But, to date, there has been no review of St. Maarten and St. Barths for FSX. In view of this, I decided to check out what was available and I quite easily discovered that FranceVFR had covered those 2 very popular islands for FS2004 and that there was a Patch available to make the package compatible with FSX. One of my main reasons for asking to do this review covering only 2 islands was that I was most disappointed to find that when reviewing the FSX Demo last September, St. Barths was not well represented and its runway was incorrectly placed. The problem was not fixed by the final FSX version last October, nor was it fixed last May in the FSX SP1.
Anyone who enjoys flying VFR out of Princess Juliana on St. Maarten usually loves to try the 2 challenges of (1) landing safely on St. Barths by ensuring that the undercarriage of his favourite aircraft does not scrape the top of the hilly ridge before descending sprightly to the runway below and stopping before involuntarily surfing on the sea and (2) landing safely on the precarious, approximately 200 ft above sea level, runway on Saba. I must confess that there was another reason why I suggested this package and it was that the advertisement stated that it contained a bonus of a Twin Otter in which to enjoy flying VFR between the 2 islands. Hurrah!
Installation
I downloaded the 57Mb file – FRANCEVRF-SMSBT.exe and the small 1,265Kb Patch file – FVFR-smsbt_patch.exe. Immediately, I decided to read whatever I could before commencing the installation. When I explored the Patch zip, I found a very important readme.txt file, which contained instructions to make the scenery compatible with FSX.
These are the complicated steps I was instructed to follow:
- (1) I had to install the main scenery as if I was installing it in FS2004 but, of course, I had to direct it to where I had FSX installed.
- (2) I had to activate it via the FSX Settings\Scenery Library.
- (3) I had to copy 14 bgl files (including 2 AF2_Txxx.bgl files for Grand’Case and St. Barths airports) and 9 bmp files to the FSX\Addon Scenery\StMartin-StBarth\Scenery and Texture folders respectively.
- (4) I had to place 2 AF2_Txxx_exc.bgl files in FSX\Scenery\World\Scenery.
- (5) I had to move all the AI Folders within a newly created FSX\Aircraft folder (re France VFR Antilles AI) to FSX\SimObjects\Airplanes followed by
- (6) deletion of the no longer required and unused FSX\Aircraft folder.
- (7) I had to delete 3 bgl files from FSX\Scenery\Name\Scenery followed by (8) renaming the StMaartenAerial.bgl to original from FSX\Scenery\Cities\StMaarten\Scenery to ensure that it would not be used.
Manual
I came across a new folder in my FSX installation – France VFR\StMartin-StBarth in which I found English and French pdf Manuals and Approach Charts for Grand’Case (TFFG) airport on St. Martin and St. Barths (TFFJ) airport on St. Barthelemy. No Charts were included for Princess Juliana (TNCM) airport on St. Maarten.
Bonus
Amongst the aircraft that I had to move out of FSX\Aircraft to FSX\SimObjects\Airplanes, I came across the expected Twin Otter, DHC6 Antilles for the local Trans Island Air. It is a very pretty looking aircraft with white fuselage on the upper half and on the wings and a bright blue belly and tail section. These 2 colours were divided by a red stripe, which gives it a distinctive look.