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| Category: Flight Simulator 2004 - Scenery | |
| 8AK7 - Bullen Point - Alaska North Slope 7 |
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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.
| Filename: | 8AK7__Bullen_Point__Alaska_North_Slope_7.zip |
| License: | Freeware, limited distribution |
| Added: | 15th July 2016, 17:46:54 |
| Downloads: | 277 |
| Author: | Roger Wensley |
| Size: | 2.5 MB |
| Category: Flight Simulator 2004 - Scenery | |
| Kotzebue PAOT on the northwestern coast of Alaska |
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There are four main northwestern Alaska towns which have good airports and are serviced by Alaska Airlines. From these airports local flights connect to nearby villages, "nearby" in Alaska meaning up to 150 miles away. The northernmost is Barrow. Southwest of Barrow is Kotzebue, then Nome, and the furthest south is Bethel. The town of Kotzbue is north of the Bering Strait on the northwestern coast, 320 miles southwest of Barrow. The population is just over 3,000 people. The location was for a long time a base for trading in furs, with three rivers emptying into the sea and providing routes into the interior land and villages; a meeting place between hunters and traders from Russia and elsewhere. The Kotzebue airport is called the Ralph Wien Memorial and has two runways. The modern one is aligned 08-26 and is 5,880 feet of 150 feet wide asphalt built across a shallow lagoon, with an ILS on 08 and PAPI on both ends. The second and older runway is originally military and gravel, aligned 17-35 and 3,786 feet long and used (wind allowing) by the GA planes that park alongside the runway. The prevalent wind is from the west; when the wind is from the east it is generally relatively feeble and with a much lower cloud base, possibly to the ground, hence the need for an ILS. All AI aircraft in FS9 much prefer to use a runway that has an ILS and so will continue to use 08-26 even if the wind is from the south until it reaches 30+ knots, even if they are a Cessna 150 flying VFR. So for AI realism in FS9 a northern or southern wind needs to be a strong one so that the runway is actually used. However, as Alaska Airlines, Northern Air Cargo, and Everts Air also fly to Kotzebue and can only use the east-west runway (as less than 4,000 feet of asphalt would be seriously inconvenient for a Boing 737 or DC6) it is necessary to have the northern or southern wind UNDER 30 knots at the times when they are landing or taking off. Your choice. I suppose a permanent strong wind from the west would be the most realistic on a daily basis, deterring all planes from ever using 17-35. The AI will develop along with further scenery additions in the neighbourhood.
| Filename: | Kotzebue_PAOT_on_the_northwestern_coast_of_Alaska.zip |
| License: | Freeware, limited distribution |
| Added: | 2nd August 2016, 16:47:52 |
| Downloads: | 457 |
| Author: | Roger Wensley |
| Size: | 19.32 MB |
| Category: Flight Simulator 2004 - Scenery | |
| Fort Nelson CYYE in British Columbia, Canada |
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Fort Nelson is close to the Peace River in the northeast corner of British Columbia, around 70 miles from the northern border, 90 from the eastern border, and 80 miles east of the Rockies. The wartime construction of the Alaska Highway actually started from Fort Nelson, as there was already a road from Fort St John (which is close to Dawson Creek) north to Fort Nelson. The airfield was part of this construction effort and after the wartime ferrying of planes to Russia it was used by the US Army Air Force and then by the Canadian Air Force. Fort Nelson flourished with the oil and gas exploration of the 1950's and the following years, and this continued to grow until the collapse of the oil price in 2014.
The town of Fort Nelson became the capital of the Northern Rockies Regional District when it was founded in 2009, and as a result the official name of the Fort Nelson airport is the Northern Rockies Regional Airport. The date for this scenery is around 2016, by which time the economic fortunes of the town were in decline. Five times per day flights by Central Mountain Air were starting to be reduced in number to the current (in 2022) one per day and none on Sunday; in the AI included here there are two flights per day. The main resident users of the airport are four helicopter companies, the helicopters presumably used for maintenance trips to whatever parts of the oil and gas fields that are still in use in the surrounding area.
There are two runways, the main one is aligned 03-21, 6,400 feet long and 200 feet wide, with ILS at the southern end and PAPI at the northern. The second runway (a narrower rebuild on a previously existing runway) is aligned 07-25 and 77 feet wide, and is without any lights. These are the alignments as per the original build of FS9 and not as per the approximate 2016 date of the buildings; I had a problem at a very late stage in making this scenery which prevented me from continuing with some final details.
On YouTube there is a series of posts by Angle of Attack showing the preparation and then the flight of an old Cessna 172 from Homer to Oshkosh for the installation of modern instruments. Interesting for me as they visit or fly over airfields I have made (Homer, Merrill, Tok Junction, Burwash, Silver City, Haines Junction, Watson Lake, Fort Nelson, and Grande Prairie) but in the winter so it all looks very different.
| Filename: | Fort_Nelson_CYYE_in_British_Columbia_Canada.zip |
| License: | Freeware, limited distribution |
| Added: | 23rd January 2022, 20:11:18 |
| Downloads: | 185 |
| Author: | Roger Wensley |
| Size: | 28.35 MB |