Vancouver Plus

A non-childhood dream of mine is to learn how to fly an airplane, but the money and time and effort involved are scaring me off. In the meantime I've been following Jon Patch's blog about Vancouver+, the better-than-the-default scenery for the Lower Mainland for Flight Simulator X. I have the the trial version on the Windows side of my MacBook, which limits me to 2 options: a free flight and an landing activity at Princess Juliana Airport (so far after about 5 hours of trying I've never been able to successfully complete it). Today Jon links to more detail about how he created the Vancouver+ scenery with more screenshots and information about how they came about technical details for airports, buildings and bridges. Also discussed: Pitt Meadows Airport, Langley Regional Airport, Hope, Lytton, Pemberton, and Whistler.

Comments

I took pilot training in the RCAF for a while back in the 1950s, but back then, I was too much of a smart-ass and I couldn't adjust to the discipline required - partly because I'd already spent three years operating hydro-electric plants before enlisting, and all the others were fresh from school and on their first big adventure. I asked to be released part way through basic flight training. because the weather that year in southern Ontario was terrible, and we spent more time in the ready room waiting for it to clear than we did in the air, flying those old Harvards. Incidently, I was told that the controls in a Harvard were more complicated than in the jets we would fly later at advanced school. I gave up the spit & polish and went back to power station control rooms, where I knew what I was doing. But I've always wondered if I would have been able to graduate that course. Out of 110 of us who started, only about 10 or 15 eventually became Flying Officers & pilots.