Worldsceneries Congonhas and Guarulhos Airports

By Phil Colvin (30 September 2004)

razil: a vast nation of over 159 million, occupying over half the continent of South America, and home to some of the most beautiful scenery and popular resorts in the world. Its greatest city, with over five million inhabitants, is Sao Paulo, and the sprawling metropolitan area surrounding is home to over nineteen million. The city is a hub of commerce and transportation, its bustling seaports and airports serving traffic from all over the globe (I've exaggerated the red "X" in the screenshot of the continent, to make Sao Paulo's location a little easier to pinpoint). Worldsceneries has produced detailed representations of two of these airports: Conghongas International, located 9 km (6 miles) south of downtown Sao Paulo, and Guarulhos International, about 19 km (12 miles) northeast.

Conghongas Screen Shots

Both sceneries are currently available for download and install quite easily, including their automatic appearance and activation in FS2004's scenery library. The folders place themselves in the "Brasil" subfolder of FS2004's main "Scenery" folder - seems like a good place for 'em! One reason I agreed to review these products is that the Conghongas download especially seemed to demand a higher-grade system for decent performance, and I wanted to see how mine faired. Although I upgraded less than a year ago, my system is pretty far below the "top-gun" systems currently being advertised: it's a 2.4 GHz P4 Northwood with 1 gb of DDR-400 RAM, and a 128 meg geForce FX5600, all sitting on an MSI motherboard with dual-channel RAM processing. And I'm happy to report I've been able to fly just as smoothly in and out of these airports as any of the detailed default ones in FS2004, like O'Hare and LAX.

Since Conghongas is a departure point for many flights to Rio De Janeiro (Brazil's second largest city), and since Guarulhos is between them, let's say we're departing from Conghongas to pick up a companion at Gaurulhos, and from there it's off to Rio! We drive into the airport on nice tree-lined roads with detailed buildings on either side. As we cruise down the apron we notice modern fire-fighting and fuel storage facilities and numerous hangars bearing the names of many operators. Many of them have open doors and beckon a little exploration. We pass flight lines of private and commercial aircraft, and finally pull up in front of our trusty Howard 500 (a great free download by Milton Shupe, Scott Thomas and Joao Paz, shown here with a teriffic paint job by Matthew Garraway).

Conghongas Screen Shots

Before boarding the Howard, we climb into a waiting Bell Jet Ranger helicopter for a brief aerial tour of the airport, courtesy of the Airport Administrator (they really know how to treat visiting VIPs from FlightSim.Com). The snapshots of this impressive airfield speak for themselves! Then we board the Howard and rev up those big radials. We notice as we taxi for takeoff that there's quite a lot of departing traffic, even though we have nothing more than FS2004's default AI traffic turned on max (no add-ons). We see high-rises and office buildings nearby, along with many other structures.

Finally cleared for takeoff, we depart SBSP (Conghongas) for SBGR (Guarulhos) on a heading of 062 degrees. It's a short hop, and as we approach we notice the four huge concrete-rimmed pools of water and the storage tanks that border the airport.

Guarulhos Screen Shots

Once on the ground, it takes a good while to taxi past the many commercial operators to our assigned ramp, and as we deplane we find another VIP sightseeing chopper awaiting us. Again we are able to take some very nice snapshots, and are especially impressed by the considerable acreage this great center of aviation occupies.

Meeting our companion in the VIP lounge, we share a fine dinner overlooking the busy air traffic, and by the time we board the Howard, twilight is upon us. A sunset flight to Rio: what wonders will we encounter there? Well, Worldsceneries has two Rio downloads; - perhaps we'll see!

Phil Colvin
gimpyfoot1@yahoo.com

Buy it here

Learn more here

[ Back | Home | Main Menu | Logout | Help ]