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Northern California - The Dams


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Hi Teecee,


 


all of the dams are in the Landmarks section of the FTX NCA Coverage and Features Map.kmz file in \ORBX\User Documents. Or, you can look at them in Google Maps with the NCA link here: http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/35120-ftx-north-america-pnw-pfj-nrm-crm-kmz-map-files/


 


Cheers, Holger


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These dams in NCA do look very nice. I haven't yet purchased NCA but I am sure I wont be able to resist for long. I'm kind of waiting to see if Half Moon Bay & Redding will be released soon so I can buy them together along with Sekiu.


 


Now I am going to engage in what may seem like sour grapes. I really wish ORBX FTX would revisit NRM (Northern Rocky Mountains) long enough to give this same treatment for what I consider to be the world's greatest hydro electric dam... The Grand Coulee Dam. Many people would say that honor goes to Boulder Dam but you do not yet cover the area East of Las Vegas anyway and having heard the evening lights on the spillway speech many times in the early 1980s I can tell you that just 1 of the 7 penstock tubes on the 3rd power house on Grand Coulee will handle the annual flow of the Colorado River which the Boulder Dam holds back. (Boulder or Hoover Dam... same thing.)


 


NRM already does a pretty nice job on that area. The main problem being that the MS FSX default model of the dam does not sit down into the surrounding rock and earth as it should. That has been true of all versions I have seen going back to default FS5.1, FS95, FS98, FS2K, FS02, FS04/FS9/CoF, and of course FSX. The model of the dam itself has been improved a couple of times over those versions but how it sits (or does not sit) into the rock has not. A gentleman who's name I unfortunately no longer remember did a pretty nice job with a small free scenery that covered the towns of Grand Coulee and Coulee Dam for FS2K but even that left the dam hanging out of the rock.


 


NRM has the two parts of the town of Coulee Dam about right and the bridge connecting them in the right place even if it is the wrong type of bridge. NRM also does a nice job of upgrading Grand Coulee Dam Airport (3W7) at Electric City. NRM does better than anybody else has to my knowledge. Better than any default version of FS... far better than MegaSceneryEarth version 1 did. I haven't seen MSE 2.0 for Washington State but I have MSE 2.0 Colorado & Hawaii and I do not consider them an improvement on MSE 1.0 except for faster load times and much faster FPS. MSE 2.0 doesn't line up the airports any  better than 1.0 did. Nor do they make any effort to improve airport facilities. I have never seen a misaligned airport in any ORBX FTX product and any airport in FTX that doesn't have upgraded facilities is rare. I've seen a few tiny ones without buildings but not many.


 


You guys already do a pretty nice job on 3W7, the towns of Electric City, Grand Coulee, and Coulee Dam. But I sure wish you would consider putting out a payware HD airport for 3W7 which would also provide a facelift for the towns and the dams. (Both Grand Coulee Dam and North Dam are in the immediate area... Dry Falls Dam is a bit further off 26 miles South by Coulee City but could be considered part of this.) 3W7 sits on the shore of Banks Lake just a stones throw from Steamboat Rock Recreation Area in one of the more impressive canyon systems I've seen anywhere. I think a FTX 3W7 product that dealt with that area as a whole would be a great addition to your already outstanding line of products.


 


Okay I have made my pitch... again. I acknowledge that you folks have already done that area much better than anybody else I know of. But consider this... when I bought PNW I also bought NRM because it includes the Coulee Dam Area and also CRM because the line between NRM & CRM passes just South of Banks Lake and I didn't want to be right on the edge. I bought 3 instead of 1 region in my initial purchase because of that area.


 


To be honest I lived for about a year and a half just above the Columbia River (unobstructed view) just around the bend from the big dam. When the dam was spilling you could hear it from my patio. I love that area and would have never left it but the mine project I was working at closed down and I had no other job prospects in that area. Got to eat and feed my wife after all. I do understand that not every FTX customer has the same attachment to the area around 3W7 and the Grand Coulee Dam that I do. :)


 


Thank you guys for all the outstanding products,


 


Tom Wunder


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  • 10 months later...

Wow! These look amazing Frank! Thanks for surprising us with such beauties. :o  :smile:


Tim has gone all out and done a fabulous job with those dams. And what a great idea by the way.


Looking forward to adding them into my NCA and seeing them for myself.


 


Cheers guys! Lovely work!


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Wow! These look amazing Frank! Thanks for surprising us with such beauties. :o:smile:

Tim has gone all out and done a fabulous job with those dams. And what a great idea by the way.

Looking forward to adding them into my NCA and seeing them for myself.

Cheers guys! Lovely work!

This topic is nearly a year old, all these dams are already included in NCA...:)
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This topic is nearly a year old, all these dams are already included in NCA... :)

 

Thanks for the info Misha! Feeling a little on the silly now :wacko:  but having said that I had no idea! Only bought NCA within the last month so haven't explored enough of it yet, apart from a recent flight from KSFO to KTVL (also bought recently...and very nice scenery by the way...only seen it in winter so far...think it'll be even nicer in the summer)...and others down to Palm Springs and 29 Palms in SoCal...which I also loved. Thanks again for putting me in the picture on these as I can get straight onto actively looking out for them now without having to wait. Great bonus! Thanks again for bringing me up-to-date on this one! Happy New Year to you! :smile:

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Tom Wunder says:


""I do understand that not every FTX customer has the same attachment to the area around 3W7 and the Grand Coulee Dam that I do. :)""


 


I'm with you on that thought Tom.  I stayed right across from the Visitor Center by Grand Coulee Dam and enjoyed the light show very much.  The drive along Banks Lake, Electric City, the whole area was a delight to me.  I'll never forget it.  I took the back way over to Omak on the way north to meet up with Hwy 97 and remember some big mines in the area.  Thanks for your post (all all the others too!)

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Hi Tenpin,


 


Your post intrigued me so I have just done a search, and it seems like a plg file is designed for the flight planning program PlanG.  Apparently if you load this file in to PlanG you can then export it as a .pln file.  I don't have Plan G installed, so I just tried changing the .plg to .pln, manually renaming the file extension, and it seems to open and contain the same information as other .pln files I have.  I have not tested this in the sim, but these are two options you now have to try.


 


Cheers,


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OK I'm a dummy and need to know about the .plg extension on your most welcome download. How do I move that to a .pln extenison? or make it usable in FSX.

 

Cheers,

tenpin

 

Sorry, my mistake. I uploaded the flight plan in Plan-G format. Here it is in FSX format: http://www.filedropper.com/vfrnorthcaliforniadamtour_1

 

BTW, give a try to Plan G, it's a fantastic tool for VFR flying and works both in FSX and P3D. You can even overlay KML files to check the position of all ORBX airports and landmarks.

 

Regards,

 

   Juan Andres

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  • 2 weeks later...

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