About This File
Welcome to Washington's beautiful San Juan Islands! Located smack dab between the Washington mainland and British Columbia's Vancouver Island, the San Juan's are a tourism hotspot, abounding in stunning natural beauty with some quaint island life sprinkled in. The San Juan's are a boater's and sea kayaker's paradise and whale watching is a major tourist draw to the islands with waterways teeming with several pods of resident Orca's (Killer Whales). It is also a poorly kept secret that the San Juan's offer the General Aviation pilot some truly awesome flying opportunities. With at least 20 airports to choose from, between seaplane bases, private airfields, and public use GA facilities, the San Juan Islands are calling your inner Cessna driver! Ditch the push button flying bus, jump into your favorite 100 knot airplane and prepare for some island hopping aviation at its best!
S31 Lopez Island Airport is the third largest public use GA airfield in the San Juan's behind KFHR and KORS. If you don't have them already, Aerospace, has modeled Friday Harbor and Orcas Island airports beautifully and I highly recommend downloading them in addition to Lopez. The Privateer has also provided us with a couple of the smaller fields as part of his KNUW Naval Air Station Whidbey Island scenery package.
In modeling S31 I have attempted to recreate the airport as faithfully as possible utilizing elements from the default WED 1.2 library, OpensceneryX, and several objects from our own Jacques Brault. I really enjoy modeling the runway to match its real world counterpart and, as always, strive to squeeze in as much realism as possible into my scenery packages. I have populated Fisherman's Bay to the north of the field with several boats and docks to give the scenery on a whole that extra measure of plausibility. According to my research, the airport was freshly paved early last summer (2012) and looks slightly different now than what was available to me for satellite imagery. It appears that the taxiway is now shaped slightly differently at both ends of the runway and the parking T's appear to have been placed differently on the ramp. My rendition, therefore, represents the, "old," version of the airport. I think we can live with it, though I will consider updating the file in the future when current imagery becomes available.
Special thanks to the following: Ben Supnik, creator of WED, Brian Godwin, Aerospace, Jacques Brault, and Lightman, my personal beta tester!
