NORTH CASCADES BUSH AIRSTRIPS
Washington, U.S.A.
By James Belk
This is a package of five bush airstrips set in the Pacific North West, designed for use with Holger Sandmann's 'US North Cascades Mountains and Northwest Washington Coast' scenery enhancements and mesh. Many of Richard Goldstein's 'Georender' series airfields also lie nearby. The airstrips are designed in my usual style, with uneven runway surfaces and located in extreme positions amongst mountainous terrain. The basic runways vary in length from 1200 to 3400 feet, with elevations up to over 7000ft. They can also have humped or undulating touchdown zones, or a slope that might give you a downhill landing from a straight-in approach, or an uphill landing from an indirect approach...that gets VERY close to the trees. Despite their small size, most of the airfields also have one or more ILS approach, an NDB, and runway lighting at night.
1. Download Holger Sandmann's 'US North Cascades Mountains and Northwest Washington Coast' [us_wa_nc.zip: 13026kb], and install as per his instructions. If you have any Georender airports installed, put the mesh in a lower layer. IMPORTANT: Leave the TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL parameter in the FS9.cfg file at its default value of 19 for compatibility with my scenery.
NB. You might also want to install Holger's 'bcmesh9c.zip' to cover the area up towards Hope, immediately North of this scenery.
2. Unzip & place the 'wa3' folder in .\flight simulator 9\addon scenery (or wherever you keep your extra sceneries: in my case, simply c:\addonscenery). Note: it's probably best NOT to combine this scenery in the same folder as any of my previous projects, if you have any installed.
3. Place the 5 Airport/Facility directory files ('AF2_K*') from the AFD folder in .\flight simulator 9\addon scenery\scenery.
4. Open up the 'Scenery Library' from the 'Settings' option in the FS2004 Welcome Menu and add the new area, navigating to the 'wa3' folder (or edit the scenery.cfg file manually if desired).
5. Close, and then restart FS2004.
6. In the main 'Go To Airport' menu, select Doc Ridge (KDOC), Tom Saddle (KTOM), Hermits Lair (KHRM), Little Jackass (KJAK), or Hideaway Ranch (KHID).
Optimising the appearance of this scenery:
In (Options>)Settings>Display>Hardware, set a MIP Mapping Quality of about 6. This will avoid the runway textures becoming blurred at any other than the closest viewing distances. May affect frame rates.
Doc Ridge: Use Runway 16 for landing (straight-in ILS), and Runway 34 for departure. An offset ILS is also available for Runway 34, but has a steep glideslope and gets very close to the mountain ridge to the north. The runway is generally flat, but has a marked hump at its southern end - don't land long on Runway 16, as it isn't particularly long.
Tom Saddle: Use Runway 25 for landing (straight-in ILS), and Runway 07 for departures. In strong easterly winds only, an offset approach can be made to Runway 07. The runway is almost flat, apart from some undulations at its eastern end which produce a 'ski-jump' profile at the eastern threshold.
Hermits Lair: The preferred landing runway is 16: an offset approach, but desirable as it gives an uphill landing on what is a very short runway. If you land straight-in on Runway 34, then make sure you touchdown as early as possible - if you end up floating downhill, then go-around. Runway 34 is the best direction for take-off, followed by an early left turn. The runway threshold markers show the runway as closed to deter casual passers by from landing on this hazardous strip. No navaids.
Little Jackass: This strip is quite similar to Hermits Lair, but has a slightly longer runway, albeit at a higher elevation. Runway 34 has an ILS (gets very close to a ridge at about 6 miles out), but don't land long. Make offset approaches to Runway 16 from the North West.
Hideaway Ranch: The longest runway here, but narrow & still essentially one-way: land Runway 16 (steep ILS), and depart Runway 34. In strong northerly winds, approaches may be attempted to Runway 34 - either straight-in, or via Hozomeen Creek from the South East. The runway undulates at its northern end (the usual touchdown zone), then slopes slowly upwards towards the South.
OK, these airstrips are only fictional...but who in their right mind would build a real runway in such places (apart from in France or Idaho maybe!)? I do, however, spend a lot of time researching backcountry airstrips and try to incorporate many of their qualities into my work.
Get the navaid frequencies from the Map.
Ignore the runway length data on the Map & A/FD, which are are all listed as just 1 foot. This is a necessary fiddle to install any ILS beams, which require the definition of a default FS runway (albeit so small as to be invisible).
I don't recommend using landing lights at night - they assume they're illuminating a 2D surface, whereas my airstrips aren't planar.
You might have noticed that my runways nearly always point due North/South or East/West (degrees true). This is because the terrain is easier to customise if I restrict myself to these directions - kind of a small price to pay for having bumpy/sloping runways.
The airfield ICAO codes (K---) are more typical of larger U.S. airports, I know, but I've used this convention rather than local codes like '21W' or 'S86' purely for ease of remembering.
Choice of aircraft: forget about your C-152 or PA-28 with all but the lightest of fuel/payloads anywhere apart from Hideaway Ranch. Use a Cub, Maule, Scout, Helio, or Zenith STOL, for example. For anybody that's interested, I design my airstrips to be within the capabilities of NORMAL performance of the RealAir SF-260 with half tanks and 2 pilots (a high performance plane, but it can't fly very slowly - not exactly the ideal bush plane to be honest). If anything ABNORMAL happens (i.e. an engine failure at Vr, then you'd end up in the trees).
Mike 'Doc' Apsey for beta testing. Doc Ridge is named after him!
Tom Fica, as always, for getting me started. Tom Saddle carries his name!
Tatu Kantomaa of the Finnish Scenery Designers (http://fisd.fsnordic.net) for help with the runway lights.
Scenery developed using Flight Simulator Scenery Creator, Ground2k4, CellGrid2004a, MDLtoBGL, DXTBmp, BGLComp SDK, AFCAD, Adobe Photoshop Elements, and Easy Object Designer.
I used macros developed by the following authors:
Tom Fica: one room cabin, shed, school bus, flatbed truck, bench, lodge.
Bob Wening: Piper Super Cubs
Matt Garry: 1946 Fleet Model 80 Canuck, Maules.
Original texture Bitmaps 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 you think they might have done to your computer.
James Belk/November 2004
http://home.clara.net/jgbelk/fs2k2.html
aeryn_sunpk@hotmail.com
