UK 2000 Part 6 For FS2002 And FS2004

By Andrew Herd (19 November 2003)

UK simmers and fans of Gary Summons' sceneries will be delighted to hear that he has released another episode in his epic UK2000 series. This latest version, which is compatible with FS2002 and FS2004, includes 34 airfields in Wales and the West Midlands. Airline fans get Cardiff, Liverpool and Manchester; GA simmers get a clutch of the best known strips in the UK; and fast jet jocks get RAF Aberporth, Mona, Shawbury, Valley, Cosford, Ternhill and Hawarden. Microlight fans might like to try their hand at Otherton, where the longest runway is only 340 metres.

As usual for Gary's sceneries, there are about as many purchasing options as there are fields in the package: the 42 Mb download version costs £22.00, delivery on CD is £3.00 extra within the EU, and £5.00 extra outside it; Manchester will shortly be available as a single as a 9 Mb download or on CD (download cost being £11.75); you can go completely mad and buy all the UK scenery Gary has done so far for £84; and finally, at some time in the future I would expect to see the military fields made available as part of a separate product, given that the southern RAF bases can already be purchased as a bundle.

The review copy was a CD version and the installation was straightforward apart from the need to enter a key code for verification; the download uses much the same system and there is even an option to try before you buy, though (naturally) this has restricted scope. The installation includes AI AFD data for most of the airfields to allow the AI aircraft to taxi and park correctly, but at present this only works properly for FS2002 - an FS2004 upgrade was recently released.

Each new pack in this series has included innovations and in this one there is an option to install approaching a hundred VFR flight plans that bring the smaller fields to life with GA tracks. Again, at the time of writing this only works - using the default Cessnas and PA-28 - in FS2002, though the FS2004 upgrade was issued free recently and should include much more varied AI flights including circuit traffic.

What you do not get is any airline AI traffic, as Gary has taken the decision to concentrate on the scenery itself. Given that there is a slew of products that allow users to edit AI, this isn't too much of a problem. Going back to the AFD data, I guess I had better point out that if you rely on commercial addons, be aware that the UK2000 airport runway and taxiway alignments have been corrected - so they don't work properly with default AI. The screenshot of Liverpool's John Lennon airport here shows what happens.

As Gary explains in the manual, at present the FS2004 AI planes taxi and park as if the default scenery was still installed, so that some end up parked inside buildings and in all kinds of strange attitudes. Another problem is that progressive taxi often sends you across the grass, so remember that following the magenta line is optional, and finally, the ILS are all aligned with the default runways, so a Cat III approach may leave you looking at grass rather than lights. All of these issues will be fixed in an upgrade Gary expects to release in November; at present there is nothing that can be done about them, though to tell the truth they don't cause too much trouble beyond making the airports look a little messy.

The installer also offers the option of adding static aircraft at the large airports. I chose not to enable this, because I am waiting (with baited breath) for the FS2004 Ultimate Traffic upgrade. If you use heavy AI traffic and choose to install the statics, there is a serious risk of running out of parking stands, which is why the option is there; but if you get bored with empty airports you can just re-run the installer and stick the statics back in again.

By popular request, the marshallers are back at several of the airfields - I had been wondering where they had gone. I have always been a little wary of those guys since an acquaintance didn't notice he had backed off the brake pressure while he was doing the mag checks and nearly ran one of them down, so keep your eye on them! In practice, the only time you come across a marshaller is when you are about to be hit with a large compulsory handling charge, so most GA pilots get little practice with them; however the manual includes some basic guidance on what to do when those bats start waving.

All the large airports have a mumber of 'active' air gates, along with working docking boards and air stairs. There are five active gates at Manchester, four at Liverpool and one at Cardiff. All the ones I tried seemed to work well, though as the boards get closer they sometimes get harder to see, which is a function of the pilot view position. In some planes this is way off where it should be, a few designers having actually chosen to place it right on the nose, which means that you think the plane is lined up when it is still many yards out. One way around this is to hit the minus key and zoom the view out, then watch the docking scale until it tells you to stop - though this generates some truly weird views at least it gets the plane stopped in the right place. Very occasionally the board code got out of synch, but I was able to fix this by retuning Nav 2 as suggested in the manual. Though the AI planes will use the active gates, if you don't have 100% traffic set there should always be at least one free, which ATC will direct you to use. Incidentally, once you have parked the plane up, you have to 'trigger' the gate by changing the Nav1 frequency, so don't sit for hours like I did, wondering why nothing is happening! The gates have been tuned to the default Boeings, but I found they lined up with most planes I tried - and as a bonus, some of the stands have moving airstairs instead, which are kind of neat.

