Historic MCAS Tustin

[flyerkg]

I was tempted by a previous discussion about MCAS Tustin and El Toro. These bases were BRAC'd but still operational when I entered active duty. I took a gamble on requesting "West Coast" for my first duty assignment geographic location to try to get one of these and ended up at 29 Palms.

Here is a view of default FSX scenery with some CH-53E traffic. I modified some existing FS9 traffic files to get Ch-53s and CH-46s to appear at KNTK Tustin and a few F-4 Phantoms to appear and operated at KNZJ El Toro.

Keith

[Grape]

Are there AI CH-46's and CH-53's available somewhere?

[maddog65]

Not true AI.
I have used the H-46 and H-53 avail at hovercontrol.com as AI but only a couple.

[Grape]

Thanks maddog65.

[flyerkg]

These helos are tied to a stemme motor-glider fde. They take several hundred feet roll for takeoff and then pitch the nose high for initial climb. They look alright as long as you are not watching the takeoff. Landing is interesting to watch as well. My 53s come to about 25-30 kts then start a pretty steep approach and come to a pretty quick rolling stop on the runway.

The Ch-46s I put in Tustin flew pretty interesting VFR patterns. I set a slightly low pattern alt of 500 feet to keep them close to the environment. They flew more than 180 degrees to get to downwind. It turned out to be a figure 8 flying left turn from upwind, crossing over the active runway at 500 ft and continued for approx 2 nm. After tower alerts that the helo is leaving airspace, freq change approved, the AI 46 comes back immediately with request to land and is given make right turn to base. Some of the 46s never came back but landed somewhere on University of California Irvine Campus. Others continued the right turn to final and landed. So much fun!

Keith