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Airport Review : EGHI - Southampton 1.2 by Pilot Plus


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Airport Review : EGHI - Southampton 1.2 by Pilot Plus
 
Southampton in the United Kingdom is one of the countries largest and most significant ports. That is for shipping though and not aviation. However Southampton Airport - EGHI is a growing and also now becoming a more significant point to depart and arrive at in the central Southern English coastal area. It has history here as well as Southampton was also the point of the first flight of an aircraft that they say won a war...  The Supermarine Spitfire (but many will note the Hawker Hurricane was a more versatile machine).
 

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(Images Google®)

 

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02/20 1,723m (5,653ft) Asphalt

Elevation AMSL 44 ft / 13 m

 

Southampton Airport (IATA: SOU, ICAO: EGHI) is an international airport in the Borough of Eastleigh within Hampshire, England, 3.5 nautical miles (6.5 km; 4.0 mi) north north-east of the port of Southampton. The airport is owned and operated by AGS Airports which also owns and operates Aberdeen and Glasgow Airports. It was previously owned and operated by Heathrow Airport Holdings (formerly known as BAA). The airport handled 1,722,758 passengers during 2013, a 1.7% increase compared with 2012, making it the 18th busiest airport in the UK.
 
The airport site's connection with aviation can be traced back a long way back to 1910 when pioneer pilot Edwin Rowland Moon used the meadows belonging to North Stoneham Farm as a take-off and landing spot for his monoplane, Moonbeam Mk II. During the First World War, when forces from the United States Navy arrived in 1917 work on the building of hangars began. At the peak of the American presence, some 4,000 officers and men were billeted in tents and huts along the adjacent London to Southampton railway line. he airport's runway is built over the remains of a Roman villa. The site was excavated in May 1925 but the villa had already been robbed of much of its material. In 1932 Southampton Corporation purchased the site and it became "Southampton Municipal Airport". By 1935 part of the site was being used by the Fleet Air Arm of the RAF and was briefly known as RAF Eastleigh before it became RAF Southampton in 1936. In 1936 Supermarine opened a test flight facility on the site, followed shortly thereafter by the opening of the Cunliffe-Owen Aircraft factory on the southern end of the runway. On 5 March 1936 the first test flight of the Supermarine Spitfire took place at the airport and events continued till both companies later closed their Southampton operations, and Supermarine moved their flying activities to Chilbolton and the Cunliffe-Owen factory then being acquired by Briggs Motor Bodies during 1949 - 1951. The military site was transferred to Naval command in 1939 and renamed HMS Raven, and subsequently spent most of the war in a ground and air training role for the Royal Navy. It eventually passed back into civilian ownership in April 1946.
 
A 1723-metre concrete runway was built in the 60's and the current Control Tower in the 1970's. The airport was renamed Southampton International Airport and a new passenger terminal was opened by HRH Prince Andrew, The Duke of York in 1994.
 
Pilot Plus EGHI - Southampton
EGHI - Southampton is a new scenery from Pilot Plus, and their first scenery release for X-Plane.
 

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Scenery demands today for X-Plane are very high. To join and sell scenery will now require you to deliver quality scenery at a good price. Make average scenery or price your scenery too high and you will find the punters wanting and passing over your offerings. In other words it is now getting very competive in the market place to deliver good scenery.
 
The real aim of good scenery in simulation is to recreate the correct scene of the position of that the real scenery (or airport) that you are trying to recreate. From the view level in either from the approach (or departure) or the point of view of being on the actual ground is to be as realistic as the real thing. If you really think that you can totally recreate the real airport in total then that can't be a real possiblity...  but you can get very close to it. So in that context if the airport from the air and the ground looks and feels real then the developer has succeeded in his aim of recreating the scenery in a realistic environment.
 
Viewed from the air in different directions, then EGHI is extremely well intergrated into the X-Plane10 scenery. Yes there are photo (ortho) plates in there, but from the air you are hard pressed to notice them, and they are so extremely well merged with the default tiles that you are hard pressed to see any joins or differences between each of them...  in other words seemless. And I really like my scenery like that, as one total landscape.
 