At Manchester airport there is a 'dynamic service fleet' made of vehicles which wait until you park in one of the active bays, before driving out. The process is nicely sequenced, takes about twenty minutes to complete and is a pleasure to watch; once the APU unit has pulled away from your plane's nose, you are ready to pushback. At present Cardiff and Liverpool don't have the feature, but Gary says it will be added at a later date.

Needless to say, the runways and taxiways comply with UK standards, one of the improvements in this edition being a new taxiway system that has smooth corners and junctions, together with a used looking surface. The taxiways are much narrower than the default ones, which are unreasonably wide and they have the correct color of centerline lights into the bargain.

The only problem I came across at the large airports was occasional flashing building shadows, triggered by moving the POV in spot view. Quite why this happens, I am not sure, but it isn't exactly a serious problem. Apart from that, the sceneries are a really good example of how these things should be done, with crisp textures, perfect joins on most of the lines and good framerates. Speed has always been one of the great strengths of Gary's sceneries and unless you really overdo the Autogen or scenery complexity settings on less capable systems, his airports run fast and one or two other scenery developers could learn a lot from them about how to make detailed scenery usable.

For Just Flight/Visual Flight/Getmapping fans, there is an installation option to make the sceneries blend into the Photo Scenery textures and I found it worked really well, which reminds me that until the AFD update appears, it would be wise to check the 'addon scenery' option when you use the Goto Airport menu, or you may find your plane parked on the wrong side of a hedge.

One thing you don't get are any approach plates, because these are available free of charge from National Air Traffic Services. Access to the site is free, though you have to create a login. After that, you will discover the delights of navigating a really badly designed website, but the section you want is under \UK AIP\aerodrome data\aerodromes specific, then click the name of whichever one you want to pull up a pdf with the plan, info and any procedures. A great service, once you get your head around it.

Enough of the large airports - most of this package consists of smaller fields and since it includes some I know well, let's go visit a couple.

Manchester Barton - shown above - is one of the oldest active GA fields in the UK and has just about the most complete set of grass runways you could wish for. It has always been a popular destination for UK flyers, the only problem being that it lies in a pocket cut under the edge of Manchester Airport's TMA and getting in and out requires a certain amount of planning, because the surrounding airspace is seriously congested. Approaches from the north have to take account of Leeds Bradford's airspace and an airway that steps down as you near the field; there is relatively high ground to the north and a mast just outside Bolton which is 2452 feet AMSL, so this isn't the sort of place for a trip on a marginal day. To the east is Liverpool's airspace, which joins Manchester's, so the only way to go south is to fly the 'low level corridor', a four mile wide passage between Ashcroft airfield and Wigan which can be transited no higher than 1250 feet on the Manchester QNH. Simmers who have the UK VFR Photo scenery might try flying this - without the GPS - and imagine what it feels like doing it for real! The corridor rightly scares the hell out of many pilots, because at peak times it is full of traffic and no amount of cash would tempt me to fly the centerline at a thousand feet - anyway, if you want to give it a try, visit this link for some charts and then give it a go.

Barton is famous for its tower, which is a listed building, as far as I can recall; and its terribly uneven grass, which makes takeoffs kind of interesting, the main challenge being to keep the plane on the ground before it is ready to fly. As you can see from the screenshot above, Gary has done a great job on the place.

The other GA field that caught my eye is Sleap, which isn't far away from some friends of ours, so I have dropped in there reasonably frequently (there being the added bonus that when you return and people ask where you have been all day, you can tell them that you just went to Sleap. Anyway, I thought it was funny).

Sleap is an outstanding little airfield that has the advantage of paved runways, but like Barton, the approach isn't completely straightforward, because it lies within the RAF Shawbury MATZ. At the weekend, this doesn't matter so much, because the RAF go home at five pm on a Friday, but during the week approaches to the field have to take account of the military. Sleap also has just about the most complex circuit procedures you can imagine, designed to avoid the many surrounding villages, and they all change when Shawbury is active. To make matters worse, at the weekends, Sleap buzzes with planes and the activity can be simply incredible for such a small airfield. The saving grace is that the guy who mans the radio at the weekends can handle a dozen planes in the circuit without breaking into a sweat and it is a real pleasure to hear him handling two at fifteen miles out, one in the overhead, one deadside, one crosswind, two downwind, one on base, one on final, one exiting and a guy who can't figure out where to park.

Sleap has the advantage of being one of the declining proportion of fields that still operate a signal square and Gary has kindly duplicated this, the most useful bit being the landing T, which shows which runway is in use and changes with the FS wind direction.

As you can see from the pic on the right, Gary has done a remarkably good job of simulating the field, and I look forward to many virtual trips there, though even with the FS2004 AI traffic patch installed, the one thing you aren't likely to see at the UK2000 version of Sleap is one of these doing circuits, as we did last time we were there. But then you never know with Mr. Summons...

Andrew Herd
andy@flightsim.com
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