| AVSIM Special Feature North American Bush Flying! |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| By Steve 'Bearracing' Cartwright AVSIM Staff Reviewer |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Aviation has been with us all for what... 100 years or so and it's aviation that has made the world smaller and smaller every year. Packages can arrive nearly anywhere in the world within 48 hours of being shipped; you can have breakfast in New York City and Lunch in Los Angeles of the same day, and it goes on an on! Within my lifetime, I've seen the average air traveler go from only the upper middle class and the wealthy, to completely replacing the buses and trains as the normal mode of travel for the average person on the street! Aviation has progressed very quickly and has intertwined into our daily lives, most often in ways we're not even aware of. I've often wondered what the early aviation pioneers, if they were alive today, would think if they were to walk into a modern air terminal near one of our world's major cities? Or maybe to have a gander at the cockpit of a modern jetliner like a Boeing 777 or Airbus Industrie 300 series aircraft? Do you think they would believe it... probably not!
In all the different types of aviation available to us, there is one particular area that has had little if any changes for the last 40 or 50 years... and that's flying small bush planes into the backwoods areas of the Great Northwest, Western Canada, or Alaska. We all have benefited from the conveniences of the jetliner or commuter turboprop, but in many parts of Canada and the United States it's a simple matter of necessity at having a float or bush plane handy to haul in the mail, food, medical supplies, and all those other things we have come to take for granted.
In real-life, backwoods or bush flying is not for the timid, the unskilled, nor is it for the inexperienced! Now an experienced and accomplished airline or transport pilot today may feel at home in the computerized cockpit of a 400 ton Boeing 747-400 with all of its advanced cockpit & flight management systems and such, but it's the bush pilots that are my personal heroes! This pilot's world is a world of freezing wind and rain, poor visibility, snow, ice and rocks, where trees are as tall as a 25 story office building, flying often times alone miles from civilization, and more often then not over ground that he or she probably knows better than the back of their hand; this is the guy or gal that is the pilot's pilot!
As backwoods or bush flying has become a necessity and is now very commonplace in the sparsely populated areas of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, and Canada (mostly British Columbia), the need for experienced bush pilots is always growing!
It is somewhat ironic that with all the advances made in modern aircraft design, with all the improvements in performance and efficiency, often times the best bush aircraft are generally aircraft that were designed as much as nearly a half century ago, with little or few changes since...! It's simply one of those situations where the designers that did it first also did it right, right out of the box! We're talking about aircraft like the deHavilland DHC-2 Beavers, DHC-3s, DHC-6 Otters/Twin Otters, the Piper J3/J4s and SuperCubs, the Cessna 120/185/195 series aircraft, the Pilatus Porter PC-6, Cessna 206/208s, Aeronica Champs, Helio Couriers, Lake Renegades, Stearmans, Stinsons, and the Grumman G21 Goose (the "Goose" was introduced in 1937 and went out of production during or soon after World War II, but there are a couple of charter services still operating them in both Alaska and Canada)! There are of course many others that I haven't mentioned, but these are the more common types found today.
With Microsoft's introduction of Flight Simulator 98, bush flying in the Great Northwest, Canada, or in Alaska, became a new realm of possibility, but it wasn't until the introduction of Flight Simulator 2000 that sim bush flying has truly gained a life all it's own! Using the combination of 3rd party aircraft and scenery, plus the 3rd party mesh/ground textures, well, this has created a sim within a sim at this point!
If flying the "bush" is of interest to you, I assure you there is an abundance of "freeware' downloads available that will magically transform your FS2000 sim into an entirely new Flight Simulator, a flight simulator that will give you hours and hours of enjoyment and some really wonderful flying experiences in an entirely new world. Are you bored with shooting those ILS landings into Heathrow or Paris, in your Concorde or Boeing 777? Are you tired of the endless hours of cruising at FL310 and listening to the drone of the ATC controllers from your ProFlight 2000 or Radar Contact add-on? How would you like to get back to the basics of flight—a flight sim where you can navigate with VFR sectionals, using just plane ole' dead-reckoning; all the while viewing some truly fantastic scenery. It's possible now with Flight Simulator 2000 and the 3rd party add-ons to do just that!
Below are listed sceneries, textures, and aircraft for flying in the backcountry of North America. I've also included the zip file names for everything needed to get you started on a new area of flying within FS2000. Though you can use FS2000 default and default aircraft for this experience, I would highly suggest you take advantage of some of the very fine work performed by many individuals that will greatly enhance your bush flying experience. If you should run into any difficulties installing or using any of these files, I would suggest you contact that file's author for further assistance. Ken Nelson (WeBads) has also written an excellent tutorial on installing 3rd party sceneries and a tutorial on designing your own bush sceneries.
Let's begin at transforming your Flight Simulator 2000 into a more exciting and enjoyable program; we'll start with adding some mesh scenery, new textures, and new bush scenery/airports!
*Unless otherwise noted, all files given are available in the AVSIM library.