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Many United Kingdom airports today are more and more looking like industrial Parks than actual airports, and EGHI is no exception. The airport is dominated by large warehouse style buildings and commerce than actual aviation related activities. All the related areas are all positioned on the western side of the airport, and only the terminal building and (Three) older large hangars give the game away. All to the south is mostly industrial buildings and warehouses.
 

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The main terminal building (only one) is very well constructed and designed. Glass is good and you only have walk on departures here and not any airbridge or jetway boarding systems. The entrance to the terminal is a bit bland with no signage. But it is mostly hidden by trees anyway and not a focal point of the terminal.
 

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Ramps are full of everything you need in equipment and are highly realistic. Well set out markings, signage and you have a marshaller at every gate. To the north is a GA/Private area that is very good for light jets and private flying. Most notable is the marked ramp brickwork, an excellent underfoot realistic feature.
 

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Control Tower
Center ramp is the Control tower and Fire Station. The control tower is low and stocky and is attached directly to the Fire Station. The scenery tower has an hexagon base, but the real one does not. Viewed from one angle it is wide, but from another angle it is narrower, because it is sitting on a rounded rectangle and not a hexagon pedestal...  a minor oversight? It is hard to notice from the wrong angle, there are more aerial's set around on the top of real tower perimeter as well? The empty roof of the carpark has flattened photo cars? 3d models would have been better as it spoils the view.
 


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Tower point of view is excellent of the ramps and so is the sweep of the runway and approaches.
 

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The industrial areas are perfectly completed with a "Premier Inn" and airport administration buildings as well with great signage. Carparks are full and the whole area is full of very realistic trees that really make the scenery very real. There is also the recently positioned memorial aircraft for the "Spitfire" prototype K5054 at the entrance to the airport.
 

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The railway station is buried down the center of the scenery (under the trees) It is noted as the the closest railway station to an airport in the UK, although I think Gatwick rail is closer? X-Plane traffic feature does not currrently allow running rail tracks above any photo scenery (hoping Laminar Research would correct that one) So Pilot Plus has put some static trains in to fill in the gap, certainly a real moving rail system would have been a better solution, but that is not the issue here.

 

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There are well done open spaces including a football field and oval, and the default traffic system is excellent here and giving the airport a great buzzy movement of traffic that passes directly below the approach of runway 02 as the M27 motorway.
 

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02/20 is a single runway with aircraft turning areas on each end. Taxiway A allows for exit from the southern end and Taxiway B is the main entrance and exit to the runway. Across the field on the eastern side is a 10CM Radar installation (Red & White chequer) and a Fire/Rescue training area, both are well represented here. As noted there is great placement of trees around here as well, these trees certainly lift the scenery up to a great level of quality because they create such a realistic feel to the surroundings, grass covers all the areas around the runway and taxiways and is again well done. There is a hanging Red Balloon situated on the eastern boundry? I don't really like these sort of hanging objects in balloons or helicopters, But found it useful in navigation to pin-point the airport when flying around the area. I usually fly to Bournemouth Airport - EGHH which is by the crow flies 29.9 miles away by helicopter and they make a great tandem connection points of flying.
 
Flying around EGHI
 
Services
Aurigny Air Services - Alderney
Austrian Airlines operated by Tyrolean Airways - Seasonal charter: Innsbruck
Blue Islands  - Guernsey
Eastern Airways  - Aberdeen, Leeds/Bradford - Seasonal: Lorient
Flybe - Aberdeen, Alicante, Amsterdam, Belfast-City, Bergerac, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow-International, Guernsey, Jersey, La Rochelle, Leeds/Bradford, Limoges, Málaga, Manchester, Milan–Malpensa, Nantes, Newcastle, Paris-Orly, Rennes
Flybe - Seasonal: Avignon, Bastia, Bordeaux, Brest, Chambéry, Geneva, Grenoble, Palma de Mallorca, Perpignan, Salzburg, Verona
Volotea  - Seasonal charter: Palma de Mallorca
 
1   United Kingdom - Edinburgh  207,767
2   United Kingdom - Glasgow-International  182,256
3   Jersey - Jersey  162,128
4   Guernsey - Guernsey  135,260
5   United Kingdom - Manchester  121,665
6   Ireland - Dublin  104,009
7   Netherlands - Amsterdam  103,524
8   United Kingdom - Newcastle  91,505
9   United Kingdom - Belfast City  86,443
10   France - Paris Orly  77,296
 
Flybe totally dominate Southampton Airport, and they also give you a great range of destinations around the United Kingdom, Jersey Islands and close European countries. Very easy to set up a route structure to fly to two or more of these destinations in one day and terminate here again at EGHI at the night time. My route today is to Jersey - EGJJ and return to EGHI flying the brilliant Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 by FlyJSim in Flybe colours.
 

