Check out this FBO...

[rdaniell]

I've begun to work on my next project. I hope to modify the Greenville, Alabama, airport to how it looked back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Here's a screen shot of the "FBO." This is a virtual rendition of what it looked like. It was just a small building with room inside for a couple chairs, desk, and couch.
There was one other employee besides the owner. And believe it or not, he (the lineman/office manager ) only had one good leg. The other had been amputated just above the knee. Mac Crenshaw was the owner. He was a WWII Marine pilot and flew Corsairs. The airport is now named for him.

Just to the right of this little building was the gas pump. On the other side was an assortment of closed and open T-hangers. I kept my Luscombe tied down on the grass.

RD

 

[MCDesigns]

Nice work RD. Really helps to have first hand info on the airport, best of luck with it.

 

[trucker17]

Looking good RD....
You'll have to show off the airport once its finished.....

 

[falcon409]

That's just very cool RD. I love doing little "Mom n' Pop" type airports...they're fun to fly into and they have so much character. Keep posting updates...love to see how this progresses.

 

[Dain Arns]

Wow, great!
Reminds me a lot of the Three Forks Airport admin building where I used to live.


View attachment 90344

 

[Flyboy208]

I like it. When I used to live in Georgia I flew into a few small airports with my 172 and was surprised to see hangars made from converted chicken coops! Mike

 

[rdaniell]

Thanks for the all the positive comments. I will continue to post WIP screen shots.

The last time I landed at Greenville just a few years back, I didn't even recognize the place. All the old buildings, etc. have been torn down. There is a new apron up at the North West end of the airport now. Fancy new FBO building, a large maintenance hanger, and some really nice enclosed "T" hangers have been built there.

The attached aerial shot was taken a couple years ago. The big red circle that I added is where the original FBO building and hanger was.


"Mac" has been posted to his final assignment as have some many of his generation.


RD

 

[rdaniell]

Wow, great!
Reminds me a lot of the Three Forks Airport admin building where I used to live.


View attachment 90344

I might just take a crack at making a scenery object of that.

RD

 

[ThinkingManNeil]

I love small fields and FBO's like this, run by people who love GA and sport aviation. Tons of character and old flying memories. Refuges for old birds and their pilots, and a place to pass those dreams of flight on to the next generation...

N.

 

[rdaniell]

I love small fields and FBO's like this, run by people who love GA and sport aviation. Tons of character and old flying memories. Refuges for old birds and their pilots, and a place to pass those dreams of flight on to the next generation... N.

Unfortunately, they are pretty much all gone now. But they can be recreated in FSX.

RD

 

[ThinkingManNeil]

Unfortunately, they are pretty much all gone now. But they can be recreated in FSX.

RD

Yeah, it's happening up here in Ontario, too. When I was a kid, the airports at Oshawa, Buttonville, Toronto Island, and Peterborough were pretty much just quiet GA fields, though Oshawa got a fair bit of cargo charter traffic for the GM plant there and Buttonville became a high traffic corporate jet facility in the 70's, but both maintained and supported strong light GA communities. Now Buttonville is closing, the land to be sold off to developers. Toronto Island - long a favourite of mine - began allowing commuter turboprop traffic in the early 1990's whereupon Porter Airlines entered the scene, building a whole new terminal and flying Bombardier Dash 8-Q400's. Now they want permission from the city and the federally operated port authority to tack on a sizable runway extension so they can operate Bombardier jets - something they said they wouldn't do when they started up - which will ruin the waterfront and further marginalize the general aviation and sport aviation communities, as airlines are always wont to do.

That will leave only Oshawa (which has its own corporate expansion plans), Markham (small field north of Toronto), Burlington Airpark (small), Brampton (still a nice GA field), and Hamilton, Guelph, and Kitchener-Waterloo (all three more than an hour west of Toronto) to serve the GA community. Even my hometown of Peterborough, which is a good 90-minute drive NE of Toronto, recently lengthened its runway and put in a new terminal to accommodate large charter jets and corporate traffic.

One thing I've noticed in both FSX and FS9 when one flies across almost anywhere on the border from Canada into the US is that the US map becomes positively giddy with airfields of almost every description, from individual farm strips and small FBO's on up through modest municipal airports, regionals, major hubs and military bases. By and large, you just don't see that here in Canada, especially with the numerous private airstrips seen in the US.

N.

 

[rdaniell]

"One thing I've noticed in both FSX and FS9 when one flies across almost anywhere on the border from Canada into the US is that the US map becomes positively giddy with airfields of almost every description, from individual farm strips and small FBO's on up through modest municipal airports, regionals, major hubs and military bases. By and large, you just don't see that here in Canada, especially with the numerous private airstrips seen in the US."

Yes there are little private strips all over South Georgia where I live. One of my cousins has a really nice little 2000 foot strip on his farm. He keeps a Cessna 170, Flea, and a Kit Fox there. The hanger has what he calls a "crow's nest" on it. Quite a nice little "man cave."

RD