Welcome to Hawker, South Australia, the gateway to the Flinders Ranges (no relation, other than in name, to my previous Flinders Island scenery). It’s called Hawker, but I’ve seen it referred to, somewhat pretentiously (including in MSFS) as “Wilpena Pound Airport”. The “Pound”, being one of the prominent features of the Ranges, is a good 50 km away, but I’m sure some marketing wag employed by the Flinders Ranges Council thought it was a winner with the tourists!
Anyway, this is a very pretty part of Australia (if you like arid and ancient rocks) and well worth a visit. Sunrise and sunset are a magic times. If you want to see the “Pound” in all its glory, take off just before sunrise on a clear day, head north for 20 nm whilst climbing to 10,000’and be awed!
As usual, my 3D modelling skills being non-existent, this scenery is a fairly simple rendition of MSFS’s extremely basic and sparse default.
But here’s what you get:
- Runway and apron placement and slopes as close to real life as I can ascertain
- Fully functional AI taxi network (but I won’t be held liable for the MSFS AI antics!)
- Perimeter fence (so we can all sleep better at night)
- Corrected vegetation and water masks in the vicinity
- Accurately placed runway and taxiway lights and close to real life apron lighting
- Removed street lights (there are none in real life … nights are DARK in the Flinders Ranges)
Bonus 1. Hawker never was, and never will be, a plane spotter’s haven, but sightseeing flights do operate from the airport. Included in the download you’ll find a separate “sltcreations_traffic_HAW” folder, that, if added to your community folder, will bring a bit of aerial life to the region. If you set your AI Traffic setting to 1% or above, there should be a dozen GA movements each day.
Bonus 2. Having developed the AI traffic for YHAW, I was wondering why the programmed flight to YRYK kept circling that airport. I quickly realised that the default YRYK has no AI taxi paths. So, for no extra cost, I’ve also included a spiffed-up YRYK Rawnsley Park with a working AI taxi network.
Installation
The download contains 4 separate folders. Copy them to your Community folder as desired:
sltcreations-airport-yhaw-hawker YHAW Hawker airport
sltcreations-airport-yryk-rawnsley-park YRYK Rawnsley Park airport
sltcreations-traffic-HAW Hawker Region AI Traffic
sltcreations-AU-Flags Library of Australian Flags*
* Created using the Windy Things library with thanks to trfsto. I have included this library with other sceneries. Please ensure that you have only one copy in your Community folder.
Known issues
- MSFS doesn’t like me changing the names of existing airports, so in the World Map and internal nav database you will still see the names of “Wilpena Pound” and “Quorn” rather than “Hawker”.
- Under certain circumstance there may be some minor flickering in the perimeter fence. This is unfortunately the nature of the mesh fence objects.
- I’ve programmed the AI (Artificial Idiots) to the best of my ability, but that doesn’t stop MSFS from displaying some truly bizarre behaviour, like taking off downwind, or 172s hitting mountains and then “taxiing” all the way to their destination. Or taking off and heading true north or south into the blue yonder, never to head for their actual destination. And, of course, the mandatory push-backs for heavies, like 172s!
- The runway “light rows” I have used, even though supposedly omnidirectional, extinguish for a short period and reappear as you get closer. This appears to be a general feature of some MSFS runway lighting.
- There’s no “fuel” parking spot. MSFS force-adds bowsers to these, and their location can’t be controlled. But the refuelling area is in an obvious place. You’ll just have to open the Fuel UI manually.
Dependencies
As always, my gratitude goes to the scenery object library creators, without whom I wouldn’t be creating scenery add-ons. You will need to have the latest version of these installed in your Community folder to properly experience my sceneries:
MSFS 2020 object library with 200+ models by colinj
totof- aircraft library v4 by Totof33120
https://flightsim.to/file/17182/totof-aircraft-library-v1-1
Nice! Another couple destinations within boredom range of Parafield.
To clear up the name confusion:
Wilpena Pound is a 3km wide basin in the Southern Flinders Ranges. You can see it in the background of pic 12. Seriously, you can't miss it from the ground let alone the air. It is frequently referred to as "The Pound".
Hawker (YHAW) is the name given by Air Services Australia to the airfield serving the town of (surprise!) Hawker. Outside of FS2020, only Google shows it as Wilpena Pound Airport and at least they get the town right!
Rawnsley Park Station is a tourist lodge SW of the Pound. It has a dirt strip just across the river from the main road (YRYK). See pic 12.
Wilpena (YWPN) is located just outside the Pound to the NE. Its a dirt strip with a terrifying hump in the middle. Google call this Wilpena Pound Air Strip and you have to zoom right in to find it. Asobo have mislabelled it Quorn and given it a fictional code of YQUU.
Quorn is actually a town 50km SW of Hawker. It has an airstrip of the same name (YQRN according to ASA) about 5km east of the town. Looking closer, every airfield in the are is labelled "xxx, Quorn:. Asobo seem to have somehow confused the Flinders Ranges Council area with the location of its headquaters. Ah, the joys of relying on vast collection of data from disparate sources with no QC...
2 years ago
CptBluebear
Great work! You should get paid for it 😊
2 years ago
sarahymac