About This File
FS2004 Scenery--Sproat Lake CAA9 Vancouver Island BC, Canada. Sproat Lake is in the middle of southern Vancouver Island, 6 miles west of the town of Port Alberni and 30 miles directly south of Comox Valley Airport. The lake is some 14 miles long and at the eastern end there are a lot of houses with docks and boats, and in the offshoot called Upper Sproat Lake it has the Sproat Lake Tankerbase CAA9, home to two Martin Mars firefighting planes. They are just huge, and their capacity for carrying huge amounts of water for fire fighting has kept them in use since their construction in the 1940's. They have finally been retired from fighting fires, having been first retired from military service in 1958.This scenery is made for use with Ultimate Terrain; there was another version made several years ago which either predated or ignored UT. This scenery is for the month when a Mars was being repainted before retiring to a museum as a military plane, date unknown but perhaps 2013? Because of hills adjacent to the lake the landing of the AI Mars may or may not take place, depending on wind direction and whether or not it flies into solid rock before landing. Take off and departure seem to be more reliable than landing, and there are other AI flights too. By Roger Wensley.