FSX Gweru, Zimbabwe Scenery

Gweru, Zimbabwe. Includes Thornhill Air Base and Gweru Aerodrome with updated landclass textures, roads with moving traffic, railways, rivers and dams. By David Uzzell.

Thanks for downloading this scenery of Gweru in the Midlands of Zimbabwe. There are two airports included in this scenery being Thornhill Air Base (FVTL) and Gweru Aerodrome (FVGW). I chose to do this scenery first as the default offering I feel is very poor. However, I have had to improvise by using available resources for buildings, etc, as I have never been onto the base. I apologise now to any FS pilot who knows Thornhill intimately as it will not be photorealistic. The building placements were based on Google Earth using RWY12 objects. Gweru aerodrome is again made using poetic licence. Both Thornhill and Gweru you will notice do not match the default placements. This is because I have used accurate placement from accurate air field data and Google Earth placement. This will be noticeable when using the GPS to navigate to these locations (I do not know how to adjust the GPS data). In addition to the airfields I have added new landclass, roads with moving traffic, railways, rivers and dams. I hope you enjoy the scenery.

History of Thornhill

Located at Gweru in the centre of the country. Built on Thornhill farm in 1941 and opened in March 1942, operated as an RATG base with No.26 EFTS. Reactivated in late 1946 for Royal Air Force aircrew training, (including No.3 Air Navigation School operating Anson Is and later T.20s), but later closed. Taken over by the Royal Rhodesian Air Force in 1956 (runway reconstructed and radar installed). Home of No.2 Ground Training School (by 1967) for initial cadet pilot training. Currently home of the School of Flying Training, the Flying Instructors School and Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 Squadrons. Primarily a military airfield, but facilities and asphalt runways have been shared with civil aircraft operators although this is no longer the case. Home of all the jet aircraft, since the climate is conducive to good take-off performance.

Aerodrome Information

THORNHILL

Airfield Reference Point: S19° 26"11.02' E029° 51"42.88'

Airfield Elevation: 4680 ft

Runways: RW 13L/31R ; RW 13R/31L (CLOSED)

Radio Communications / Navigation Aids:

Tower 123.500 MHz
Approach 126.500 MHz

GWERU

Airfield Reference Point: S19° 26"11.02' E029° 51"42.88'

Airfield Elevation: 4658 ft

Runways: RW 13/31

Installation

THIS SCENERY IS FOR MICROSOFT(R) FLIGHT SIMULATOR X ONLY.
It WILL NOT WORK properly with FS9 or earlier.

Please follow the steps listed below:

1. Unzip Gweru.zip to a temporary location and you will find two folders inside, these being "Gweru" and "Static Objects Library".
2. Copy Gweru to Addon Scenery Folder in FSX.
3. Static Objects Library contains several objects from both RWY12 and other sources. Copy this file to your Addon Scenery Folder in FSX. If you already have RWY12 objects installed it may ask you if you wish to overwrite some files, if so, click NO / SKIP to keep your original files as these will be the same. If you do not have RWY12 objects this file contains all the files you need for this scenery.
4. Start FSX and go to SETTINGS. Click on Scenery Library... and then click Add Area... Search for the Gweru folder under Addon Scenery and then click Okay. Repeat the same process for the Scenery Objects Library folder (only if you DO NOT have RWY12 objects installed). Once done click Okay at bottom of screen and your scenery will reload.
5. Select FREE FLIGHT and change location to Country - Zimbabwe, City - Gweru, select either Gweru or Thornhill AB. There are various start locations for both.
6. Start flying and enjoy!

Known issues

- For some unknown reason there is a difference of about a foot or so in altitude from the runway / taxiway / apron surfaces to the surrounding grassed area. I have tried my best to rectify this but it has not been resolved. This may only cause an issue if you go onto the grassed areas and try to get back onto the paving. With crash detection switched on under the Realism Settings it is possible that you will crash. If I find a solution I will upload a patch. If anyone has any ideas please drop me a line.

Future Plans

I intend to produce more scenery of Zimbabwe in due course. The next one, which will be Harare International, may take time as I have to work around work, family, etc. This will be made with custom GMAX objects. I would appreciate if anyone has photos of Zimbabwean airports such as Harare, Bulawayo, etc to drop me a line as I would like to try to make the scenery more realistic in future.

Thank you to:

The Runway 12 authors and contributors for their scenery objects.
Ted Andrews for his RAF scenery objects.
Sidney Schwartz for his EZ-Terminals SS.
Flight1 Software for AFX and Instant Scenery.
Matthew Styles for FSXKML.
Last but not least Microsoft for FSX.

Scenery created with:

KMLXML 1.10
AFX 1.40
Instant Scenery 1.40

Dave Uzzell

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