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Post by connieguy on May 27, 2021 4:03:13 GMT -5
Dhahran (OEDR) in Saudi Arabia in some ways linked East and West. MATS C-121s flew there via the Azores and Port Lyautey and Navy R7V-1s from California and Hawaii. It was also on the routes of some commercial airlines, and aircraft from the Cal Classic 1957 traffic folder are present. According to my OAG guide of December 1953 TWA was stopping between Cairo and Bombay and Saudi Arabian Airlines was travelling from Jeddah, while Gulf Aviation, ME-Middle East Airlines and MR-MISR airlines also visited. Twice a week, on Tuesday and Saturday, KLM cargo flights arrived from Amsterdam, the Tuesday flight going on to Karachi, the Saturday flight terminating in Dhahran.
By an agreement of 1945 (what follows is a much abbreviated version of Wikipedia) the Saudis allowed the US to build a small airfield near the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) town. In 1949 it was the only airfield in the area which could support USAF Superfortresses. The Dhahran airfield and the emerging support facilities became Dhahran International Airport in 1961, shortly before the United States relinquished control in 1962. By then a grand new terminal had been built. Today the airfield is used by the Royal Saudi Air Force and is known as King Abdulaziz Air Base.
There is, almost needless to say, an invaluable Flickr album on Dhahran pre-1960 by John Hewson:
This shows terminal buildings far more primitive than the building which replaced them. Aramco DC-4 aircraft can be seen near them. In 1950 Flight D of the 7th Air Rescue Squadron was present, in 1959 Detachment 10 of the 1602nd Air Transport Wing, MATS; the presidential aircraft Columbine III visited the same year. There is unfortunately no airfield chart available, but there are watercolour drawings which provide useful aerial evidence, and which show one roughly North-South runway and one roughly East-West runway. It seems likely that following the practice of the early 1950s these were each about 7000 feet long. I have tried taking off in a C-121C loaded to overload weight and carrying full fuel in a temperature of about 50C and the runway was adequate.
Re-creation of this mid-1950s Dhahran has been made easier by Dan French's kindness in making convincing terminal buildings for the new scenery. I offer screenshots of the airfield below. The water tower is currently in the wrong place. Comment and information of any kind welcome at this point, particularly if we could be pointed to people sprites of Middle Eastern appearance.
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Post by jwh on May 28, 2021 1:24:24 GMT -5
All is looking good, particularly the original terminal building.
Another welcome addition to the CalClassic library of military air bases.
John
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Post by connieguy on Jul 12, 2021 4:41:53 GMT -5
There is an interesting article on Dhahran by Lt Col Morris, who served there with the 7th Air Rescue Squadron in 1950-51, here: www.zianet.com/tmorris/dhahran.htmlThe scenery is almost ready for release. We have reworked the landclass and eliminated undesirable stock FS9 features,with the result that the surrounding environment now looks more convincing. We have given both runways ILS, although there is considerable doubt whether it existed at this date. Purists can ignore them and use GCA if necessary. Late in 1956 a MATS C-121 crashed attempting to land in dense fog when GCA was not operating.
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Post by connieguy on Jul 27, 2021 4:59:19 GMT -5
Uploaded to Flightsim, Avsim and MAIW today. Further screenshots: Grumman Albatross of the 7th Air Rescue Squadron. The upload contains a Traffic file by Al which provides some of the military traffic of the period. A TWA Super Constellation taxies for take-off. This is supplied by Tom's recently uploaded 1955 Traffic File, along with a number of other aircraft, including the Aramco DC-4s which appear in John Hewson's photo album.
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Post by Tom/CalClassic on Jul 27, 2021 13:33:09 GMT -5
Thanks Ken.
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Post by connieguy on Jul 27, 2021 14:40:34 GMT -5
Thanks, Tom.
Now available here;
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Post by Tom/CalClassic on Jul 27, 2021 18:39:05 GMT -5
And linked on my page.
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Post by connieguy on Aug 1, 2021 5:00:37 GMT -5
Apparently as a result of an oversight by myself there is another scenery library necessary for this scenery which is not mentioned in the instructions. This is Michael Carr's excellent MCD Military Library, available here: www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib.php?do=copyright&fid=116841If the tents are white or do not appear, it needs to be installed. My apologies.
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Post by jsaus on Aug 13, 2021 16:34:32 GMT -5
Is there a way to just put those textures needed in the texture folder already (and credit the dev) and NOT have to download and install multiple Library's? Its such a PITA sometimes (all the time actually). Especially when somebody pulls the pin on their library being available so you have to put up with textures not showing if you download an older scenery.
Just a thought...
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Post by Tom/CalClassic on Aug 13, 2021 19:12:55 GMT -5
Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean.
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Post by jsaus on Aug 14, 2021 20:01:02 GMT -5
Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean. Sometimes having to download separate libraries for an airport gets a little frustrating as on occasions, the scenery library (it caneven be 2 or 3) may not be available any more. So the scenery is missing textures for some objects.
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Post by Tom/CalClassic on Aug 15, 2021 9:08:30 GMT -5
No, you cannot use only the textures, the entire library is needed. But you can try asking on this forum if someone has the libraries you need?
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Post by jsaus on Aug 15, 2021 9:39:01 GMT -5
Ok, no worries. It was a question to as I had done a airfield once just for myself. And had to use some libraries and that also frustrated me as I wanted to use only a scenery and texture folder not linking with the any needed libraries. Ive also downloaded some old sceneries that are missing textures because some aren't available any more. Or are hard to find. I was looking for a work around to all of this.
But appreciate the reply.
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Post by connieguy on Aug 15, 2021 11:21:19 GMT -5
And I'm sure you will not mind if I point out that all the sceneries required for Dhahran are readily available, so none of the issues you have mentioned apply to it.
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