Pier Glass Aviation Scenery Darby's Fishing Shack FS 2004.

Introduction.

Here is my version of what I think Darby's Fishing Shack and surrounding areas may well look like at Lake Berryessa Q86 [or E20] in FS 2004. You dear pilot may well have other ideas and thoughts which in a way makes PGA as unique as it is. If there is something you don't like then go ahead and move change or delete it, this is all fiction after all.

Background.

The Legend of Darby Wilcox.

Darby was one of the original Bay Area Charter pilots and even as far back as then when not out making a dollar or three for Fred he could be found with a scrap of paper, normally the back of a load manifest or a weight and balance sheet, and a stub of a pencil he used to lick the end of and spent time planning his little hideaway in the country.

When BAC closed and the few pilots who were wise enough to steal what they could and get the hell out of Half Moon Bay Darby put his plans on hold to help with formation of Pier Glass Aviation at it’s then new home at San Jose. Whilst others spent long hours into the night working away on HTML, Mission Writing and Pilot recruiting Darby became our Chief Plane Washer. Boy I have to tell you that guy could put a real good shine on your cockpit and thoroughly polish your instruments and he was forever cleaning the Boss’s Beaver, well that’s what he said anyway, and there was no reason to disbelief Darby.

During the off times when he was not giving something a good rub down with his chamois he kept on with the plans for the hideaway. Sure enough after a year of so Darby had saved enough money [the Boss pays real well he was often heard to say] to invest in the country retreat. That is how we now have Darby’s Fishing Shack on the shore of Lake Berryessa or Q86 if you prefer [or E20 depending what year you’re in].

A keen fisherman Darby stocked the place up with supplies a small inflatable and spare fishing gear and made it available for all PGA pilots to use either as a restful retreat, a weekend getaway or somewhere to lay low for a few days or so. If you fancy a visit the key is under the propane tank at the back of the cabin and before you leave chop some more wood for the next visitor.

About three or so years ago Darby planned a long haul holiday flight with a bit of fishing and drinking thrown in for good measure. He acquired a DC 4 and even to this day I don’t think the rightful owners know where it is, and planned to ‘Go Pacific’ whatever that means.

After some regular reports of his progress the last factual report we heard was in the April and he was planning to go to Townsville, wherever that is and nobody has heard from him since, but being a PGA pilot there has been no real concern as we think he is laying low somewhere until the heat dies down and sure as day follows night he will turn up.

Some say there has been talk of a young dark haired pilot flying a Piper Tri-pacer for a logging company about five hundred miles North of Fairbanks, others say that they have heard reports of a small remote island about a thousand miles East of Papua New Guinea inhabited by head hunters with a new tribal chief with fair skin and speaking with an Australian accent. There have even been reports of a mysterious and furtive individual who has recently set up a market stall somewhere in New Jersey selling second hand steak knives and claiming that he has found an unlimited supply of these items from somewhere in Alaska.

Whatever the truth we are sure that one day Darby will just turn up again [we all do in the end] until he does then please enjoy his lakeside cabin.

NOTAMS

The Fishing Shack has a small pier for light float and amphibian aircraft. Heavy float aircraft can tie up to the Red and White marker buoy that is about 500 yards off shore and the pilot will need to get a boat ashore. The pier has limited night lighting.

There is also a small raised wooden landing pad for light helicopters. This pad has limited night lighting. Large or heavy helcopters should not attempt to land on this heli pad, they may use the beach area for landing well clear of the landing stage and pilots should take care regarding dust and sand when landing.

There is no fuel at Darby Fishing Shack.


Scenery.

This scenery is made using Abacus EZ Scenery with a default [out of the box] installation of FS 2004.  There was no Mesh, Landclass or any other third party Scenery installed, this way it ensures hopefully that it should work on everybody’s machine.  The way this system works is that it allows the user to make, adapt or download sceneries that are made in a standard texture and bgl file format [EZ Scenery] and share them with others and providing you have at least the basic default FS 2004 installed correctly and follow these instructions this and any other sceneries I make for PGA in FS 2004 will work for you.


Disclaimer.

This is the standard disclaimer I see everyone else adding to their Readme so I thought a good idea to do it myself. There should be no files that you use or download for this scenery that should harm your computer in anyway however if they do and your computer explodes in a huge and uncontrollable fireball during which you receive such horrific injuries that you are unable to work for the remainder of your miserable life and your dog leaves home then you only have yourself to blame for installing this PGA Scenery, you should know by now what PGA are like, it is all your own fault, tough luck mate.

Installation.

READ THIS VERY CAREFULLY YOU MAY NOT HAVE TO FOLLOW EACH STEP

You should see two folders named One and Two [as well as this Readme]. It is only the contents of these folders that you are going to move into other folders within FS 2004 and not the folder named One or Two themselves.

First an apology, in an effort to enable you to have all of the required textures as I can make sure you have you will need to download one large file, this is a once only and any other scenery I may make for PGA you will at least have the textures for [I hope].

Step 1. 
IF YOU HAVE ALREADY DONE THIS WITH ANOTHER PGA SCENERY YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO THIS AGAIN.

Go to Flightsim.com and download and install the following file, it is an exe files and just follow the installation instructions given. The file title is FS2004 EZ Scenery Libraries EXE by David Grindele and it will give the most up to date compilation in one go of all scenery objects as at April 2010.

ez_1.zip


Step 2.

In Folder One you will find a file called

ezdarby.bgl

Place this file in FS / Addon Scenery / scenery


Step 3.
IF YOU HAVE ALREADY DONE THIS WITH ANOTHER PGA SCENERY YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO THIS AGAIN.

In Folder Two you will find an Exe file called AbacusEZLibraries. Run this file and install it, just follow the installation instructions. This adds the default Abacus EZ Files and Library to FS.


That should be it. There is no need to add any scenery via FS, when you next start FS it should build its own scenery. 

Uninstalling.

If you wish to uninstall this scenery then follow these steps.

Step 1. Go to FS / Addon Scenery / scenery and locate and delete the file ezdarby.bgl.


Any texture files you downloaded can stay and will do no harm at all.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT BLURRIES
A Few Words about Texture Formats
=================================
Scenery objects typically consist of a model (the shape of the object) and the textures that we use to "paint" the model. These textures can be saved in a variety of formats, each of which has slightly different properties. (Some formats allow for transparency, some are more compact, etc.) It appears that certain texture formats are more likely to cause the blurries to occur.
 
PLEASE NOTE that because the scenery objects are made by different authors is very likely to use different texture formats. If you are using scenery that was created using objects by different authors, you almost certainly will have a mix of texture formats in that scenery.

If after installing this scenery following the instructions you may [or may not] find that at times the scenery of South County goes into a ‘Blurry’ state. If this is the case with you then there are three small files you will need to download and install. These are updated texture files and they are formatted as follows:

* DXT1
* With MIP maps
* With Alpha Channel

IF YOU HAVE ALREADY DONE THIS WITH ANOTHER PGA SCENERY YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO THIS AGAIN.

Go to Flightsim.com and the three files you require are by Sidney Schwartz

FS2004 Texture Update 1 for SS Scenery
FS2004 Texture Update 2 for SS Scenery
FS2004 Texture Update 3 for SS Scenery

ss_textures_update_1.zip

sstexturesupdate2.zip

sstexturesupdate3.zip


When you unzip each zip file you find multiple zip files, unzip each file to

FS / Addon Scenery / EZ Scenery Library / texture


The Old Man.
January 2011.
