This is a tour of my ol' stompin' grounds, Dallas, made with the aid of my good buddy, YeeHaw. The tour begins at Addison Airport, a formerly private, but now city-owned, airport in a suburb just north of Dallas. Originally, this thang had a 2,000 foot runway. In the mid-60s, Collins Radio (now part of Rockwell) got the contract to maintain the electronics on Air Force One. They paid the owner to extend the runway to 8,000 feet. The result crossed an existing road, but the money was a lot. To hell with people having to suddenly take a 5 mile detour to get home.
Takeoff will be toward downtown Dallas. Love Field, the home and hub of Southwest Airlines, is just to the southwest. I'll take a little buzz down the cross-wind runway. All images are screenshots from Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004.
Click on any image to get an enlargement.
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| Looking south, down runway 17, ready to roll. |
Lift off; 'twas a rocket after rotate. | Banking towards Love, Dallas downtown in the center. |
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| Love Field ahead. | And underfoot; that's YeeHaw on the deck. |
Texas Stadium on the left. |
"On the deck" is 1000 feet AGL here, 1600 on the altimeter. In the stadium shot, the blob in the upper right, below the horizon, but above those buildings, is DFW International Airport. Love and Addison are both in the TCA, but we're ignoring that. | ||
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| Downtown back in the sights. | YeeHaw in 'er bank back. | Reunion Tower to the left. |
The Hyatt Regency sits right next to the tower. Someone didn't bother with it. When I was there in December, payin' 'em 8 bucks a shot, I got some poor service. Hell, I'd leave it out, too. | ||
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| Someone actually flew through that keyhole, once. They went to jail. | Man, that runway is small. | Hmmmm, a tad left |
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| Crap, now right. I gotta get a joystick. | Oh, well. Final resting place. | |
Actually, the grass landing isn't quite as bad as you might think; it's maintained for the tail-draggers, who use it all the time. Still.... |
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Satellite image on the left Flight Simulator scenery on the right |
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