Bear's Cave The world of Flight Simulators short reviews by Steve "Bear" Cartwright This last week we saw a near record breaking number of uploads, again, with a daily average of nearly 15 files uploaded. We had mesh scenery, airport scenery, original aircraft, some very excellent utilities, and a whole bushel of uploads for aircraft re-paints for FS98, FS2K, FLY, FU3, and X-Plane! So as usual, my weekly task of trying to pick just 5 uploads to spot-light, gets tougher every week! Well-here's my choices from week one of February! 11-Feb-2001 DDR Military Airports by M.Spengler ddr_mil.zip uploaded 4-Feb-2001 3,991Kb FS2000 Hmmmmm, for my picks – I suppose I wouldn't normally include a scenery set that was of airports that either no longer exist or are closed, but Michael Spengler has used such unique ideas with his scenery/airport package that I decided to include his upload in this week's picks! Michael has taken 26 of the now closed military airports of the former DDR (all located in the southern area of the former East Germany) and brought them back to life—such as it is—some very good documentation (pretty much in German only, but it includes actual aerial photos of each location) and some of his own design macros (including textured hardened aircraft bunkers, nuclear power plants, and complete forests). At many of the locations, fuel is available, plus full night lighting—night lighting which includes some very unusual ramp spots that display that yellowish glow of low-powered lamps, probably more typical of reality here! All of these airports are either of World War II or Cold War vintage and are pretty much confined to within a 200 square mile area or so. What this means is that if you take off from one, it's most likely two or more others are visible within 20 miles! Because Michael included aerial photographs of each location, you can compare and note that he held true to how each of these locations appear in real life. One of the locations even has nuclear power plants on two sides, power plants that include smoke coming from the smokestacks (non-dynamic smoke). Flying (FS World) in this part of Germany would normally be very mundane, being simply flat ground for miles around, but Michael Spengler has come up with a very good and a quite original scenery package to add some interesting and unique sceneries to this area. Due to Michael's unique use of building texturing and original macros, we now have a set of very detailed airports that are in all likelihood very accurate to their real-world counterparts—dark, cold, and gray! ...Bear! 11-Feb-2001 Hellas 2001 Scenery Skiathos ver 1.0 by Vangelis Vasilias skiathos10.zip uploaded 31-Jan-2001 8,481Kb FS2000 To say that I'm impressed with Vangelis's scenery upload of Skiathos, is the true definition of understatement! This is simply the best freeware scenery package I've yet seen for FS2000—end of statement! Skiathos (Greece) is located in the northwest area of the Sporadhes group of islands and is a part of the Aegean Sea. This part of the world is very scenic and I must assume that Vangelis has been working on this scenery package for some time, as his results reveal a true FS scenery artist at work; an artist that obviously has the dedication and patience to achieve near perfection! Everything about this scenery is probably as good as one could ever hope for, within the confines of FS2000, and even then I believe Vangelis has pushed that envelope out somewhat! This scenery package version covers the complete island, plus several of the smaller nearby islands as well. From the coastlines, the mountains, lakes, sandy beaches, static vehicles, airport, and my personal favorite – the unique whitewashed Greek buildings – it's all here! This has extraordinarily realistic textures and some very special night lighting; well, I'm going to stop here – download and install this scenery – you will not be disappointed! ...Bear! 11-Feb-2001 Grand Teton National Park North by Skip's Scenery for FS2K gteton_n.zip uploaded 4-Feb-2001 3,974Kb FS2000 This is the third section of the Grand Teton Range that Skip has uploaded here at AVSIM and you can see that Skip is improving with experience. That's not to mean that his prior two uploads (mt_moran.zip & gteton_s.zip) weren't good, but in fact they're quite excellent, each in their own right. It's just that he has improved in some of the small details, as with improved beach lines on the lakes and such. Skip's most recent upload (prior to this scenery package) was Yosemite National Park, of which Skip was mistakenly not given the proper recognition, as to it's authorship, in my pick for that week! (I mistakenly gave the scenery authorship credit to Misho Katulic, whereas it should have been to Skip M. of Skip's Scenery for FS2K. Misho Katulic is the author of the Terrabuilder Lite program that Skip uses to design his sceneries and not the author of the scenery itself!) Skip's latest scenery covers the Northern section of the Grand Teton Range, right up to the Southern border of Yellowstone National Park (could that be next?), or an area about 30km by 15km! For those of you familiar with this area (in real-life), that's from Bivouac Peak up to the Northern edge of Grassy Lake Reservoir! This scenery is fairly easy to get to from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Just