Spend the Holidays in Idaho? Why not! It’s a great time to return to the Frank Church – River of No Return Wilderness Area. Make sure you have your ELT ready to go, leave your GPS behind, grab your sectional and your favorite low and slow bush plane… and let’s get going!
Bush League Basics:
- Everyone is welcomed! Whether you’re an expert or beginner with flight simulators, radio communications, or navigation, etc., you’re invited! We’re a friendly bunch and enjoy learning from each other.
- The best aircraft for these events are those that can handle short, narrow airstrips. STOL mods are not mandatory, but helpful. Fat tires help make the bouncy strips that much more enjoyable. Several CSL files are available to correctly render other aircraft.
- We encourage you to join the VATSIM network and use the CTAF frequency of 122.8 to announce positions. We will not be in communication with ATC unless you plan to extend your flight into a controlled airspace.
- We’ll also use the Downwindsim Discord voice channel during the flight for non-ATC related chit-chat.
- As always, the main goal of these flights is to have fun and practice good airmanship. The event is intended to be VFR, so you are free to configure your weather and time of day as you see fit.
Flight Information:
The event takes place on Monday, December 5. Let’s plan to meet at Challis (KLLJ) for a quick flight briefing at 8:00pm EST (0100z on 12/5) with departures immediately after. I have an idea about destinations… I’ll fill you in at the briefing.
X-Plane Scenery Installation Instructions:
This scenery was developed in XP11, but it works great in XP12. In fact the “Idaho Loons” picture was taken in XP12. Two words about X-World scenery addon (free) and Global Forests v2 ($15)… get them! They really add to the sim experience everywhere!
All the airstrips are developed, tested and designed to work with Ortho4XP scenery tiles. You’ll need to cook at least one tile… +44-115. These are the settings I used to cook my development tile… I’d recommend the same! Also, I used “Arc” for the imagery source as this provided a bit more consistency throughout the tile. Again, I’d recommend the same. I’ve also provided this link to modified OSM data files for the +44-115 tile. These help shape the terrain immediately around airstrips and also add A LOT of missing water features.
The +44-115_airports.osm.bz2 and +44-115_water.osm.bz2 files should go in your folder “your Drive: Ortho4XP\OSM_data\+40-120\+44-115\” and the file cougar_ranch.patch.osm should go in your folder “your Drive:Ortho4XP\Patches\+40-120\+44-115\cougar_ranch.patch.osm” Once those are there, rebuild the tile. If you’re not sure how to use the modified OSM data, here’s a short video. While you’re at it, you might want to cook some of the surrounding tiles.
You’ll also need to download these airstrips from me (DWS). Download the .zip file and extract the folders to your X-Plane/Custom Scenery folder. Note: If you’ve been collecting Idaho airstrips for a while (as I have), do some housekeeping as there’s been several versions of some of these airstrips out for a while. My design approach on these airstrips is to keep them as realistic as possible, without causing slowdowns on sim performance due to too many objects or vegetation. “ID D47 Cougar Ranch” and “ID 0U3 Mahoney Creek” and “Lower Loon” have been updated.
Scenery Library Requirements: OpenSceneryX, CDB-Library, The Handy Objects Library, MisterX Library.
If you get stuck or have a question, drop a message on the DownwindSim Discord bush-flying text channel. There’s a bunch of friendly folks that’d be happy to help. I look forward to have you tag along (in the snow) on the Bush League Backcountry Fly-In Series! -DWS
P.S. Did I mention there’s something for both fixed and rotary wing aircraft? Oh yeah… the map and a PDF of the same map.
