About This File
FS2004 Scenery--Barrow PABR, on the north coast of Alaska (AK), USA. The town of Barrow is in the far north of Alaska, and is best known in flying circles as the place where Wiley Post crashed his floatplane on takeoff and killed himself and Will Rogers. The Barrow population is largely Inupiat and totals some 4,400. The downtown area of Barrow is immediately north of the airport, and the second and largest part is further north past a string of lagoons, and locally called Browerville. To the northeast along the coast is the smallest part around what used to be the Naval Arctic Research Lab, and is now a college. To the east of this are the DEW buildings, plus two large navy hangars and the gravel runway that was used to serve the DEW station. The PABR runway is aligned 06-24 in FS2004 and is 7,100 feet long and 150 feet wide, built on top of a gravel base and surround that copes with the underlying permafrost. There is PAPI at both ends and an ILS and approach lights on 06; 06 circuits are to the right. The apron in this version is not as in reality; the airport notes include a warning that the apron is not a standard width and that planes that are enroute to the far end of the runway will not be able to taxi past a large parked plane at the gate; FS2004 AI cannot cope with that concept. There are, in real life and the AI, daily flights by Air Alaska (three at least) and Era (several, and which is now called Ravn, hence the new hangar door motif) and air cargo flights by Northern Air Cargo and Everts, plus GA. The buildings have been made with photographic textures or with textures made from reference photos. To "make" all of the town of Barrow would have needed far more that the 500+ scenery objects included here; the auto-generated FS2004 town objects could not be left as Barrow with trees would not look at all like reality. The town buildings have been "faded" into the distance from the airport. By Roger Wensley.