This is definitely a work in progress; assuming there's further interest and information.
I had considered making a historical grass runway for Lae for quite some time to help recreate the last flight of Amelia Earhart; however, I could find so little information I didn't think it was worth the effort. Then, I got encouragement from @Raven214 to make an attempt at this airport, and helped me dig up some of the limited information on what the runway was like in the 30s and 40s.
I only found one aerial photo of the airport taken at the end of World War II. At least the grainy low resolution image showing lots of bomb craters, was just enough to determine the correct dimensions to use for length and width based on the different dimensions provided on the "Pacific Wrecks" website. So, I settled on a hybrid of two sets of the reported dimensions: 1,386 yards long by 25 yards wide; which fit the proportions of the aerial photograph perfectly. I then scaled the taxiways accordingly.
According to Pacific Wrecks, the runway used crushed stones (gravel?) after 1942. In this case, I made the runways and taxiways grass, as I believe that's what Amelia took off from; and the aerial photo looks more grassy than gravelly to me, anyway.
This is a very simple scenery addon. I also had to make a lot of assumptions. I had to hide the satellite imagery of much of the modern town of Lae to give the area a more isolated feel to it. Oddly, some areas I masked with the SAME polygon had bleed through from the satellite imagery, so I used a copious amount of trees to hide the township in the vicinity. I have no maps to what the township looked like back then, so it's probably all wrong.
As always, feel free to make any recommendations on what you think should be included, or changed, to make the area a little more historicaly accurate.
I did try taking off with Aeroplane Heaven's Electra Special with full fuel, and well, it doesn't seem to handle grass runways too well, as I couldn't get it above 40kts.
The shipping crane is only visible if you download the free FSDG "Landmarks of Germany Library" available in the Marketplace.
Thank you for this work! As we've discussed, I think you've done a great job at capturing the "look and feel", especially considering what little information there is to go on. I'm sure all Amelia Earhart enthusiasts will appreciate this!
1 years ago
Raven214
Hello!
Red Wing Simulations has a huge and outstanding project called "1935 flight simulator"
They are making aircrafts and scenerys from that era... even more, they have a project called "aeropostale" about carrying mail between the
You could check with them, I think that they could have some information for you. I love all about that era, and I had the Idea of making Santos Dumont (SBRJ-1936) Galeao (SBGL-1923), Aeroparque Jorge Newbery (SABE-1934) to extend the project to south america.
https://discord.com/invite/5uCtPUwX2E is the Red Wing´s discord if you would like to check
1 years ago
Thanks for the tip. I'll check them out.
1 years ago
SkyborneVisions
Cicuta