1926 Airmail Route CAM5 Salt Lake - Pasco

[robcap]

Our first attempt to scenery creation.

https://flightsim.to/file/32132/1926-airway-route-cam5

Bare bones navigation from the dawn of commercial aviation…
Flying really low and slow in all weathers, day and night, no autopilot required…
Following in the slipstream of Leon D. Cuddeback & Elrey B. Jeppesen…

If this sounds like your kind of flying, then we might have something for you.

Inspired by a discussion on a MSFS forum thread we have been recreating an original US Air Mail airway for the sim.

In 1926 the US Postal Service & Department of Commerce began contracting air mail routes that would eventually criss-cross the USA.
Each route was marked approximately every 10 miles by a path of 51' long yellow concrete arrows with flashing rotating beacons mounted on 51’ towers, interspersed with landing fields.
The beacons have a generator shed and a fuel tank, and the Airway and Beacon number on the roof of the shed. The arrow points in the general direction of where the next beacon is.

Some surviving arrows are visible on Bing Maps, meaning that they are also visible in the sim, if you know where to look.

So, we have decided to recreate the whole 485 mile Contract Air Mail 5 (CAM5) route from Salt Lake City UT to Pasco WA, using original maps and research by aviation historians.

The route is mapped, 51 individually numbered beacon sites have been built to scale, with a animated rotating beacon, positioned precisely using the original sectionals & surviving remains.

If you want to find out more about the airway system, then these sites are a great place to get started:
Arrows Acros America
thesurveystation

And for an account of how low you need to go to fly the mail check this interview with Elrey Jeppesen
Jeppesen interview

See you on the Airway!

A flightplan for the whole CAM#5 route is included in folder. To be able to select in MSFS, copy it here:
C:\Users\Gebruiker\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState
Also the native LittleNavMap file is the forde. Copy that file into your LNM installation folder.

Acknowledgements notes and disclaimers:
Thanks to my wife, who helped with decal textures.
Thanks to the FS developer forum, especially rhumbaflappy, for his solution to place beacons.
Thanks to the youtube videos from Flying Theston, Federico Pinotti, MyPhysical World, helping with understanding Blender and the MSFS SDK.
Textures and effects are stock MSFS, used for these models. The beacons, inspite of carefull placement, can be off position, which is some kind of MSFS glitch.
Also, just before beacon 10, the beacon flashes stop, you can hold your course and pretend the light is out. When you reach beacon 11, all is good again, and you can see beacon 12 and later also beacon 13 flash in the distance. I need to figure this out, but at the moment it is the way it is.
For best results, if you have it installed, turn Puffin VFR Region 2 off (eg using Addon Linker). The new masts are often in the location of the old Airway Beacons. Those surveyors in the old days knew their trade well.

Legal Stuff
This scenery is released as FREEWARE. You may use it for your personal enjoyment, but you may NOT use it in any kind of money-making endeavor, you may NOT modify it and you may NOT publicly distribute any copies of it, whether modified or not, without my permission.

Rob Cappers

 

[K5083]

This looks cool, I definitely will load up an appropriate plane and fly this.

Does anything in the package tell you where you are supposed to land for a sandwich and coffee along the route?

August

 

[YoYo]

Great idea! Thank you!

 

[Tom Clayton]

Something of this kind of historical significance certainly deserves a dab of stickum!

 

[Sundog]

Now I'll have to decide which plane I'm going to use on this route. Probably my WACO biplane.

 

[DennyA]

This is super-cool.

I've been reading Fate is the Hunter and I've been thinking of recreating Gann's AM-21 route from the late 30's. But just the flight plan portion -- this is an awesome effort on your team's part!

 

[robcap]

Hi guys, thanks for the sticky. That's nice to wake up to.
At the moment this is one route. Next in this effort will be adding some intermediate landingfields along the way. These were situatede everey 30 - 50 miles. Beacons every 10 miles.
Some of these fields are still official airports, but for some, only the outline of the old runways are still visible in Bing maps, and therefor in the sim. Same goes for some concrete arrows.
The arrows and beacond are in, runways, markings and some generic buildings are next.
Let me know what you think, thanks fir your support.

Cheers, Rob.

PS, will try to add a screenshot, was difficult from my phone.

 

[robcap]

Lets see if this works...
Edit, nah, but will try later from my PC.

 

[YoYo]

Now I'll have to decide which plane I'm going to use on this route. Probably my WACO biplane.

Bee Gee (although it's not very historical )?

 

[jmig]

This is really interesting. Thank you for your efforts. It reminds me of the 1930's remake of FS9 scenery.

