SANTA ANA ORANGE COUNTY JOHN WAYNE AIRPORT
California, USA
ICAO idenitfier: KSNA
version 1.0 for FS2000 only.
TURN ON WORD WRAP
THE AIRPORT
This project is a detailed rendition of John Wayne Airport which is an extremely important airport in the LA basin. Although LAX takes the glory in the region the four smaller reliever airports in the region (Santa Ana, Ontario, Van Nuys and Burbank) play an important part here providing relief to LAX, and in their own right also serving as very busy Commercial/General Aviation gateways.
Santa Ana lies 35 miles to the southeast of downtown Los Angeles and has become a very busy airport to the point that expansion is now not possible. The airport is situated in the center of the residential and business districts (hence it's popularity with businessmen), and is an important part of the Orange County economy. Upgrades and renovations over the past decade and a half have resulted in a thoroughly modern airport with all the amenities for the traveller. The main terminal building (Thomas F Riley terminal) is a unique design with rounded roofs laid out in a straight configuration and providing parking spaces for 14-15 aircraft through jetways. A couple of huge multi-story car parks run the length of the terminal buildings at the back.
The main activity at the airport, however, is Business and General Aviation and Santa Ana is home to an enormous collection of Bizjet/GA aircraft anywhere and most of which can be seen all around the western and eastern perimeter GA parking areas. John Wayne Airport is home base for approximately 575 general aviation aircraft. General aviation activity accounts for approximately 80% of the airportÂ’s total number of operations (takeoffs and landings). The AirportÂ’s general aviation facilities serve small private aircraft, corporate aircraft, and fixed base operations that provide fuel services, aircraft maintenance, flying lessons and other services.
Santa Ana is the 18th busiest airport in the world ranked according to total aircraft movements handling 470,000 aircraft movements annually of which approximately 120,000 is commercial and 350,000 Business and General Aviation. Additionally, approximately 7.7 million passengers are handled annually. With only two runways (one and a half really!) to service this one can imagine the levels of traffic at the airport! If you also take into account the location of this ariport right in the heart of the Southern California ARTCC with its mass of air traffic one marvels at the guys and gals who control the skies around SNA. If you listen in on the tower controller at SNA you realise that his intellect is on another planet to the rest of us due to the amazing level of traffic control he manages! Of course, Socal Approach also plays an equally important part in 'shoe-horning' in the traffic into SNA in the process also avoiding all the other traffic swarming around.
Although I have never had the pleasure of passing through this airport I have heard enough stories about the "rocket ship" departure procedure when taking off. Due to noise restrictions aircraft are required to maintain a high rate of climb on climb out to 5000ft, to an extent that almost resembles a rocket ship with passengers hanging on to their seats for dear life!
The airport is named after John Wayne "The Duke" in honour of the great actor and a 7ft high statue of "The Duke" stands in the main terminal entrance.
THE SCENERY
The scenery is as close a resemblence as I could get from the numerous photographs I have of the terminal area. The main terminal (Thomas F Riley terminal) has all the gates in place with the appropriate stand numbers (almost accurate). The hangars are all there as in real life while I have also put in the FBO buildings (with the names of the FBOs on them), although I have taken some liberty with the design of some of these buildings as I did not have any clear photographs of some of them. I have also put in some sundry buildings/warehouses beyond the airport towards the westside.
The car parking areas are all there as well as the roads that service the airport. Taxiway/runway signs are included and I have also included a NOAA map of the airport to help you in navigating around the airport.
Full nightlighting of the airport has been done while also included are seasonal effects on the grass textures. All navaids for the airport are included including the ILS 19R, the LDA 19R and the NDBs.
***The scenery is designed to accomodate a whole set of static aircraft wrapped up in three separate files and also included is a set of ramp vehicles included in a separate file. The static aircraft are placed accurately as you would most likely see them at SNA. A large collection of General Aviation aircraft are included and placed in the appropriate parking areas and in front of the hangars. The statics are included only if your system can handle the tremendous load of the complex structures and the resultant fall in frame rates. To reduce the burden on the CPU of the statics I have placed them in various files and also in either dense or very dense scenery complexity settings. By manipulating the scenery complexity or removing one or two of the files one can still get the effect of the static aircraft while still getting reasonable frame rates. The static aircraft files listing is as follows,
SNAStatics Commerical airliners at the main terminal
SNAStatics1 General Aviation traffic at the perimeter parking areas
SNAStatics2 General Aviation traffic at the perimeter parking areas
SNAvehicles Ramp vehicles
(Note: These files are included in a separate download which was uploaded along with this scenery and is called SNA2KSt.zip).
