Welcome & Intro.

Hello and welcome to my little patch of the internet.

This blog 'Project RAF Airfields' does exactly what it says on the tin. For years I have been in to flight simulation for a hobby, having flown a few Cessnas / gliders in real life, I'm definitely a novice pilot, I enjoy flight sim, as a game and as a simulator. I enjoy the fact I can fly a 747 out of Heathrow or land an F14 on a carrier anywhere in the world. What I find a little bit of a let down in the sim is the depiction of some Royal Air Force air bases. I'm a Brit, and have served in the air force for some years so naturally I want to fly from a RAF camp that has had that aircraft. The problem is that sometimes in FSX, an RAF airfield is little more than a runway and a fuel bay on grass. I assure you, no RAF camp is ever so... established.

So I decided to contribute to the community that has given so much to me and my personal enjoyment, I've decided that I will start with an RAF station close to my heart, RAF Wittering (EGXT).

RAF Wittering Cira 2010

I've never built anything for FSX. So scenery is an easier starting point. It covers a lot of bases that I hope to apply to some aircraft creation in the future.

Goals

I can't go head on into what could be a project lasting years of my life without some goals for each airfield. Some airfields I wont touch as I don't have any knowledge of, or there is already an exemplary freeware version available. This project is just to get things a little more realistic for military airfields in the UK.

I'm not going to be creating Aerosoft's Heathrow X using hi res photo realistic scenery here either. Simply due to time constraints of work commitments and the extremely steep learning curve associated with it.

So, the shopping list of things I need to do, learn and build to create a fairly accurate modern RAF Wittering:

1. Build a background to edit with ADE.
2. Add taxiways, extra runways (RAF Wittering had several STOL runways for harrier practice, unsure if I should delete them, or keep them in for a bit of fun for STOVL / helicopter pilots)
3. Add 'White Water Resivour" to the north of the airfield.
4. Get familiar with GMAX (Modeling, texturing etc)
5. Build all 3 main hangers in gmax, using simple textures for now.
6. Build RAF wide generic buildings ("H Blocks", Officer's Mess, Guard Room)
7. Create ammo dump (Currently used by 3 Sqn RAF Regiment)
8. Build or acquire Harrier GR9 model for gate guardian.
9. Build vehicles: MAN SV, Oshkosh CST, Articulate Lorries for 2MT yard, RAF MAN LCARs (FPS Friendly - as much as possible)
10. Build Married quarters.
11. Add a bit more detail to local town, Stamford which is a very useful nav aid when flying VFR.

Starting the project

My tools are simple, ADE X, S Builder, Google Earth and a little personal knowledge.

First things first, I had to do away with the default scenery, it was named incorrectly, had a runway and 2 parallel taxiways. The position of these was correct, but there was no parking there at all, the refuel area was next to an incorrectly placed tower, in the middle of the grass. ACES Studio really don't seem to care about the rest of the world other than America, so I added detail to the selection of "Wittering AB". It's now got its correct title of RAF Wittering which is near the city of Peterborough, in Cambridgeshire. For now in my FSX it's the only UK airfield to have a 'State' but, it's all about the detail.

I used Sbuilder to build me a nice (large) background for ADE, so I can just draw on RAF Wittering.

RAF Wittering in ADE, slightly missed a bit of the background off in Sbuilder, but I can just cross reference with google maps.

It's a case of just drawing away the taxiways and parking as well as aprons and roads. As of yet I'm unsure how far to take the detail of things, but for now ill do it all and delete as needed later.

As is 14/01/15

So here's a few quick shots as the scenery looks right now, few vehicles and buildings added just to get bearings / scale sorted.

On approach from the west. As you can see, more roads. Need to add trees for Vigo Woods

I've never seen fuel dispensed on an RAF airfield, from a 'gas station'
so I put a bowser on the refuel instead

Lots more detail already added, a few buildings in the foreground just to see about positions.

Hornet gate guard, until I can acquire a Harrier GR9 model, or make one.

Buildings / Gmax

I want to add custom buildings, problem, I've never really touched gmax in my life. Queue a few handy youtube tutorials later and I started to create, fine tune, delete and curse. For this whole project I want to create some one off buildings specific to a station; RAF Wittering for example has a mock HMS Ark Royal / Invincible ski jump, now who doesn't want a ski jump to throw a jet off? Some buildings however I will be able to use in other projects, on RAF stations the guard room and officer's messes look very similar. Also things like married quarters tend to be extremely similar.

Hanger 1, now the home of 2 MT Squadron starting to take shape in gmax

I've started simple with hanger one (the hanger closest to the A1). This can then be chopped and changed to hanger 2 which is further into the airfield and also on other RAF stations, but considering this is the first thing you see on approach from the east, it has to be built with a fair bit of detail.

That's it for now, progress is steaming ahead quite nicely. Gmax is going to be... interesting! I shall be researching more efficient and FPS friendly ways to build in it over the coming few days and get these buildings up ASAP.

May release the updated AFCAD files soon once I've had time to make sure it's 100%.

Any requests / tips please by all means add them bellow. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Ben