Category: Flight Simulator 2004 - Scenery
8AK7 - Bullen Point - Alaska North Slope 7

Images related to this file:

• alaska_north_slope_7-1.jpg
• alaska_north_slope_7-2.jpg

File Description:
The town of Barrow is in the far north of Alaska, and these are coastal villages or radar installations to the west, south, and now east of Barrow. There will be further additions. Bullen Point is a DEW station Air Force base 240 miles east of Barrow and 75 miles east of Oliktok. The runway is just under 4,000 feet of gravel and aligned 05-23; this is approximately at right angles to the default FS9 alignment and how that came about is something I doubt Bill Gates could explain. Most of the DEW buildings have now been removed (including the large hangar, which is unusual) but as I had a layout I made the whole site as it was originally, way back in the days when the north slope was still a wilderness. The AI is one day a C-130, on another a Cessna, and on a third a DC3. When I started this North Slope series it was my intention to create the full monty and make all the oil and gas installations and Deadhorse airport etc. I have come to realise that the oil side is impossible to make. There is so much of it and each bit is as time consuming as Heathrow while the actual airfields are more like Rockcliffe CYRO, so a lot of effort for what is just background to an adjoining airfield. But at the same time, if I make the new airstrips it is impossible NOT to make the oil installations as they are the dominating feature. So no new airstrips, and this is going to be just the 1960's or 1970's, when the oil business was only exploratory and the airfields were for villages or DEW stations, and Harmon Helmerick had his dirt strip on the Colville River estuary and was guiding hunters and fishermen and had just started to help out Sinclair Oil with oil exploration in 1966. Read his book. Download my previous post of his field.