In a place I used to live many years ago they had bumper stickers on some cars that read "Where the hell is Noonamah?" Well, how about this place then: Where the hell is Bukoba? I hear you ask.
I can tell you it's located on Lake Victoria, Tanzania, right across from Mwanza, also in Tanzania. But if you don't know about Mwanza, then ... what can I say...
(Btw. HTMW Mwanza is an airport I've been working on for a while. It's more or less finished except for the perimeter fence. But right now, I just cannot get myself motivated to draw 10 kilometres of fences with the current MSFS SDK. Maybe I'll release it as a "beta" without the perimeter fences. We'll see...)
Anyway, back to Bukoba. HTBU is a regular destination from Dar (usually via Mwanza), but default MSFS still shows it as a rickety dirt strip that's at least 15 years out of date. In fact, HTBU has over the last few years been upgraded to a significant regional airport, with a sealed all-weather runway and a new terminal. However, the airport in for now uncontrolled and there are currently no published instrument approaches (that I'm aware of), nor lights (though installation of the latter is apparently imminent). So now Precision's ATRs and Air Tanzania's DH8Ds join the frequent Caravans on the apron.
HTBU has a local met station and publishes TAFs and METARs, though there's no ATIS.
Notes on Operations:
While it's not going to make the "World's 10 Most Dangerous Airports List", there are a few things to consider when flying into HTBU:
1. Runway 12/30 has some undulations and slopes relative steeply up from the lake in the 30 direction. While technically not a one-way strip, I would guess that the regional operators consider it as such and only land on 30 and take off on 12.
2. Lake Victoria, due to its size, creates significant local weather. Strong afternoon sea breezes are common and will assist with take-offs on preferred 12, however they will obviously be detrimental to landings on 30.
3. If there is no alternative to landing on 12 keep in mind that the approach angle to keep you clear of the hills and buildings will probably make you land long and waste half the runway's length. If in doubt, divert to HTMW Mwanza.
To emphasise the above, remember that in November 2022 a Precision Air ATR 42-500 landed short of Rwy 12 (i.e. in the lake) causing 19 fatalities. The flight crew apparently had already made two unsuccessful attempts and then possibly encountered bad wind shear on finals during their fateful approach.
Design Notes:
My 3D modelling skills are rudimentary, so rather than horrify you with a jagged terminal building I "borrowed" one from another handcrafted MSFS airport. It doesn't look anything like the real world Bukoba terminal, but it has a very similar footprint and even has the entry/exits at the right places.
I'm only listing one dependency (ColinJs most excellent object libraries) but I have included objects from other MS/Asobo airports. If you don't have the world updates installed or if you have un-installed certain airports from the Content Manager you may not see the entire picture.
Just in case you are not aware of this, contributor foxquakes has published a procedure/batch file that preserves the model libraries of MS/Asobo's handcrafted airports. Well worth a try:
https://flightsim.to/file/71374/experimental-alpha-asobo-handcrafted-airports-model-preserver
AI Notes:
The static DH8D shown in my screen shots is from FSLTL, so you will need their base models installed to see it. While I have implemented an AI taxi network, actual use of it by the MSFS AI, with or without FSLTL, is sketchy. There's probably no ADS-B receiver in the vicinity, so FSLTL traffic will pop-in once airborne, but I've yet to see one on the ground. Similarly, FSLTL AI do attempt to land (spectacularly so on Rwy 12, invariably ending up in Lake Victoria) but quickly disappear or "taxi" off into the hills. I don't call them "Artificial Idiots" for nothing!
StableSky
gunther author
18 days ago
gunther