Scenery Review : EFRO - Rovaniemi by DAI Media

[Stephen]

Scenery Review : EFRO - Rovaniemi by DAI Media

 

Rovaniemi Airport is known better by its unoffical name of "Santa Claus Airport", situated with its northern part of its single runway on the Arctic Circle. It delivers 329,900 (2011) passengers annually, but the main season of charter traffic from Great Britain and many other European countries lasts from the end of November until the middle of January annually.  A smaller later season of Russians then arrive in January because they celebrate Christmas later. They all come here to visit the "Santa Claus Village and Santa Park" that is situated 2km from the airport.  Rovaniemi Airport is also the fifth biggest airport in Finland by annual number of passengers, and is located in Rovaniemi about 10 kilometres (6 mi) north of Rovaniemi city centre, central-northern Finland.

 

 

DAI-Media has come north from their usual areas of Romania and the Mediterranean coastal airports to Finland for this scenery. An a great addition to your northern collection it is. If you already have Truscenery's excellent EFTP - Tampere-Pirkkala then this scenery is a perfect addition for a Helsinki - Tampere-Pirkkala - Rovaniemi - Helsinki regional service.

 

 

I have always been a huge fan of DAI-Media sceneries, because they are the very best (if not the best) at inserting their custom sceneries into the surrounding X-Plane default textures. The transition from the surrounding area to the custom scenery is simply seemless, and EFRO - Rovaniemi is no exception and in fact the design is pretty close to perfect. This is very important to get that "I am there" feeling and there is no badly flattened photo objects here...  it is just simply very good.

 

There is only one runway in 03/21 3,002  (9,849ft)  Asphalt Elev 642 ft / 196 m, but from above it looks like a smaller cross runway has been removed.

 

 

Get down close to the runway and taxiways and the textures are simply first-rate, with cracks and sealant and genuine markings covering all the surfaces, all the main runway markings and taxiway linage are also excellent as is the grass and infields that fill in the areas around the main movement areas.

 

 

You get what you pay for, and here is in the specialist details like the perfect installation of the ILS tower with the worn tracks to the instrument. everything is correct to give you a perfect replication of the airport and its surroundings.

 

 

There is only one main terminal with two airbridges (needed this far up in the cold north) that is quite grey and dark. It is very hard to get any light into the building and so it looks dull, but it is still very well constructed and a perfect reproduction of the current terminal, close up detailing is very good. Arrival side there is Santa to greet you and a couple of sweet snowmen.

 

 

Aircraft side the ramp lineage and layout is first-rate, but there are no static aircraft or ramp equipment and so it looks a quite bare (DAI-Media have noted they are both coming soon).

 

 

The surrounding areas around the terminal in carparks, lighting, static vehicles and the various items are all quite perfect and well laid out, even the approach road has vehicles that travel into the airport (X-Plane default traffic) that gives the airport animation and life.

 

Once you move away from the central terminal area the scenery has many small clusters of buildings and hangars. Most of the clusters are cargo associated, as there is not one large cargo depot here, but about three very small ones spread around in various places. All these buildings and hangars are again great reproductions (mostly to the south of the terminal area) and a fuel depot is partly hidden behind.

 

 

The commercial side of EFRO is located on the south-eastern side of the runway. As with most Scandinavian countries most airports are both civil and military and here at EFRO the airbase part is located on the north-western side.

 

It is not really a full airbase here but just a collection of hangars and bunkers, there are a few military vehicles here (tankers) but no static aircraft.

 

 

South-east side and northish of the terminal is the tower complex, that is part the control tower and part a cargo depot. The airport tower is perfectly reproduced with the associated ground buildings. the (X-Plane) view from the tower is perfect with coverage over the sweep of the runway and over the small GA area between the terminal ramps and the tower complex areas. All these cargo areas are well filled in with trucks and small stacked items of cargo and the areas are well filled in.

 

Overall the airport is simply a very good scenery, but it's position in the very far north of Finland will mean that for most of the year it is usually very arctic in conditions with ice and snow...

 

Since the move by Laminar Research to X-Plane 10 there has been a few but not many comprehensive ways to have a snow-bound landscape. "WinterWorld" by Tom Curtis was very good but not updated for X-Plane 10. Well now there is with the "Winter_Package 1.1" by Albert who does the default scenery autogen textures for Laminar Research. So this clever winter look goes to the core of the simulator. It is tricky to install, but there are now a few extra options in switching around the summer and winter files.  With good luck or just good foresight DAI-Media also supplies some winter textures for EFRO as well, again they are a little tricky to exchange over (Both Summer and Winter spare files are supplied) but the totally effect is well worth the effort.  To get the best view I flew FlyJSIM's excellent Boeing 727-200 north from Helsinki - Vantaa (EFHK) to EFRO - Rovaniemi to see the total effect of a snow storm in X-Plane.

 

 

The effect is quite mesmerising, all that white, but beautiful as well. DAI-Media has enclosed a full set of charts for EFRO, and they include everything you need in ILS, GPS, SID/STAR, a waypoint list and also includes the important low-visiblity approach charts that cross over the airport (at the VOR-DME point) and then twist you back to land on RWY21. I set the Boeing's VOR (117.70 ROI) and NDB (TORAMO - TOR 416khz) to point out the aircraft, and TORAMO is important as it is your gateway from the north going south to the airport runway ILS Cat-l (21). EFRO loomed out of the bleak white wildness as I put the B722 into the set circuit to go north to return to RWY21. 