take-off and fly north, that's it! With all three of these sceneries (gteton_s, mt_moran, and now gteton_n) installed, this area becomes screenshot city believe me, particularily around sunset with a few clouds scattered about—it's really fantastic! ...Bear! 11-Feb-2001 F/A18c Angels Full package version 1.1 by John J Schumacher / Schu Engineering se-f18v1.zip uploaded 10-Feb-2001 8,853Kb FS2000 Though there were several aircraft uploaded last week, I only choose two as part of my "Top 5 Picks" and John J Schumacker's F/A-18C (Blue Angels) is my first of these two and I believe a worthy example of the level of quality we've all been experiencing with FS freeware aircraft lately! John's fine example of the Blue Angel's F/A-18C is listed as a Full Package and this is a pretty fair description of his upload. The aircraft itself has full lighting, formation lighting, animated gear-flaps-arrestor hook, and a complete panel with multi-color HUD, working NAV (FS2000), FS2K GPS, and PSS's really neat INS (a 10 pre-selectable waypoint Inertial Navigation System)! This aircraft's panel is also equipped with smoke initialization switches and heads-down selectable CRTs! John has also included a secondary panel view that's somewhere between the full panel view and the virtual panel view (and they are included too); and this secondary panel I found to be the most usable during airshow flight demonstration maneuvers. With both the full panel and secondary panel all view positions are selectable as well. John has designed 4 or 5 adventures of which at least two of them I tried a number of times—and they're a lot of fun (take-off from the deck of the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) during a rain/thunderstorm; and an approach to landing, again with the same aircraft carrier, which is located off of Lanai Island in the Hawaiian Island chain). Be cautious of one thing though, John has included a new "SMOKE" texture for your main texture folder, so be sure to backup your default bitmap (same file name) before installing this new texture, as I found it to be somewhat invisible when attempting to make screenshots; but on the other hand you may like it. The visual model and aircraft textures are by Phillip Robbins & Bryant Arnett, with the sounds provided by none other than Mike Hambly! Overall, I really enjoy this aircraft package, and maybe I've never actually flown with the Blue Angels, but somehow I feel I have now. Oh... one other thing, in the event you enjoy seeing the "real" Blue Angels as much as I do, their official 2001 schedule has been included by John, dates and locations for the whole year! ...Bear! 11-Feb-2001 Boeing USAF KC-135E Stratotanker by Gary M. Carlson/Harry Gaydosz kc-135e.zip uploaded 6-Feb-2001 480Kb FS2000 As another example of an aircraft for FS2000 that was designed with Abracus' FSDSPro, we have a winner! For many years now, the USAF has used the Boeing jet (military version of the 707/720 civilian series Boeings) designated the KC-135, as its mainstay aerial re-fueler! In reality (and to the surprise of most), Boeing designed the civilian 707/720s from the KC-135 design, rather than the other way around (most early airliners were more often than not simply conversions from military aircraft designs)! Gary Carlson and Harry Gaydosz have put together this aircraft in the markings of the 171st ARW; Pennsylvania ANG, based at Pittsburgh IAP, PA. This FS aircraft features—which have now become standard fare—32 sided fuselage, night lighting, and fully animated gear-flaps-spoilers, and is designed for use in FS2000 only. Gary and Harry's design is based on the "E" version of the KC-135, which was basically the "A" version with updated engines (from the J-57s to the Pratt & Whitney TF-33-PW-102 engines). The end result of their work is a very accurate appearing aircraft from a visual standpoint; and for this FS aircraft, Dale Jackson handled the FDE design work and he appears to have gotten the flight dynamics replicated quite accurately! As with the real thing, this FS aircraft is really very stable, somewhat sluggish on the controls at normal speeds and altitudes, yet fairly responsive at slower speeds; but it's a real "bear" to get slowed for landing. You've got to think ahead! The real aircraft had a maximum take-off weight of 161 tons (322,000 lbs) which was astonishing, considering the decade it was designed in (the early 1950s). I've personally never flown or even ridden in one of these aircraft, but some time back I had a retired AF Commander, working for me, that had flown the KC-135 out of Beale AFB in California for over 8 years! He and I had discussed flying these workhorse aircraft several times over beer or coffee! The panel and sounds are all default 737 from FS2000, but a quick search through the various flightsim websites should find you both (panel and sounds) for this really nice addition to anyone's FS fleet! Check it out! ...Bear! Tell A Friend About these Reviews!   Standard Disclaimer These reviews above are a subjective assessment of the work of the authors. There is no connection between the product author and the reviewer, and we feel this review is unbiased and truly reflects the performance of the product in the simming environment. 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