Superior National Forest Seaplane Base - Ely, Minnesota
The Superior National Forest Seaplane Base is the home to three DeHaviland Beaver aircraft that are owned and operated by the US Forest Service. This scenery was requested for and inspired by the recent repaint to the Blackbird (MSFS) Beaver which came out in the 40th Anniverary release in November 2022. The base has been in operation for over 70 years and has been operating these Beavers since the 50's. They serve numerous roles including the following:
- Water bombing (fire suppression)
- Search and Rescue
- Firefighting support
- Fish stocking
- Tree seeding
- Animal Tracking
The base itself is on Shagawa Lake, just north of the city of Ely, Minnesota in the Arrowhead region of the state. It is nearby to the prohibited airspace over the Boundary Waters Canoe Area where they do conduct specific missions inside the Prohibited Areas on an as needed basis. While at one point almost 80 years ago Shagawa Lake was known as the largest seaplane base in the lower 48 states, it now only has this base on the lake.
For more information - see the various websites/YouTube videos regarding the base. An example:https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/superior/home/?cid=FSEPRD834432
Notes:
I was not able to find an official FAA identifier for the base. I assigned one that I don't believe is currently used: 08Y
I don't do modeling, so most objects in the scenery are default or from various other freeware libraries. These are linked below; some are required. I added two water runways linked to the two parking spaces provided. If you have the forest service livery from flightsim.to loaded, you will have two static aircraft parked at the docks as they would be during summer operations. The two parking locations should allow you to start up and go, one being from the dock and the other in the open hangar (from the Windhover open hangar library).
Ski operations: In the winter, the floats are removed and the wheels put on one or two of the Beavers. One stays at nearby Ely Municipal Airport (KELO) and the other stays on skis at the base. Sadly, MSFS won't let you load up on wheels (or skis) since there are no land runways here. The only way I found to allow the sim to use the beaver on wheels (skis) is to launch the sim with the float version and uses the Developer Mode Aircraft Selector to change to the wheeled version (and put the skis on with the tablet) once the sim has loaded. I then am able to take off on the frozen lake in the winter.
- Two water runways added on Shagawa Lake
- Open Hangar added from the Windhover lbrary (Thanks Windhover!)
- Static Float planes added to the docks if you have the USFS livery installed for the Beaver
- Various sim objects added around the base for added realism
- Simple Lighting added - This is a seaplane base so night ops aren't much of a thing.
- Trees and vegitation adjusted/added to match real world locations
Installation:
Extract the Scenery folder to your Community folder.
Libraries:
The Seaplane Asset Library is required as most of the critical objects (docks) came from this library. The others are for scenery objects around the base.
Required:
- Seaplane Asset Library - https://flightsim.to/file/32010/seaplane-asset
- Forest Service Livery for the Beaver - https://flightsim.to/file/47517/dhc-2-beaver-usfs-n192z - Thanks to lamaSVK for this great livery!
Optional:
- Emerald Object Library - https://flightsim.to/file/8824/emerald-object-library
- Windy Things - https://flightsim.to/file/14024/windy-things
- UK2000 Scenery Library (from the in-game marketplace)
- Bush and Backcountry Library - https://flightsim.to/file/43061/bush-backcountry-library
- Totof object library - https://flightsim.to/file/17179/totof-library-object-v1-1
- I also use objects included from the Free World Updates. As new airports are released, additional scenery objects become available for use. If things are missing, it is likely you don't have these world updates installed. You can download these in the in-game Marketplace for free. I try to have a mix of default and updated objects so there should always be some of the scenery objects present.
As always, thanks for flying in Minnesota!
johnek
I think I mentioned this to you, the Ely seaplane base id full of boats. Well it was a lot of work, fund the file causing the problem. If you have complaints about boats, tell them to look for a folder in community called a-mamudesign-marinas. they can then decide witch one to keep. For me it's bye bye boats.
johnek
I like it. not having done scenery for fs 2020 I don't know the answers to my questions. 1. the static aircraft, can they be made to disappear from mid November to around the 3rd week in April. 2. again I know how to do this in FSX, but no idea how this works in fs2020. the right side of the hanger are office spaces see link
https://backcountrypilot.org/images/photos/4031/5654/3e620b1999bb13cf66715c2b.jpg
Having those would make it so much better
Thanks for your great work on the 192 livery and the sea plane base.
if, and when they get a new airport designation, I will let you know what it is..
johnek62
spidermanMN author
Hi - It's my understanding that this can be done - but would have to be done at the model level which I don't know how to do, or if it is possible from placing the object as a scenery object. Currently I don't see this as an option in the SDK documentation, but maybe it is something that will be added in the future. This is something I wanted to do during development though as I also noted that the aircraft won't be by the docks in the winter for obvious reasons. Should this ability get added to the SDK, I would be happy to add it to this scenery package.
1 years ago