Mesh Scenery Well, it's my suggestion that we begin at rebuilding the general scenery first, then we'll talk about the available 3rd party bush scenery airports and aircraft. The default FS2000 Alaska/Canada scenery is overall, fairly well done—got to hand it to the FS Team at Microsoft, as they got it pretty good right out of the box, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
I would wholeheartedly suggest you install Eddie Denney's "Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana" mesh scenery first, then we'll build from there. Unfortunately, Eddie doesn't have mesh available for Canada as "freeware," but you can order his RealSceneFS disc set (about $25USD or so) which does have the mesh scenery for the entire world, including Canada. I recommend the latter, if you're able to come up with the 25 bucks that is, because this also opens some other possibilities, like bush flying in the Karakorums in Pakistan or the Himalayas of Nepal! The following mesh files will get you started, at least, with the Great Northwest and Alaska.
Mesh scenery files available in the AVSIM library:
akmesh1.zip - akmesh8.zip (8 seperate files for Alaska Mesh) Textures:
Although the mesh scenery is quite stunning, especially for Alaska, it's when we install some new texture replacements that the most dramatic improvement occurs and the best I know of are from Lennart Arvidsson. Now Lennart has two packages, Summer Textures only (with a special desert pack) or he has his All Season pack; either set will work, though I personally like his all season pac. Lennart did darken the summer green forest texture a bit much (with the All Season pack that is), but I find it to be quite acceptable anyway, most certainly as compared to the default textures. The best part is that in both cases, Lennart's textures are available as freeware. (Whenever you install any texture package, be sure to backup your default textures in the event you may wish to go back to them, for whatever reason).
newsubet1.zip (Lennart's Summer Beta 1 textures) For Lennart Arvidsson's All Season textures you will need to go to his website (they're Freeware).
Below are screenshots of the same area (just a bit Southeast of Valdez, Alaska) where you can compare the default scenery/textures and then see what happens to the scenery with Eddie's mesh & Lennart's textures installed! (I think you can tell the before and after on your own here!)
Bush Sceneries:
T To add to your simming experience, you may wish to install some actual "bush" sceneries themselves, but here your choices are many (I've counted over 150 individual bush locations on my harddrive, bush sceneries for the Great Northwest, British Columbia, and Alaska).
A quick search at AVSIM's library should yield you a whole host of very good 3rd party bush sceneries for North America. To start you off on the right track, I've included the following sceneries and their file names. Many of these designers (at least for Alaska) have scenery files available that include an entire group or series of bush/lake airports/seaports.
Alaska:
Ken Nelson (WeBads)
Don Moser (Alaska by Don)
Dave Erickson
Ron Ackerley
Dennis Waggoner
Dale Baker
Joe Watson
Smitty Calhoun
Mark Smith
Jim Jackson
Oregon/Washington:
Richard Goldstein
British Columbia, Canada:
Jim Faircloth
Now it's time to choose a suitable aircraft for bush flying and the choices are many!
Bush/Float Aircraft:
Now for the aircraft and here's where the fun really begins, as there are a whole bushel of really easy and fun to fly bush/float aircraft available to use in your bush country flight simulator. Here's a great starter list of some of the very best FS "Bush Country" Aircraft.
DeHavilland DHC-2 Beaver
Fred Banting & Yannick Lavigne have, well these fellows have the definitive answer to a FS2000 DeHavilland DHC-2 Beaver and it comes in float, wheel, and ski versions and there have been several re-paints of these aircraft as well! This is probably my favorite or second favorite bush aircraft of all (if they're second, it's only to FSD's Porter PC-6):
Dehavilland DHC-6 Twin Otter
(Panels for DHC-6-300 Twin Otter)
(sounds for DHC-6-300 Twin Otter)
Cessna 185 Skywagon
John Cantwell (Steve Small did the FDE) has a beautiful Cessna 185 in both a wheeled and float version.
Pilatus Porter PC-6
FSD (Flight Sim Developers) in one of their last freeware packages has the PC-6 in two versions of wheels and a more recent release of the PC-6 in a ski version (the ski version was, until recently, only available at FSD's website, but for now it's kind of in limbo).
Piper SuperCub
Ron Ackerley has a set of two versions of the SuperCubs (Wheeled & Float in both cases). His "Wilderness Outfitters" SuperCub and the "Cree Lake" SuperCub. (both include some really great panels as well).
Yannick Lavigne has a beautiful set of SuperCubs (The Red Cub and The Blue Cub), both equipped with "tundra" tires and aircraft specific (Fred Banting/Yannick Lavigne designed) panels.
Piper J3 Cub
FSD (Flight Sim Developers) have applied their handy work to develop this extraordinary example of the Piper J3 Cub.
Please see Bush Country "Round Robin" for selected flights!
|
|
|
|
This feature is a subjective assessment of the work of the authors. There is no connection between the add-on product authors and the reviewer. This disclaimer is posted here in order provide you with background information on the writer and connections that may exist between him/her and the contributing party. |
© 2001 - AVSIM Online
All Rights Reserved