Ketchikan PAKT in southern Alaska


Made using SceneryGenX by Roger Wensley for FS9.



SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING LIGHTS AND SMOKE EFFECTS

I should have mentioned long ago that to see the apron lighting you need to have Sidney Schwartz's lights installed as library objects. You will also need his revised textures as he had a problem with one that was faulty; if you have a scenery or ground textures that go blurry then that could be the problem.

Plus, I have recently started using smoke effects (houses, oil refineries, etc) and this requires you to have installed the "EZEFFCTS.ZIP" by Ron Jeffers; again, it is a simple and one-time installation.



WHERE AND WHAT

This is Ketchikan PAKT in southern Alaska, 45 miles north of the Canadian border and 220 miles south of Juneau. It is, accordingly, the closest major Alaskan airport to the lower 48 and most flights from or to Seattle pass through Ketchikan en route. The airport is on the southern side of the stretch of water known as The Narrows and the town is on the northern side, with ferries connecting the two. The town is heavily reliant on tourism (from cruise liners) and salmon fishing. The town side was somewhat modified towards the town centre as part of the three Misty Fjords sceneries, so there were already some marinas and docked cruise liners etc before I started this. In addition, Ketchikan Airport had been partly made by Alan Wright way back in 2006, and further modified by John Hinson in 2007; I say "partly" as there is in fact no way to accurately make PAKT within the limitations of FS9 as there is a 50 or 60 feet difference in elevation between runway and apron, and the taxiways are actually ramps up from the apron to the ends of the runway. This has a knock-on effect on the float plane and ferry docks on the water below the airport, as when making the glassed-in bridges that make the link it is difficult to achieve anything that appears realistic, with a 120 feet difference in level instead of 30 feet. I can see why the Misty Fjord sceneries avoided it.

This scenery retains the original buildings from the Alan Wright scenery. It also includes the modification made by John Hinson, who created the second taxiway to the western end of the runway; FS9 had not included this as the original airport started operations with only one taxiway in place. There are new vehicles on the apron (fuel etc), new apron markings and some parking modifications to enable AI with Boing 737, DC6, Beechcraft 1900, GA etc. plus runway and taxiway signage, windsocks, some car parking, freight items, etc. The back of the airport, where there should be a road and glassed-in bridges down to the docks etc, has been mostly ignored, for now, this may change along with new buildings if I can somehow make the levels work better. The far side of the water has been modelled to include another float plane dock along with waterfront buildings, including the ship repair facility with it's dry dock (actually a floating dock that lifts ships out of the water) and the Alaskan Ferry Terminal wharf etc. The ferry forms a part of the AI, generously permitted by FSAddon and originally a part of the payware Tongass Fjords package, as are the AI aircraft also included here.

The AI is a further adaptation of the CF36 AI and the PAKN AI, as listed in the AI folder. Due to the surrounding hills there may be some interference with AI float aircraft, depending on the wind direction, though I have watched succesful Beaver landings with the wind from the east. My only blunder (I hope!) was in not separating the reference points for the AKM1 float base and the XKM1 marine for the Alaskan Ferry, so on the gps the airport reference shows as somethingKM1 with the A and X superimposed. 




NEEDED and PROVIDED

What do you need? Well apart from FS9, ULTIMATE TERRAIN Alaska/Canada would be a definite plus to get the water in the right shape and place. This scenery will not work without it. The three Misty Fjords sceneries (2 free and one payware) were superb at the time they were made, and remain impressive even today, so should be included......

The planes are listed as such on the aircraft list in the AI folder, and in the main are provided here, or before with a previous scenery.

A paper chart of the area would be experience-adding and very useful.



INSTALLATION

First locate and delete all previous installations of PAKT, including AF2_PAKT and any other. There may be other previous versions by others that I am not aware of.

Instead of requiring you to first install the Alan Wright version, and then the John Hinson one, and then listing the items to be removed, I have included the required items here in total; you can either modify your existing installation to match what I have retained and then add mine, or delete all and then install all.

To install unzip to a temporary folder, then move the Ketchikan PAKT folder with its scenery and texture folders to wherever you keep your additional scenery. After that activate in the FS Library in the normal way. Note that it is only for FS9. It should be above (smaller number than) UT, as should all your other airfields.

The other folders, KetchikanTOP (which reduces water runway widths to 1 foot to avoid showing in the water) and the PAKTgrass (modificatons to coastline and grass) should be installed in the same way, and the FS9 library priority, if these were the only folders you had, should be as shown below:

1  KetchikanTop
2  Ketchikan PAKT
3  PAKTgrass
4  UT Alaska Canada

It will not work as intended if you throw all the bgl's into the same folder; the installation described above works.



AI 

I am going to presume you know how to install new planes, anyway just place these in your aircraft folder; the AI planes and ship were provided by FSAddon as noted above.

The Traffic_CF36.bgl and Traffic_PAKN.bgl and Traffic_XKM1.bgl go into FS9/scenery/world/scenery.


LEGAL STUFF

Note that this is free at no expense spared and not to be sold. You can use it within FS9 for your own fun, but if you want to do something else you ask me first, which includes loading it on a site other than the one I post it on. Above all, don't make money from it, and this remains my copyright, I am just loaning it out for FS9 use.

rogwen@rogers.com

Criticism and praise equally welcome, and particularly if you point out a missing texture or something similar! I just wish that the downloader who points out an error will one day be downloader number 1, instead of the more usual number 181; why does nobody think that they should be the one to tell me I messed up? It never bothered Sid (past tense as he stopped using FS9 now).

This version posted on Flightsim 11 January 2017