KSTP - St. Paul Downtown / Holman Field - St. Paul, MN

St. Paul Downtown airport is one of the top reliever airports in the Twin Cities area.  As the name implies, it is situated near the downtown area of St. Paul and as such it is home to many area business hangars and sees a fair amount of business jet traffic as well as Piston Engined aircraft.  It is surrounded on two sides by the Mississippi River and will partially flood when the river is high.  It is also home to the Hangar of the Saint Paul Army Aviation Facility which sees a fair number of Blackhawk helicopter operations in any given day.  

The airport has three runways, the primary is 14-32 which is just shy of 6500'.  The other two crosswind runways are 13-31 at 4000' and 9-27 at over 3600'.  There are two main FBO's on the field and the airfield is a part-time Class D airfield with the associated tower.

Update 3.1 Note:

This version adds CHS Field - Baseball in St Paul, a current landmark that was a building site when Bing Maps last covered it.  I have messed around with the fencing around the FBO as well.  (Still shimmers)

Update 3.0 Notes:

•  Taxi Signs now have a reverse side to match reality at most Airports in the USA.
• Holmans Table has been tweaked to provide railings to Balconies, doors onto the Balconies, and a clock, none of which would have been possible without a great photo taken by Devan Mayer and posted to Google Earth.
• The 3M Hangar facility has now been modelled, replacing the amazing job Ben did in constructing this out of Asobo Hangars.
• Holmans Table and the 3M Hangars now use LODS to reduce the vertex count.  There is still a lot more work to do on other buildings to trim things down.

Known Issue:

For reasons beyond my comprehension, ATC insists on sending users that are parked at Holmans Table, -and wish to take off on runway 14-, on a round trip via Echo to Delta cross runway 31, Alpha, Alpha One.  Just turn right onto Echo and ignore the rest. 

Update 2.0 Notes:

• Airport Services
  • Marshalls will appear at all parking spaces where aircraft can exit forward.  Pushback is available where forward exit is not possible.
• Lighting
  • All the edge lighting has been positioned as precisely as possible, rather than accept the auto positioned lights that can end up in the middle of taxiways.   These lights at present are likely to remain on during the day, but this means they are on in poor lighting, which fits well with other new features.
• Tower Complex and Hangars
  • The hangars on the western side have all been modelled, and parking spaces, regardless of size, have been set as GA_SMALL so that Airport Services only provide the marshaller.
• Beacon now has inclement weather sensitivity, so it comes on if the rain or snow falls at a rate over 5mm/Hr.
• Flood Defence wall has now been modelled, with custom lights on top.  
• Holman's Table has been modified with more accurate tower presentation.
• Taxiways have been checked to make sure ATC directions and AI Aircraft follow real world instructions.

Dependancy

Please ensure that MNSD-MODELLIB-AIRPORT-MODELS is installed in the Community Folder to provide the new beacon.

Known Issues:

Weather can enter open hangars.  Awaiting Asobo fix to Environmental Occlusion.
Lights have very short visible distance, also awaiting Asobo.

Notes:

- Taxiway redesign - Addition of numerous taxiways to bring the airport to it's current layout

- Taxiway names - Brought the airport to the correct taxiway names and signage

- PAPI's updated to the current airport format based on 2021 AIRNAV data

- The majority of the AI hangars were removed and replaced with stock hangars of similar shape and size.  Hangars also added to those missed by the default Asobo implementation (the MN Army National Guard hangar was pulled from the World Update KSWF airport)

- Night lighting added to many of the hangars

- One hangar was added from the colinj library.  Thanks colinj!

- Static scenery objects added

- Blackhawk helicopter and Falcon Jet object from the JB's Scenery Models package.  Thanks JB! (The Falcon Jet was added to the location where "The Learning Jet" currently sits.  This IRL is a retired Fedex 727 but I couldn't find a 727 static object.  The Falcon was a trijet so it was used)

- Beacon objects added and location corrected (including the beacon on Dayton's Bluff north east of the airfield across the river)

Update Notes:Version 1.1

-Three custom created buildings added:-

1. Old Terminal Building - now Holman’s Table.

2. Army National Guard Aviation Hangar.

3. St Paul Flight Center

-Extra Fencing:-

Concrete Flood Defence Fence and revised general link fencing.  Fences are overlapped where a gap would be left though having insufficient space left for a full fence.

Caveats:

Connomar started learning Blender just before Christmas.  These are the 2nd-5th models ever created using this package, so there is still a huge learning curve ahead.

The models are one LOD size only.  I have yet to crack the art of LODS.  I don’t see any degradation of performance on my 2016 PC, so hopefully all will be well.

There is no signage on any of the buildings, simply because I haven’t worked out how to make that work yet.  It looks fine in Blender. You may notice the attempt at adding text to a back-plate on the Flight Center, but there are no letters. 

Textures Credit:

The textures used were either hand drawn, or more often, downloads from Textures.com.

Installation:

If you have a previous version, please either delete or move the folder to a location outside of MSFS.  Extract the zip file and put the package in your Community folder. 

About MNSceneryDesign: 

MNSceneryDesign is a combined effort between users connomar and spidermanMN.

MSFS 2024

A lot of work will be needed to make our airports fully compliant with 2024, but that doesn't mean the 2020 versions can't be used.  At the time of writing, 12/13/2024, there seems to be an issue with the Community folder.  I would recommend that you create a folder with all the packages you want to put in the community folder before you do anything else.  If you already have packages in the Community Folder, then I found moving it and then populating it with all the packages before running MSFS 2024 worked.

2020 Static Aircraft are missing.  Vegetation is missing around the fencing bordering the river, and Terraforming is behaving in a different manner to 2020.  There is a new version with suffix B appended, as I neglected to put in the correct Title, which is now needed in 2024.

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KSTP - St. Paul Downtown - Holman Field - St. Paul, MN - 3.1

Explore KSTP - St. Paul Downtown/Holman Field in Minnesota with this detailed add-on. Discover the top reliever airport, business hangars, Blackhawk helicopter operations, and more. Updates include CHS Field landmark, accurate taxi signs, enhanced lighting, and detailed tower complexes. Created by MNSceneryDesign, this add-on elevates your flight simulation experience.

Version History