Introduction

Lydd Airport is located about 14 milessouth of Ashford in the district of Folkestone and Hythe, in Kent,England. The airport is currently able to handle aircraft up to thesize of a Boeing 737 or Airbus A319, but the runway length means thatsuch aircraft can only take off with a restricted payload.

Lydd Airport opened in 1954 and was the first airport to be builtin the UK following the end of the Second World War. It was built forSilver City Airways as an all-weather replacement operating base tothat of nearby Lympne Airport, whose grass runway was oftenwaterlogged in rainy weather.

Silver City Airways subsequently became part of British United AirFerries (BUAF), under the same ownership as British United Airways(BUA). The airlines used Bristol Freighters, Superfreighters andAviation Traders Carvair aircraft on their car-carrying routes fromLydd. However, the introduction of roll-on/roll-off ferries andhovercraft on cross-channel services led to a decline of the air ferryservices from Lydd.

During the 1980s the airport was bought by Hards Travel fromSolihull, who used the airport (along with Coventry Airport) as itsbase for its holiday operations to Spain, Italy and Austria, usingDart Herald and Viscount aircraft flying to Beauvais in France, wherecustomers were transferred to coaches for the remainder of thejourney.

Expansion of the airport was approved in 2014 following a legalchallenge by Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and theLydd Airport Action (LAAG) Group. This includes a runway extension ofalmost 300 m (980 ft) and a new terminal building.

Installation

After purchasing the product from the FlightSim.Com Store, you areprovided with a single zip file. With the file unzipped, it is just asimple case of placing the extracted folder into your Flight Simulator"Community" folder.

As mentioned in my previous review, there is no need to add theairport in the simulator's scenery library (as in the case of previousversions of MSFS), as this is all done automatically for you.

Documentation

Contained within the package is a single text document whichcontains a brief introduction to Lydd Airport, plus an installationguide.

Looking Around

Having had the pleasure of reviewingTaburet's Fishburn Airfieldfor Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 a few weeks back, I thought Iwould tackle something a little bigger from the author.

Prior to installing Taburet's version, I loaded up the defaultscenery of Lydd Airport and was surprised to see how empty itwas. There were only a few buildings present, plus the odd aircraftwhich was a bit of a disappointment. Not only that, but there werealso two small road bridges present (not connected to either side) inthe Dengemarsh Sewer! These looked extremely strange and made thedefault area look even worse.

So...out with the old and in with the new.

The first thing I noticed about the Taburet version was how busythe airport now looked. Gone was the dull and lifeless scenery I hadexperienced before, replaced now with something much more akin to itsreal-life counterpart.

Yes, they might only have been stock default objects...but theywere much more accurately placed and abundant, with the overall effectof creating an airport which felt alive.

As well as the additional buildings, there were also what I like tocall airport "clutter" present. This included things like oilbarrels, bins, pallets, etc., and together, really helped enhance thescenery.

As with Fishburn, the package also included a few 3D animatedpeople, and these were situated in what could only be describedas...appropriate areas. Again, these are probably stock sceneryobjects, but I would rather have them included than not.

Night Lighting

Night lighting is fairly good and looks quite realistic once thesun has set. The most well lit are the main terminal building andlarge hangar, but away from these the effects are a lot more subdued.

Performance

As previously mentioned in my last review, my setup is at the topend of Flight Simulator 2020's system requirements. It includes an i79700F, coupled with a GTX 1080Ti and 32 GB of RAM. During my testing ofLydd, I experienced no issues at all in regard to frame rates (noteven a stutter).

Conclusion

Much like Fishburn, I really enjoyed my time at Lydd Airport as itallowed me to explore an area I was unfamiliar with (usually fly inthe north of England). Compared to the default scenery of Lydd, thisis a vast improvement, even if it does contain a large amount of stockobjects. Some might sneer at this, but the fact is, they work well andthe performance they offer is very good.

Having not explored this part of England before, Lydd makes for agreat starting point to take in the sights. To the west you haveBeachy Head, and to the east you have the White Cliffs of Dover, sothere is plenty to see.

When you factor in the relatively low price, I have to say thatTaburet's scenery of Lydd makes for a compelling purchase, even moreso if you have a link to the area.

Review System:

• Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020
• Windows 10 Professional
• Intel® Core™ i7 9700F CPU 3.00 GHz Processor
• 32 GB RAM
• NVIDIA® 1080Ti

Neil Birch

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Read our review of Taburet - Fishburn Airport for MSFS 2020