San Cristobal Airport

The Galapagos Islands second airport was rebuilt a few years ago.  These islands are the territory of Ecuador and they are not well represented on the flight simulator X-Plane 11.  This is the start of my work to address this omission.

When the runway is placed at the exact geographic coordinates, it sits out of place on the scenery mat.  The placement of large antennae gives me a position for the runway, and also where the relative position should be in relation to the set scenery.

By much the simplest solution is to place the runway 400 meters out of line to fit the existing landscape.  The locator's and instrument landing patterns will all fit this position and it will appear visually correct.

It took about a week to construct the scenery buildings for the airport, using Google SketchUp 2017 and converting the files to X-Plane objects  The most challenging task was to get the ramp lights to shine at night.  That requires a programming addition to the .obj files.

Using X-Plane World Editor (WED) it was quick to assemble the scenery items and add ground markings to the airfield.  Library generated content was used to add static aircraft and equipment.

The nearby town of San Cristobal is an important part of the overall effect of the scenery.  Existing streets were located using antennae models and buildings were positioned to give a representation of the town.  Some did not sit well on the terrain, so a tweak would be needed to disguise that fact.

Better, but only to be seen at a distance, so detail is kept to a minimum to save on computer memory.

Still some way to go, but the airport is now a functional flight simulator model that can be used.  It will be available on line before Christmas.

Paul's X-Plane Pages