Introduction

The Isles of Scilly (or just ScillyIsles) are a small group of islands 25 miles off the southwestern tipof Cornwall in the United Kingdom. The larger islands are St. Mary's,Tresco, St. Martins and St. Agnes.

St Mary's Airport being review here, is located 1 nautical mileeast of Hugh Town on St Mary's in the Isles of Scilly. It is the onlyairport serving the Isles of Scilly, handling all air traffic to andfrom the Islands. The airport is owned by the Duchy of Cornwall andcurrently is operated by the Council of the Isles of Scilly.

On 15 September 1937, Olley Air Service's subsidiary Channel AirFerries started the first scheduled service between Land's End and StMary's, flying de Havilland Dragons. St Mary's Airport was firstopened in August 1939, after being converted from High Cross Farm.

The terminal at the airport is open all year round whilst theairport is in operation. It has a buffet, toilets, as well as accessto wheelchairs upon request. The airport is used as a landing area forsome emergency services such as the HM Coastguard Search and RescueAircraft (based out of Newquay Airport) and the Cornwall AirAmbulance, as well as being the administrative base for the Isles ofScilly Fire and Rescue Service.

Features

This scenery package from Taburet not only includes a completereconstruction of St. Mary's Airport, but also a redesigned harbourcomplete with additional 3D objects.

Installation

After purchasing the scenery from the FlightSim.Com Store, you arepresented with a single zip file weighing in at just over 40 MB insize. Compared to some sceneries I have had in the past, this is quitesmall (especially for payware), so I was rather interested in seeing howit performed.

Once the aforementioned file is unzipped, it's just a simple caseof placing the scenery into your Microsoft Flight Simulator"Community" folder. Unlike the old days, there is no need to messaround with your scenery load order as this is all done automatically(highly welcomed).

Documentation

Apart from a very short "Readme" file covering the installationprocedure of the scenery, there wasn't anything else included. This Ifelt was a shame, especially as the airport's history is quiteinteresting. Perhaps in the future, the developer might like toinclude a short PDF on the airport.

Looking Around

My first port of call was the main airport terminal building(complete with Otter), as seen in the image below.

The modelling of the building is rather good, and captures thefeeling of its real life counterpart well. The only thing I found tobe a little bit off, was the shininess of some of the wall texturesand also the glass windows.

At the back of the terminal building you have parking for a fewcars, plus a nicely modelled stone wall (see the image below).

As what has now because the norm for sceneries by Taburet, there isthe usual amount of "airport clutter" to be seen, and this includessuch items as bins, barrels, cones, etc.

Next up are the airport hangars and huts, and these too have beenplaced in their appropriate locations. Situated just in front of theseare numerous GA aircraft, and whilst default objects, they fit thebill nicely.

Moving away from the airport proper and you can see how delightfulthe approach is. In saying that, it's not something you'd want to getwrong!

As mentioned in the developer's scenery description, as well as themain airport, the harbour area of the island has also seen some love,and this is shown in the images below.

Night Lighting

Night lighting is functional, with some areas working better thanothers. For example, the hangar buildings and car park area werereally good, but I found the main terminal building to be tooharsh/garish.

Performance

Having had the pleasure of reviewing a number of MSFS sceneriesfrom Taburet in the past, I can safely say that this scenery followsthe trend of its predecessors by running flawlessly on mysystem. However, I am using a somewhat high end setup: i7-9700, 32 GBRAM, and a GTX 1080Ti.

Conclusion

Taburet's rendition of Saint Mary's Airport in the Scilly Islandsis a welcomed addition to the Flight Simulator world. Not only doesit offer simmers a chance to visit a truly lovely part of the UK, butit also does it at a price that doesn't hurt. There are areas which Iwould like to see some improvement on, namely the documentation andnight lighting, but apart from that...it's hard to fault thisdelightful scenery.

Neil Birch

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