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Realism is noted by the way the aircraft in the images is totally in balance with its surroundings, is that a photo or the simulator? From the cockpit or the external view you are totally within the scenery. Taxiways/Runway are very well textured and well signed and lined, If the taxi line is a little wide? But the surrounding photo textures are as real as you need them to be. Good features are the metal access grids set out in the taxiways. At the end of RWY 20 you can easily turn to around to the centerline.
 

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Power up and climb out of EGHI and the scenery nicely blends in with its surroundings, next stop Jersey.
 

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After a 25min turnaround at Jersey and I'm airborne again and heading back to EGHI. As I flew out of Southampton the weather started to close in, and on the return service it got colder and darker as I flew further north. Once on the circuit to land on EGHI RWY 20 (ILS freq 110.75) VOR 113.35 SAM the weather had become quite murky and you was down to your minimum visibility requirements and with this it gave you at close to dusk a very different view of EGHI than the one I saw when left only a few hours ago.
 

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With the runway icy and a 15knt crosswind I was going to have to work for my money...  But EGHI looked sensational in the fading light. You only have that RWY 20 ILS approach, there is none from the approach north from the south on RWY 02. But the conditions would mean this time a manual landing to take care of that crosswind, it was tricky but doable...   just!
 

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A quick turn around and I taxied back up to the central B1 taxiway and headed for my gate in T3. A welcome sight is the marshaller to guide me in.

Lighting
 

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Lighting overall is excellent. With great coverage and with really good well designed street and carpark lighting systems. There is a lot of different types of lighting variations that give you the right impression that one light does not fit all. Here there is lighting that is tailored to fit the correct area as required. But I did find when the Dash 8 was parked in the correct spot it was in darkness? So the light throw out on to the ramps is not that great outwardly and crucial areas are in semi-darkness. I found the terminal a bit dullish as well, and no lit signage on the terminal buildings.
 

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Taxiway lighting is good, and so is the main runway lighting, but the approach lighting is quite sparse for an airport positioned in the UK which a country that has quite low lighting conditions and frequent patches of fog. On the approach to RWY 02 there is a carpark that is quite bright on the left and could be a distraction of the main runway lighting.
 
Summary
In scenery realism is everything. You want that "I am really here" feeling and on that scale EGHI - Southampton from Pilot Plus really delivers. On the ramp or in the air the scenery is excellent. It blends in perfectly to the surrounding default scenery and the woods of trees give you a real English country feel. Ramps are full and exciting in the day or at dusk and the feature ramp brickwork is quality in design. The set pieces of surrounding Industrial/Hotel/Administration buildings are exceptionally good. negatives? not many, control tower needs a new base and more aerials? and the flat car carpark top is the only real distraction. There is a bit of thrash in the textures as you move around and the car's textures are a little bland. Lighting is excellent but more throw on the ramp and aircraft would be very nice.
 
There is a "static" aircraft package you can download from Pilot Plus's site that will fill out the ramps, but the American JetBlue sitting here here in the UK is a bit of a head scratcher. Pilot Plus says the mixture will be changed around soon to fit better. Frame-rate wise it is very good and won't really tax your system. I ran it in the resolution setting of "very high" and I was fine, and HDR "on" was still (but not by much) over the working line.
 
Overall for a first scenery EGHI - Southampton is simply a great result and certainly a very good investment and is priced very well and under US$20 dollars. EGHI's position gives you great and flexible routes all over the UK and the close by European countries, and that gives you the chance to work your Flybe's very hard. This is very good quality scenery and EGGD - Bristol is coming next...  can't wait for that one.
 