***
Due to the complex nature of the scenery I have set five complexity levels to the scenery so that the low power computer user can also use the scenery.
Very Sparse The runways and ramp area but no buildings
Sparse Adds the main terminal buildings
Normal Adds the car parks, hangars, the main FBO buildings, a few gates and two static aircraft (if installed)
Dense Adds all gates, all the commercial static aircraft, half of the Biz/GA static aircraft (if installed), taxiway signs
Very Dense Adds all detail including all the buildings, static aircraft etc.etc.
TIP1: TO OBTAIN AN ACCEPTABLE LEVEL OF FLYABILITY AND DETAIL PLAY AROUND WITH THE VARIOUS SETTINGS AND FILES i.e. REMOVE A STATICS FILE OR SNAGATES FILE OR SNAFENCE FILE ETC.ETC.
TIP2: ONE METHOD OF FLYING HERE IS TO TURN COMPLEXITY LEVELS TO DENSE/VERY DENSE WHEN TAXIING TO SEE ALL THE DETAIL (EYE CANDY) OF THE DESIGN BUT ON LANDING AND TAKEOFF GO BACK TO NORMAL SETTINGS TO BOOST FRAME RATES AND ELIMINATE STUTTERING
****A WORD OF WARNING ! THIS SCENERY IS A FRAME RATE HOG ! REMEMBER, IT IS INTENDED TO BE AS ACCURATE AS POSSIBLE WITH LOTS OF PURPOSE DESIGNED AND COMPLEX BUILDING STRUCTURES. HENCE IT IS NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED COMPUTERS (i.e. IF YOU OWN ANYTHING LESS THAN A PII 300Mhz AND NO 3D GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR THEN SAY GOOD BYE TO FLYING HERE)****
Most of the textures are included within the zip file but to be safe this scenery requires VOD 2.7, Airport 2.02, ASD textures and the new VOD 3.0 textures which can be found at SurClaro.com and SurClaro. download these and place them in your main texture directory.
INSTALLATION:
As normal, unzip the file SNA2000.zip. The unzipped file should create a folder as follows,
SNA ( with two subdirectories \scenery and \texture )
Move this SNA folder (intact) to your FS2000\scenedb directory. So you should have a structure of FS2000\scenedb\SNA with subdirectories called "scenery" & "texture".
Start FS2000 and thru the scenery library add the above scenery folder as SNA2000. Make sure that the SNA folder is on a scenery level higher (i.e. lower scenery layer number) than the default US Southwest and any terrain mesh add-on scenery folders. Remember that this SNA scenery and the default US Southwest default sceneries have to be active at the same time to use this scenery.
IMPORTANT:
You also need to make the following change to the scenery.cfg file in the FS2000 root directory AFTER YOU HAVE ADDED THE SCENERY FROM WITHIN FS2000,
The [Area.xxx] and Layer=xxx are assigned automatically by FS2000 so do not change these within the scenery.cfg file, just find where FS2000 has added SNA and paste the above on top. Also do not change the layer number and leave it as your FS2000 has assigned.
Hope it all works!
Credits:
The John Wayne Orange County Airport Authority, and specifically Gary Drake for the photographs of the airport
Pascal Meziat, B McWilliams & T Hiscox (Airport 2.60)
Luis Sinclair and the FSDS team (FSDS)
and of course...MICROSOFT.
For more information on this airport be sure to visit the Santa Ana Orange County John Wayne airport website : www.ocair.com
THIS SCENERY IS FREEWARE AND MAY NOT BE USED FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES WITHOUT PRIOR PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR. HOWEVER, IF YOU WRITE TO ME THIS AND MY PREVIOUS SCENERIES MAY BE ALLOWED TO BE UPLOADED TO OTHER SITES WITH MY PERMISSION.
If you like this scenery drop me a line. DFW next...