 

 

The runway is clean and black, and the approach is very clear from the north east. Once down and at taxi-speed you can note the high snow walls with the winter textures provided by DAI-Media. The whole set up of the winter textures and the scenery winter textures works extremely well considering DAI-Media have not put the two together before. The airport textures are a little whiter compared to the surrounding winter areas, but it is an excellent and very deep winter sort of scenero. I simply loved the whole experience...  This is the arctic circle after all.

 

 

So it is well worth the effort to combine all the different textures in X-Plane to create this winter wonderland. It really does add a very different dimension to the simulation.

 

 

The night-lighting with HDR "on" is excellent, full marks here in the way the lighting has been set out and used...  again DAI-Media are very good at the finer details on what really makes a scenery work in the right context.

 

 

It is important here because the airport spends a lot of time in twilight and darkness for long periods over the year. You certainly are not disappoint with that in this case. the window textures on the terminal at night are excellent and you wonder (out loud) why they are not more colourful in the daylight, a little more colour would break up the greyness a little more. Highlights are the excellent ramp lighting with great coverage and great detailing of the post-support lighting on the arrival side of the terminal and high on the ramp side of the terminal, the details! Carpark and remote area lighting is also very good including the military areas on the north-west side. Runway lighting is first rate with great approach lighting, edge and taxiway lighting as you would need in a snowstorm. Taxiway signage is also very good. 

 

 

 

Services

Edelweiss Air  - Seasonal: Zurich

Finnair - Helsinki : Seasonal - Murmansk

Norwegian Air Shuttle - Helsinki

Transavia.com : Seasonal - Amsterdam

Transavia.com : France : Seasonal - Paris-Orly

 

Services are very, very seasonal. Only Finair and Norwegian Air Shuttle (Helsinki) provide any all year round services.

 

Charter

Aegean Airlines - Winter seasonal: Athens

Arkefly - Winter seasonal: Amsterdam

Arkia Israel Airlines - Winter seasonal: Tel Aviv-Ben Gurion

AirExplore - Winter seasonal: Athens, Barcelona, Madrid, Milan-Malpensa

Adria Airways - Winter seasonal: Berlin-Tegel, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt

Israir - Winter seasonal: Tel Aviv-Ben Gurion

Jet2.com - Winter seasonal: Cork, Dublin, East Midlands, Leeds/Bradford, Manchester

Privilege Style - Winter seasonal: Madrid

Sun d'Or - International Airlines operated by El Al  Winter seasonal: Tel Aviv-Ben Gurion

TAROM  - Winter seasonal: Bucharest-Henri Coanda

Thomas Cook Airlines - Winter seasonal: Belfast International, Birmingham, Bristol, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Durham/Tees Valley, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Glasgow International, Leeds/Bradford, London-Gatwick, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne

Thomson Airways  - Winter seasonal: Belfast International, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Dublin, London-Gatwick, Manchester

Transavia.com - Winter seasonal: Amsterdam

UTair-Ukraine - Winter seasonal: Kyiv/Kiev-Boryspil

Wind Rose Aviation   Winter seasonal: Kyiv/Kiev-Boryspil

Wizz Air - Winter seasonal: Budapest, Katowice, Prague, Warsaw-Chopin

XL Airways France - Winter seasonal: Paris-Charles de Gaulle

 

But the winter charter business is huge, mostly from Israel, Europe and the UK.

 

Note : Santa is here of course, but he is very busy getting clearances for his round the world in a night flights. The logistics are now a nightmare and so is the mountain of paperwork, The sleigh of course is in one of the hangars at EFRO (sorry I don't know which one), but it is at the moment in the middle of a D-Check before it can fly.

 

Summary

Dai-Media has always produced quality scenery for X-Plane, as EFRO - Rovaniemi is another excellent scenery to add to your collection. It is a certain perfect companion piece with Truscenery's excellent EFTP - Tampere-Pirkkala, certainly not as highly detailed as EFTP, but it is very close and the differences between them is really minimal. Quality in every area is what good scenery is about and you are not lacking any of that here and the price reflects that quality. The missing static elements and dullish grey terminal are only slightly minor points, and both are easily dismissed. Certainly the foresight to include the winter textures has paid off handsomely with the now available winter package from xflyer. together they create a winter-world beyond beyond believable and makes this scenery really work well. 

 

Overall you can't fault EFRO - Rovaniemi, it is excellent scenery, well done and very complete.

 

Review by Stephen Dutton 

 

The EFRO - Rovaniemi Scenery by DAI-Media will is available now from DAI-Media Scenery : EFRO - Rovaniemi

 

Price is  €28.00 (euros)

 

Installation and Documents: ''Download is 222.80mb which is unzipped to your X-Plane in your custom scenery folder at 238.30mb. Comes with a full set of charts (23 charts) and (readme) manual (3 pages). extras include winter textures.You have to create an account with DAI-MEDIA before you can purchase or download any scenery.

 

Copyright © 2014 : X-Plane Reviews

 

13th December 2014

 

Review System Specifications:

Computer System:     

- 2.66 Ghz Intel Core i5 iMac 27”

- 6 Gb 1067 Mhz DDR3

- ATI Radeon HD 4850 512mb

Software:     

- Mac OS Mavericks 10.9.4

- X-Plane 10 Global ver 10.31 Final

Addons

- Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle

- Bose Soundlink WiFi Speaker

Aircraft

- Boeing 727-200adv by FlyJSim available from the New X-Plane.Org Store US$ 32.00: 727 Series 200Adv

Scenery

- Winter_Package 1.1 by xflyer (Albert)