 

[YoYo]

Few free models are also interesting for this challenge:
https://flightsim.to/file/31689/wedell-williams-model-44-1-00
https://flightsim.to/file/17017/golden-age-simulations-moth-package
https://pl.flightsim.to/file/17956/aeronca-c3

 

[pbearsailor]

This is so much fun to fly! Thanks Rob!

Hiked up a hill in Utah several years ago to find one of these.

 

[Twice43]

Very interesting concept & will make the flights interesting.
Which aircraft were used on the routes in 1926??
T43

 

[robcap]

Thanks for your reactions! Cool to see such an arrow in real life!
And nice suggetions of vintage planes, YoYo.

 

[mthrift]

Great stuff! I'm really loving it. Here's a bird's eye shot from my stop at SL-P-8

Thanks for putting this package together. Looking forward to wherever you take it.


Michael

 

[Bomber_12th]

This is a really cool project!

Each of the airmail routes were contracted to different companies. CAM-5, as depicted here, was contracted to Varney Air Lines, and their aircraft of choice in 1926 were biplanes built by the Swallow Airplane Manufacturing Company.

On other airmail routes throughout the US in the mid-to-late 1920s, depending on who was contracted to cover those routes and which years, you would expect to see aircraft such as the de Havilland DH-4, Ryan M-1/M-2, Curtiss Carrier Pigeon, Douglas M-1/M-2/M-3/M-4, Boeing Model 40 & Model 80, Fairchild FC-1 & 2, Laird LC-B, Stinson Detroiter, Pitcairn PA-5/PA-6/PA-7, Stearman C3 and M-2, Waco JWM & JYM, Fokker Universal, Hamilton Metalplane and Ford Trimotor.

Almost on a daily basis I drive right past the very last of the original 1920s concrete arrows that still remains in the whole of the upper Midwest, which is located in Cottage Grove, MN. Originally known as "Beacon 33", it was the last of the series of arrows and beacons on the flight path that the airmail pilots followed from Chicago, IL to St. Paul, MN, known as the CAM-9 airmail route, which was contracted to Northwest Airways (later Northwest Airlines). Once pilots reached this arrow, which points to St. Paul, they would have been able to spot the Downtown St. Paul Airport (Holman Field), which was then the base of operations for Northwest. Originally the arrow was painted bright yellow and there was a beacon tower, but today, with the beacon long gone, it lies situated in the front yard of a farm house, with a basketball hoop installed on one end (likely added in the '60s or '70s).

This map provides the locations where all of the known arrows/beacons were once located or still exist today: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewe...3o&ll=42.05990775945976,-94.1176626858183&z=4

Additionally, the original airway beacon that was installed adjacent to the Downtown St. Paul Airport in 1929, located in Indian Mounds Park, is still in use today, and it remains painted bright yellow and black just as it looked when new (a modern beacon is positioned in the same location within MSFS).

 

[robcap]

Wow, thanks for your reply.
Must be awesome to stand on an arrow.

 

[Twice43]

This is a really cool project!

---

Additionally, the original airway beacon that was installed adjacent to the Downtown St. Paul Airport in 1929, located in Indian Mounds Park, is still in use today, and it remains painted bright yellow and black just as it looked when new (a modern beacon is positioned in the same location within MSFS).

Awesome data.
Particularly like the Post Office Airmail Routes map.
T43

 

[BirdDog]

Hi all, thanks for your support so far with project - we have been getting wonderful feedback.

As pass 200 downloads, work on our first Intermediate Landing Field is underway.

I have been working on the layout and lighting of Strevell ILF using three sources:

• the visible remains of the north-south runway
• the description from the 1929 Airway Bulletin which has the orientation and measurements for the two runways
• the description of the lighting system for ILFs from the same bulletin

There is some fine tuning of the positions to do but the overall layout looks like this:



Green lights were used to mark the runway centrelines, two at each end of the principal runway (assumed to be N-S given that it was the longer of the two and still visible) and one for the secondary runway. White boundary lights then marked the remainder of the perimeter.

The triangular section was designed to assist with cross wind landings.

Red warning lights were used to mark hazards and I have assumed a line along the highway to the west of the field.

The intersection of the runways was marked with a chrome yellow circle with projecting bars indicating the two runway headings.

At Strevell, the airway arrow and beacon was in the SW corner of the field. Although fuel was stored there, as this was an emergency field there were no hangers.

Now it’s over to robcap to work his magic, modelling the lights and runway marker and dropping them into the sim.

 

[BirdDog]

Strevell ILF update:
We now have a test version of our first CAM5 Intermediate Landing Field installed in the sim. @RobCap1966 has modelled the lamps (they are only 30" high) and placed them on the field as per the layout above.







Improvements to the lighting effects are next…