Hello there good people of the world,
summer break's over, I've got some news.
Apart from some smaller bugfixes and airfield updates, I've worked on new tours.
The first one, called "North Slope", includes airfields from communities that are located at the northern end of Alaska. Flying over Alaska’s North Slope is a special challenge because the environment is pretty unforgiving. There are vast distances to cover, you don't have many diversion airports, the Arctic weather can change quickly and dramatically with strong winds, low clouds, icing, snow, and long periods of poor visibility. I love it. Maybe you do, too. You can find more information about the North Slope and the real communities on their website: https://www.north-slope.org/
The second, third and fourth new tours, called "PNG Bush Strips Part I-III" are located in an area I haven't covered at all on FrontierWings so far: Papua New Guinea. I'm pretty sure that many of you bush flying fans know about Missionary Bush Pilot and other PNG centered Youtube channels.
Papua New Guinea is one of the world’s great bush-flying environments for a variety of reasons. Huge areas are covered by dense rainforest and steep mountains, with many communities having little or no practical road access. Airstrips are often the only reliable link to the outside world, apart from hiking on foot which can take days to reach a larger settlement.
What makes flying over PNG very special is the combination of challenge and variety: we've got short, sloping strips cut into mountains or valleys, high-density-altitude operations, rapidly changing tropical weather, low clouds, heavy rain and strong downdrafts. Many approaches are effectively one-way, with limited or no go-around options.
Fortunately for us sim pilots, PNG is especially well covered when it comes to airfield addons. There are lots and lots of awesome freeware addons as well as some great payware options.
On Flightsim.to I've created a collection of airfields compatible for FS2024 that are situated in PNG: https://flightsim.to/collection/frontierwings-png-collection-fs2024
These freeware addons should also be covered by the FrontierWings airfield database because the airfields exist in FS2024 by default. The addons just add pretty, immersive scenery. In case I missed something, please let me know, the collection certainly does not contain ALL great airfields that might exists around PNG.
The tours I've created on FrontierWings are centered around the payware-addons from Ken Hall, see https://orbxdirect.com/bundle/png-highland-bush-strips-bundle-2024
These addons aren't mandatory, the tours can be flown with the default scenery of FS2024, but the addons have one particular advantage: They enhance the terrain and remove obstacles from approaches that otherwise at some short airfields make landing almost impossible with the MS default scenery (autogenerated trees quite often sit in spots they have no business to be).
Unfortunately for the addon by Ken Hall there's no try-before-you-buy option, that's why I've covered them in a series of videos on Youtube, take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjPdbLXS1ow&list=PLP93EOraYdYcLAYcF6eDMFhQL_3eFTgx8
Feedback on anything is very welcome as usual, if you haven't, please join the FW Discord server on https://www.frontierwings.eu/discord
Happy bush flying everyone!