Sleap airfield (pronounced Slape) is situated in the heart of Shropshire UK. Anyone visiting the site today will immediately recognise the hallmarks of an RAF WWII airfield. It was first opened in January 1943 though it did not become operational until April of that year. It was used mainly for training purposes as were many airfields in Shropshire, being situated well away from most enemy action. However it did prove to be the saving grace for many aircrews that were diverted from their home base due to fog, some on their last dregs of fuel. One such occasion involved 31 B-17s diverted from Molesworth, Grafton Underwood and Great Ashfield.
It was the base for C flight 81 OTU flying Whitley bombers and during this time some unfortunate incidents occurred whereby two Whitleys crashed into the Tower on separate occasions involving loss of life to aircrew and ground personnel. The Tower was subsequently repaired and no sign of the damage can be seen today on the original building.
Later operations included Horsa glider towing trials using the Whitley bombers. December 1944 saw the arrival of Wellington bombers and the OTU was renamed 1380 TSCU.
The station closed in December 1945 but was reopened in 1958 as a satellite to RAF Shawbury who used it for touch and go landings by Vampires and Provosts. It was finally abandoned by the RAF in 1964 and today it is the base of a very enthusiastic private flying club called Shropshire Aero Club. The original control tower is still used for that purpose as well as containing a good club house and restaurant. Some of the outlying WWII buildings can still be seen in odd corners but little remains of the extensive quarters that once occupied much of the surrounding countryside in what was quite a large RAF WWII airfield.
The club makes anyone very welcome at any time and trial flying lessons can be arranged. A flight over the wonderful Shropshire countryside is a great experience not to be missed.
My scenery is representative of the airfield as it is today, and is my first attempt at scenery building.
Note: Runway 9/27 is included, though it is not used. It is a relic of wartime use. I did hear that it may be reinstated at some future date.
Credits:
I am deeply indebted to Craig Jacobs who has created some fine scenery himself, which was how I got to know him in the first place. He patiently guided me in how to use both the Easy Object Designer and Airport for Windows programs. I am quite sure that Without his help this scenery would not exist today. This involved countless emails, as he lives in Oregon and I live in Shropshire and so far we have never met up. The nice thing about this is that we have now become close friends.
In the final stages of developing this scenery I was indebted to John Farrie from Visual Flight (www.visualflight.co.uk)/Getmapping VFR Photographic Scenery. He helped me position the scenery to fit reasonably well with VFR scenery. However it should be pointed out that a precise fit with VFR scenery is not now possible because it wasn't originally intended for this scenery, but by careful realignement it is reasonably close. I have deliberately left my ground textures in so that those without VFR scenery can also use the scenery.
Use has been made of Gerrish Grays wonderful freeware add-on called Trees. I would highly recommend anyone to install this software.
Of course we all have to thank the authors of the wonderful programs mentioned above and below, particularly Airport for Windows and EOD, Trees by Garrish Gray and Traffic by Lee Swordy, which are all freeware. They have enabled independent scenery designers to create much of the add-on scenery we all enjoy, and, without which FS 2004 would be a little dull, perhaps...
This scenery must never be used for financial gain and cannot be modified without my written consent.
Put the Sleap Airfield folder and the Trees folder into your Addon Scenery folder. Go to the Scenery Library in FS2004 and click Add area, then browse to the Sleap Airport folder and click OK. Do the same with the Trees folder. You must then exit and restart the game.
Most Important:
Do not open the scenery until you have carried out the following modification to your Scenery cfg file, found in the main FS9 folder
Open the Scenery Cfg.file with Notepad and under the Sleap entry add the following lines, it is easier to copy/paste this text just below the last line in the Sleap text:
Traffic: In order to make the scene at Sleap more life like tou can have AI traffic working there by simply adding the included files Traffic_Barrie.bgl,and AF2_EGCV_BP.bgl to your Flight Simulator 9/Addon scenery/Sleap/Scenery folder and also to your Flight Simulator 9/Scenery/World/scenery folder. The actual traffic you will see can be altered if you wish by using Lee Swordy's Traffic program available as freeware from SurClaro
NOTE: To run the Traffic at Sleap as it is intended you should start from a Parked Ramp position and NOT from the Active runway. By starting from the latter you may encounter a traffic jam where the AI does not allow you to get takeoff clearance. This is due to the unusual control situation at Sleap whereby aircraft have to backtrack down the main runway before taking off, as there are no taxiways that lead to the runway threshold.
Note: Please do not email me about the double entry of the Traffic & AFCAD files, this is essential otherwise the traffic will appear half buried and I cannot explain why. Nor can it be changed now.
Those of you who may also have Gary Summons UK2000Scenery part6 installed will get a clash with his Sleap scenery so you must choose which you prefer. If you prefer my version then go to Flight Simulator 9/UK2000 scenery/Part6/Scenery find the egcv.bgl file and rename it to orig_egcv.bgl which will disable Gary's Sleap scenery but allow all the other airfields in that package to work such as nearby RAF Shawbury.
