Just
Flight Real Scenery Airfields
Denham (EGLD) UK
By Nigel C Martin
September 2008
Overview
Why Denham you may ask? Well
for those who do not know this airfield, it is situated on the A40 main
trunk road from London towards Oxford, only a few miles to the north west of
London. I have flown into Denham on a few occasions and found the welcome
courteous and very enjoyable experience, small enough to care, large enough
to offer all the services required.
It is steeped in history, assisting the military in fashioning keen young
aviators in the skills required to play a vital role in the First and
Second World Wars. Its varied history began in its early days
as a Royal Flying Corps base in WW1, licensing by the CAA in 1938, further
war service from 1939 and its post war reinstatement as a general aviation
airfield. With a new lease of life, now the home of Denham Aero Club.
What of it today? Well, it is a GA field having a tarmac runway, with a
small flying club, The Pilots Centre is located in the old wartime hanger on the north
side of the airdrome and despite very limited facilities for the visitor,
every effort is made to make the visitor feel welcome.
It is also home to the well known Express
Newspapers ambulance for London, G-HEMS, for those in the UK may have seen
the television documentary series featuring this so very vital service.
Because of the airfields proximity to London it is a popular stop/park
facility, ok, a little bit of a drive into north London, but still a very
conveniently located GA airfield to the metropolis.
You might say there are more local airports available, I have not asked for
landing costs at Stanstead, City Airport, or God forbid, Heathrow! But, I
bet a ‘pound to a penny’ the costs would bankrupt me to land, let alone
fuel-up! So Denham sounds a good and cost effective option to me.
Among the distinctive features of this scenery is snow on the ground during
December and January - a first for FSX add-on airports! As well as the
authentically-modelled buildings, custom night textures and high resolution
mesh, Denham boasts static and AI aircraft, people and objects - there are
even animated tractors in the nearby fields and flocks of birds. So, watch
out for bird strikes! And if you are around at Christmas, you will see some
lovely snow effects.
Denham is designed to blend seamlessly with the default FSX landscape or
Just Flight's VFR Real Scenery.
So there you have it, one and all, off we
fly to Denham.
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Feature summary
• Aerial photography provides 100%
accuracy of airfield and surroundings
• Denham can be used with the default FSX ground textures or
blends in perfectly with VFR Real Scenery add-ons.
• Optimised for FSX
• All major buildings accurately modelled and located
• Ground snow texture available during December and January
• High resolution (10 metre) terrain mesh
• Custom night textures for ground and buildings
• Animated people, aircraft and vehicles
• Flocks of birds fly above the airfield
• Unique tool for performance customisation
• Static and AI Aircraft
Installation
After sorting out the payment part, which
presented me with no issues, the downloading commenced. Once again this
process proved to be effortless and trouble free.
There we have it, the scenery was downloaded. I saved the download to my
desktop, there was an exe file, double click on the icon, the installation
process guides you through, and hey presto all done.
Now to open FSX, and select Denham form the airport list.
In use
Well installation over and complete, so let’s go flying….
I have to say when I selected if form the list of airfields I had to wait
some minutes for all the scenery to boot up, no great shakes, really, my
theory, the longer it takes the better the scenery!
So selected day and a favourite GA aircraft, pressed fly, and there we are
positioned on the runway at Denham. I decided to hover taxi (as I had
selected the default Bell Ranger) a few feet off the ground and started my
tour of the airfield.
I noticed a collection of parked aircraft and a blister hanger. As I
approached, a persons hand was waving, upon closer inspection it was a male
with a young lad next to him and to round off the family unit a woman also
stood close by. They all were positioned ‘tuther’ side of a fence.
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I changed my aircraft to a Cessna 172 and as I taxied past these admiring
members of the public I noticed an opening to the hanger, upon turning
towards the interior there was another chap positioned at the back of the
hanger also waving, rather oddly towards the rear of the hanger, oh well, I
turned away and continued to taxi past an array of out-buildings, all shown
in excellent quality and superb attention to detail.
I counted three helos parked up. Nestled between two buildings was a
fuelling area, again superb detail. As I was looking at this, I saw some
vehicles passing on the other side of the buildings, now that was a nice
effect.