*** English Farm Strips ***
*** Eastbach, Milson, & Nayland ***
By James Belk
Nayland is in Suffolk, near Colchester - the main 600m/2000' grass strip has a gradient of 8% in its first half: probably the closest you'll get in Britain to one of the French alpine airstips like Courchevel or Megève.
Milson sits beneath Clee Hill in rural Shropshire, on the side of a shallow valley; it has both a helipad & a 450m/1500' grass strip - most of which is on a fairly gentle 3.5% slope apart from the last 70 feet which rises up more steeply. By chance, Milson's runway lies more or less in line with the Shawbury VOR (116.8 MHz), making a rough sort of instrument approach procedure possible: I recommend flying inbound on the 176 radial (QDM 356), starting descent from 3000' AMSL (roughly the local MSA) at around 35d to maintain a 3 degree/5% descent path: the Runway 36 threshold is at 26.5d but you'll soon loose the signal as you descend below 1000' AMSL; the runway (353 degrees) should by then be visible with the visibility set to a few miles or greater.
The two runways at Gloucestershire's Eastbach Farm, on the edge of the Forest of Dean, are also on a slight slope but most of the excitement comes from their short length (250m/820' & 350m/1150' respectively) - ideal for microlights and STOL planes.
NOTE ON DESIGN LIMITATIONS:
The availabilty of high quality mesh, together now with the ability to create runways without having to flatten the terrain makes it possible to recreate the unique character of these airfields. Despite the accuracy of LAGO's mesh, however, some compromises have still had to be made. The main victim is Eastbach which I have had to build about 600m to the south of its true position; the major difference is that runway 01/19 is virtually flat, whereas it has a 5% slope in reality. At Nayland, I am happy with the profile of the main runway (14/32), although the 32 threshold area is meant to be flatter; the secondary runway (13/31) is about 20% shorter than its true length to avoid having an excessively high camber near the 31 threshold. Milson is, as far as I know, quite accurate.
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INSTALLATION:
Place the 'farm' folder in 'c:\program files\microsoft games\fs2002\addon scenery' (or wherever you keep your extra sceneries). Now open up the Scenery Library in FS2002 and add the new area - or manually edit the scenery.cfg file as required.
Install Gerrish Gray's tree library (trees_v3.zip) using the author's enclosed instructions.
NOTE ON MESH:
All 3 airfields are ONLY compatible with LAGO's TerraMesh Part 13 of England & Wales (5 uros) - no other mesh will work.
NOTE ON VISUAL FLIGHT'S GETMAPPING PHOTOREALISTIC SCENERY COMPATABILITY:
There is a slight mismatch between the mesh and the terrain textures due to the different earth model systems (WGS84 & OSGB36) used for each in FS. As these airfields have been made to fit exactly with the mesh terrain, they will not quite match up with their corresponding positions in the photorealisitc terrain. Also, the VFGM mesh should be deactivated, and the LAGO mesh used instead.
[Quick links to all the required files can be found on my website:
http://home.clara.net/jgbelk/fs2k2.html]
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THANKS & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Scenery developed using Airport v2.6, Ground2k v2, MDLtoBGL v4a3, DefArea v1.01, and Easy Object Designer v2.0.59.
Many thanks to John Woodside for research on Nayland & Eastbach, plus VFGM scenery and mesh testing.
I used macros and FS98 planes developed by the following authors:
Gerrish Gray: Trees
Tom Fica: Conifers, fuel barrel, van, Landcruiser, '79 Chevy, Dodge Pickup, & Unimog.
Jordan Moore: cow
Peter Leadbeater: windsock (texture modified - sock material now orange)
Bob Wening: white/green cub
Bob Wening & Daniel Gazzano: Progreso cub CX-ALE
Jerry Arzdorf: Thruster T-300, & Team Airbike Ultralights
Dana McGee, Eric Johnson, & Robert Palmer: C177 Cardinal
Renato D. Pullin & Jim Coarse: Pitts S-2S
Ralf-J. Triebel: RCBR-4082-35, BREHAUS5, & AWERK1 hangar
Frank Betts: Engine hoist, coverterted Hanglider Trike (original author unknown)
Konstantin Droubetski: Russian GAZ-66 fuel truck (texture modified - russian lettering removed)
Frank Elton & Robin Ritchie: Percival Proctor
Daniel Hamblin: Blister Hangar
Unknown authors: Piper J-3 Cub & Tin Buidling
Original texture BMPs used in some of my own macros by Tom Fica, Don Moser, & Doc George; all used with kind permission. If, however, I have violated anybody else's copyrights please let me know and I will take immediate steps to resolve the problem.
This scenery is distributed as freeware, and this readme file must be included with it if used elsewhere. Use these files at your own risk: no responsibility is accepted for any damage they might cause to your computer.
