of the main runway. The page also has some links to interesting items about Pancho and the ranch.
I took the lat/long to be the runway intersection, probably not strictly correct, but happily this placed the runways precisely where the literature said they should be. Directly on the centreline of runway 04-22 at Edwards and less than four miles from the threshold. Milton Thompson's book 'At The Edge of Space', a rattling good read by the way, includes a map of Rogers Dry Lake and shows a single airstrip marked 'not useable landing strip' at the exact same place, giving handy confirmation of the ranch's position.
I scaled off from the aerial photo the lengths and approximate widths of the runways and the distance from the runway intersection to the swimming pool. The page had four photos of the ranch, the aerial photo of the whole site mentioned earlier, a small low-res colour image of the ruins today, a black and white photo of the swimming pool and a low-res black and white undated aerial photo of the complex. I also found a good quality black and white photo taken just after the fire that showed a small area of the complex near the swimming pool. None of these photos give any real idea of what the buildings looked like, or even what colour they were. However, using just these photos I made a speculative scenery file that, I hope, very roughly resembles the layout of the ranch.
I made the runways dirt, which is probably correct. I have read that the field had a control tower and at least one hangar, Pancho's personal one that was later moved to El Mirage airport and still exists today. Because I have no idea where the tower or hangers were I have not put them in. Likewise I have not included any taxiways although I have 'hardened' the whole site so you may taxi around without undue jolting and bouncing. I feel sure that the complex had more buildings and more areas under cultivation than I have shown but I didn't want to use too much guesswork.
The best thing I can claim for this scenery, as inaccurate and speculative as it is, is that the airstrips and the ranch complex are about in their correct positions, give or take a hundred yards or so.
I made this scenery for my own amusement but I have two motives for releasing it. Firstly, I am hoping that someone will be able to point me towards some good photos of the ranch so that I may start a better version, but my real hope is that one of the genuine scenery gurus out there will be inspired to make an accurate, properly researched, professional quality scenery file of what is probably the most legendary and evocative landmark in the history of aviation.
