The Texas Getaway

I am glad to see that BVA is hosting a week long getaway in Texas the land of big skies and never ending horizons. However, I was disappointed in the selection of airports featured in this getaway. Iâ¬"ve been a resident of Texas all my life and Iâ¬"ve been to every major airport in the state, as well as many of the smaller fields. KIAH George Bush Intercontinental is a good airport to feature it has five strips totaling to ten runways but, KAUS Austin Bergstrom and KSAT San Antonio are not very great choices for a week long event trust me people will get bored with them fast. KAUS is in the state capitol you can see the state capitol which is in fact taller than the national capitol building whoopdie doo! but, the airport is becoming dilapidated| is in need of upgrades, and features only two strips. San Antonio does reserve the largest population in Texas and KSAT does feature three strips but, it isnâ¬"t a very scenic place to fly at, things like the Alamo, the River Walk, and Sea World usually arenâ¬"t visible for aircraft that arenâ¬"t looking for them. All that being said, I feel it would be a mistake not to feature the Dallas/ Ft. Worth area in this getaway, DFW is the aviation hub of Texas with two major airports and a plethora of smaller and private fields all within Fort Worth Center. KDFW Dallas/ Ft. Worth International has been revered as one of the greatest architectural feats in Texas, featuring seven strips totaling to fourteen runways, taxiway bridges that cross over the airport highway, and multiple control towers| it is the busiest airport in the state, as well as one of the busiest in the country. Then there is KDAL Dallas Love Field located in the middle of Dallasâ¬" inner city this can sometimes make for what is in my opinion a very unique and picturesque approach, particularly because of the proximity of aircraft to the taller buildings and skyscrapers of downtown Dallas. Either one of these airports would be great to feature in this event, Iâ¬"m not sure if their close vicinity to each other would allow for both of them be used a call I would leave to the controllers and if a choice has to be made between the two I would recommend KDFW. And, a few other airports to consider KCRP Corpus Christi International and KGLS Scholes International Airport at Galveston both of which are very close the coast line.

Thanks for your feedback!

One of the issues with Texas's airspace is that it's covered by two center controllers: Houston Center (which covers KIAH, KSAT, KAUS, and those other two you mentioned at the end in the southern portion of the state) and Fort Worth Center, which covers airports like KDFW and KDAL. While I know those are major airports, KDFW is ridiculously out of date in FSX. It's missing several terminals, and the runway layout was poorly done. One of the things the scenery design team cannot (yet) handle is custom terminals, so I wanted to avoid DFW as much as possible during the Getaway. However, KCRP and KGLS are both within Houston Center and will be controlled by that Center controller during the Getaway.

Just like any BVA event, you can always fly to other airports. We pick only a few featured airports because it's a pain to create routes between several other airports and we have limited ATC resources. I do hope to see some traffic into and out of many of the other more interesting airports within Houston ARTCC during the Getaway, and I understand some Cape Air Virtual routes have been set up to other (non-preferred) airports in the Getaway in order to allow those pilots to do just that.

Hope that helps! Let me know what you think about that. The best possible configuration would be to get a Houston Center and Fort Worth Center going at the same time during the getaway| then we'd be able to get KDFW opened at least once.

Per this request, our featured Texas Getaway will include KDFW & KIAH next week (Tuesday, June 1). Hope to see lots of traffic there... it's a long flight, so we'll need as many people as we can get to make it worthwhile!

And as per request, attached (hopefully) is an update for KDFW brought to you by your always faithful BVATC Scenery Design Team!!

Updates include the new terminal, extended Rwy 17C-34C to current length, changed the M3 fast taxiway from current FSX status "Closed" to a finished actual taxiway, and made some other adjustments. This release is V1.0 so if there's any issues just let me know.

OH! and i have not yet compiled it into an EXE file yet but when you open it, instructions of how to install the files to the correct location are in the ReadMe file.

OH! and i have not yet compiled it into an EXE file yet but when you open it, instructions of how to install the files to the correct location are in the ReadMe file.

... the .exe file will be available from the normal locations (Event Scenery and Regional Circuit Details pages) before the event on Tuesday. Thanks for your hard work Devon!

I have to say I enjoyed the TX getaway quite a bit. I really don't pay much attention to the airport layout or the local scenery. To me, the airport is just a runway with a place to park my jet while I set up for the next runway and by the time I'm airborne off that runway I'm too much at altitude to see Sea World or any of that. But what I did enjoy were the Texas sized thunderstorms! I run Active Sky and REX and between the two there was some serious hair raising flying going on for me and my team. UALR pilots went so far as to use weather.com to find where the thunderstorms were and then skype that info to other UALR pilots so we could all set up and depart in a drenching downpour. I also have to say that TX produced some of the prettiest skies I've seen with the BVA/ASA/REX combo. And for a jet pilot, sky and clouds are pretty much all we see so it's nice when it's interesting.

I did also originally have an interest in KDFW until evan alerted me to the fact that it was outside of Houston center. A little bit of research after that turned up about 6 or 7 other interesting jetports within center's jurisdiction that we were able to use including Corpus Christy, Lake Charles, and more. We were able to generate enough airports and routes that the TX getaway produced also one of the better UALR events we've had. In fact, I had several comments from pilots requesting to extend the TX getaway an additional week - which was not to be, but still we had fun.

with the BVA/ASA/REX combo.

You can upgrade ASA to ASE (Active Sky Evolution), which is the latest version, for free at:

http://www2.hifisim.com/node/9