Slipping back to the original roots of the series, we travel back to the Frank Church – River of No Return Wilderness Area in Idaho. Leave your GPS behind, grab your sectional, your favorite low and slow bush plane and have fun finding the many airstrips in central Idaho.
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, March 1st. Let’s plan to meet at Boise Air Terminal (KBOI) for a quick flight briefing at 8:00pm EST (0100z) with departures immediately after. The idea is to get your sectional out and explore/find many of the airstrips located in the +44-116 ortho tile (that’s the southwest corner). There’s no time limit or itinerary, so stay as long as you’d like.
X-Plane Scenery Installation Instructions:
This month’s fly-in is highlighting the area between +44 and +45 north latitude, and -115 and -116 west longitude. All the airstrips are developed, tested and designed to work with Ortho4XP scenery tiles. At a minimum, you’ll need to cook at least one tile… +44-116. 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 +44-116 tile. These help shape the terrain immediately around airstrips and also add A LOT of missing water features. 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 too.
A word about forests and trees…
There are several addons providing updated forest coverage data for X-Plane, some free, some payware. I’ve used (for various reasons) “antwob’s” free U.S. Forests addon which uses the default tree texture set, but more accurate location data than the default x-plane data. I’ve also modified the tree forest type for this tile in Idaho. That modified forest overlay file is linked here. This file should go in your X-Plane/Custom Scenery/us-forests/Earth nav data/+40-120 folder. The us-forests scenery folder (SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/us-forests/) should be just above your “SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Global Airports/” line in your scenery_packs.ini file. What’s Idaho without lots of coniferous trees? Right???
Last, but not least, here’s the link to the 12 published airstrips in this tile, along with a few others not found on the latest skyvector chart. 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. Also, be sure to grab StevePHL’s great version of Pistol Creek Ranch. It’s a great place to visit! Thanks Steve! (You don’t need to use Steve’s OSM data included in his post as the OSM Data files posted above includes his changes.)
UPDATE: There’s a sneaky Heliport right next to Garden Valley. I forgot to include the scenery for that (D12 Garden Valley Heliport). Here’s the link to the D12 Scenery. This should get rid of the double windsocks at Garden Valley.
Scenery Library Requirements: OpenSceneryX, CDB-Library, The Handy Objects Library, JB Library
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. It’s my hope that all this installation work will be worth it, and I plan to be back in this very same tile several more times. There’s a bunch of unique places to visit and Easter Egg opportunites!
MSFS and Questions:
I would imagine that many of these airstrips exist in the MSFS world, although I haven’t checked. I know our friend Milosanx has created some of these. The custom, “off-the-beaten-path” locales I’m sure do not exist. 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 tagging along on the Bush League Backcountry Fly-In Series! -DWS