NORTH CASCADES BUSH AIRSTRIPS 2
Washington, U.S.A.
By James Belk
FOUR more challenging airstrips for Holger Sandmann's 'US North Cascades Mountains and Northwest Washington Coast' scenery enhancements and mesh. You can use them on their own if you like, but they're intended as an addon for my first package, 'n_cascades.zip'. These new airstrips are set in a variety of locations - on high mountain ridges, deep in narrow canyons, or perched on a ledge half way between those two extremes. As usual with my sceneries, you get very basic sloping or uneven runways, plus runway lights and ILS approaches for instrument practice in bad weather or at night. In good weather, these airstrips make rewarding destinations from many of Richard Goldstein's nearby 'Georender' series airfields.
START HERE: Many people had trouble getting my previous scenery for this area (n_cascades.zip) installed correctly. Please take a moment to review this checklist:
i. Read Holger Sandmann's mesh 'readme us_wa_nc.txt' CAREFULLY - this package isn't as straightforward to install as most other addons. BUT...
ii. Don't alter the TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL parameter in the FS9.cfg file. Leave it at its default value of 19 for compatibility with my scenery. Note: some commercial scenery addons can also alter this value during their installation, so it's worth a check. AND...
iii. If you're using any other mesh for the same area (e.g. FSGenesis or FSFreeware), don't remove Holger's mesh file 'mesh_North_Cascades_LOD10.bgl' because my scenery needs it. Also, because of the 'inverse priority' bug for mesh in FS2004, make sure that Holger's mesh is in a lower layer than these other meshes (i.e. below anything else relevant in the Scenery Library, which also includes any Georender airfields you might own; to achieve this, you'll probably need to move the other mesh out of the default scenery folder in fs9 and into a separate addon scenery folder).
ALL OK? CONTINUE HERE:
1. Download Holger Sandmann's 'US North Cascades Mountains and Northwest Washington Coast' [us_wa_nc.zip: 13026kb], and install as per his instructions (but see point ii. above). You might also want to install Holger's 'bcmesh9c.zip' to cover the adjacent area northwards towards Hope.
2. Unzip & place the 'wa4' folder in .\flight simulator 9\addon scenery (or wherever you keep your extra sceneries: in my case, simply c:\addonscenery). It should also be safe to combine the scenery and texture files with those in the 'wa3' folder if you have Part 1 of this scenery installed.
3. Place the 4 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 'wa4' 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 North Fork Junction (KNOR), Le Conte Notch (KLEC), Boundary Ridge (KBDY), or Dragons Claw (KDRA).
7. Check that what you're seeing agrees with my series of screenshots enclosed in this package; if not, please go back and read through these installation instructions again. If you experience aircraft crashes while using my runways, turn off crash detection.
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.
NORTH FORK JUNCTION: The airstrip is located just beyond a branch in Bridge Creek. The recommended approach is from the West on a long left base leg (remotely-situated ILS available [strictly, an IGS]), followed by a fairly late left turn onto finals. The airstrip has a 'ski-jump' profile, with Runway 34 being uphill overall. In strong southerly winds, you can fly past the airfield and do a U-turn further up the canyon (where it is also wider), before returning for a tricky downhill landing.
LE CONTE NOTCH: The runway here is relatively long, and has only a gentle uphill gradient in the landing direction. Unfortunately, it is located on a ledge and behind some trees so that the entire runway is out of sight until turning a very short final. The approach is from the North East up Flat Creek (from the vicinity of the North Fork Junction strip). You should be heading about 210 degrees magnetic and aiming just right of a rocky spur that projects from your left as the canyon starts to curve to the North (the airstrip itself sits on the ledge just to the right of this track). When you get to the rocky spur, at which point your altitude should be about 5500 feet, turn momentarily left to follow its contours, descending gently, followed by a right turn onto final for Runway 25 when collision with the canyon wall ahead seems imminent. Take-off, always from Runway 07, is simpler - it's just a gentle left turn onto a heading of about 030 degrees once clear of the surrounding trees.
BOUNDARY RIDGE: There are two approaches to this runway, both of which are relatively open. The high elevation runway itself is quite short, however, and it has a humped profile so that there is no line-of-sight between the runway thresholds. The approach to runway 07 is straight-in (ILS available), following a sharp ridge just to the left during its final stages. A right-hand visual circuit should be made to Runway 25; this can be quite a wide pattern, following the natural contours at the head of the canyon beneath Elderado Peak, before rolling out onto a reasonably long final.
DRAGON'S CLAW: Situated on a high ridge projecting from Bonanza Peak. The runway is built at a slight angle to the ridgeline so that terrain is present just to the right on approach from either direction (2 x ILS available). Landing on Runway 16 gives you an uphill rollout, but only after some marked undulations at the northern end of the strip - for this reason, a displaced landing threshold has been marked. The approach to Runway 34 (downhill) is past some very high terrain if the ILS is followed, or alternatively a left-hand visual pattern can be flown.
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 manipulate 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. 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).
Tom Fica, as always, for getting me started.
Tatu Kantomaa of the Finnish Scenery Designers (http://fisd.fsnordic.net) for help with the runway lights.
Don Lively for beta testing.
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, old cabin, bench, barrel, & tractor.
Bob Wening: Piper Super Cubs
Matt Garry: Maule
Jim Jackson: construction cone & tent
Paul Clawson & Frank Betts: 1946 Cessna 140
Donn E. Bohde: 1980 Cessna 185 Skywagon II
Paavo Pihelgas: Kihnu windsock
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/May 2005
http://home.clara.net/jgbelk/fs2k2.html
jgbelk@clara.co.uk
