Category: Flight Simulator 2004 - Scenery
PABR - Barrow - Alaska, USA

Images related to this file:

• barrow_alaska_v1-1.jpg
• barrow_alaska_v1-2.jpg
• barrow_alaska_v1-3.jpg
• barrow_alaska_v1-4.jpg
• barrow_alaska_v1-5.jpg

File Description:
The town of Barrow is in the far north of Alaska, and is best known in flying circles as the place where Wiley Post crashed his floatplane on takeoff and killed himself and Will Rogers. The crash was some 15 miles south of Barrow and was "assisted" by the mismatched fuselage, wings, and floats that had been assembled to create the floatplane. The Barrow population is largely Inupiat and totals some 4,400. The downtown area of Barrow is immediately north of the airport. The second and largest part of Barrow is further north past a string of lagoons and is locally called Browerville. To the northeast along the coast is the smallest part around what used to be the Naval Arctic Research Lab, and is now a college. To the east of this are the DEW buildings, plus two large navy hangars and the gravel runway that was used to serve the DEW station. The PABR runway is aligned 06-24 in FS9 and is 7,100 feet long and 150 feet wide, built on top of a gravel base and surround that copes with the underlying permafrost. There is PAPI at both ends and an ILS and approach lights on 06; 06 circuits are to the right. The airport notes include a warning that the apron is not a standard width and that large planes that are enroute to the far end of the runway will not be able to taxi past a plane parked at the gate and should use the runway as a taxiway, then turn and takeoff. FS9 AI cannot cope with that, so the apron here is wider. There are, in real life and the AI, daily flights by Air Alaska (three at least) and Era (several, and which is now called Ravn, hence the new hangar door motif) and air cargo flights by Northern Air Cargo and Everts, plus GA. The buildings have been made with photographic textures or textures made from reference photos. I decided that while 500+ scenery objects was probably ok for most people the required 900+ to "make" the town of Barrow would likely not be. The auto-generated FS9 town objects could not be left as Barrow with trees would not look at all like reality; I have "faded" the density of the town buildings into the distance from the airport.