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EGHI - Southampton by Pilot Plus is now available from the New X-Plane.Org Store here : EGHI Southampton Airport and is priced at only US$19.95 
 
If you have purchased the release 1.0 version of this scenery then go to your account at the X-Plane.Orgstore and update to v1.2

Installation : Download is 235.70mb that is unzipped to 409.10mb and placed in your Custom Scenery folder. "Static" aircraft add-on can be downloaded from the Pilot Plus site. and then deposited in your custom scenery folder (note: static aircraft file must be placed above your EGHI-Southampton scenery in the "scenery_packs.ini" file to work!)

 

Note: since the review was completed. Pilot Plus has updated the "static" aircraft to " B738 Ryanair, CRJ-100 Austrian Airlines and the Fokker27 with Aer Lingus colours and the updated version is now also on the X-Plane.Org - Static Aircraft 1.1 
 

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Documents : 1 Manual pdf, but no charts? you can get the EGHI charts here : NATS/AIS
 
Developer Site : Pilot Plus
 
Requirements:
X-Plane 10.30 Windows XP/ Vista/ 7, Mac or Linux. Multi-core processor @ 2.6 Ghz or faster, 4GB Ram. 3D video card with at least 1GB.
We recommend the following:
Windows XP/Vista/7 , Linux, Mac. Mulit-core processor @ 3,0Ghz, 4GB RAM, Dedicated Graphics Card such as Radeon series, or Geforce GTX Series.
YOU MUST HAVE OPENSCENERYX INSTALLED FOR STATIC AIRCRAFT TO APPEAR.
Current version: 1.2 (Last updated February 1st 2015)
updated store#
 


Features :
    Extremely  detailed custom 3D buildings, vehicles and many other objects
    High Resolution ground imagery at 12.5cm per pixel
    Custom night lighting
    Optional download for static aircraft
    Animated Ground Marshaller guides you into the gate
 
Review by Stephen Dutton
 
4th February 2015
 
Copyright©2015: X-Plane Reviews
 
Review System Specifications:
Computer System:     
- 2.66 Ghz Intel Core i5 iMac 27”
- 6 Gb 1067 Mhz DDR3
- ATI Radeon HD 6970M 2048 mb

- Seagate 256gb SSD 
Software:     
- Mac OS Yosemite 10.10.1
- X-Plane 10 Global ver 10.32 (final)
Addons
- Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle

- Bose - Soundlink Mini
Aircraft
- Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 by FlyJSim (X-Plane.OrgStore) US$32.00...   But on sale at this date for only US$20!
 
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Guest rob coultas

Hi, I would agree with the author's comments - I also fly heli's out of Bournemouth and this is a great destination and Bristol will be another plus - Bournemouth next??  The one thing I would like to see is the removal of the hot air ballon which is not realistic in any way,  next to this airfield. I am aware there is a small advertising ballon at a lower altitude used by a out of town shopping store at Hedge-End but, this is a small tethered yellow ballon. Carpark roof is rather flat looking! i.e. the cars. The static aircraft could be of a higher quality visually. This is a great first effort and I will be awaiting further airports to buy from PlusPilot. This will now start to bring X-plane nearer to FSX/ P3D offerings in the U.K. :) Hopefully, VATSIM will now start to man this airport on a regular basis providing ATC at a more local level. ;)

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Hi, I would agree with the author's comments - I also fly heli's out of Bournemouth and this is a great destination and Bristol will be another plus - Bournemouth next??  The one thing I would like to see is the removal of the hot air ballon which is not realistic in any way,  next to this airfield. I am aware there is a small advertising ballon at a lower altitude used by a out of town shopping store at Hedge-End but, this is a small tethered yellow ballon. Carpark roof is rather flat looking! i.e. the cars. The static aircraft could be of a higher quality visually. This is a great first effort and I will be awaiting further airports to buy from PlusPilot. This will now start to bring X-plane nearer to FSX/ P3D offerings in the U.K. :) Hopefully, VATSIM will now start to man this airport on a regular basis providing ATC at a more local level. ;)

 

Yep... I think we are in sync here :)

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