Aerosoft African Airstrip Adventures User Manual

African Airstrip Adventures

Content

Credits.....................................................................................................................2

Copyrights............................................................................................................. 2

System requirements............................................................................................ 3

Contact support..................................................................................................... 3

Installation..............................................................................................................4

Introduction........................................................................................................... 5

Before you start..................................................................................................... 7

Performance........................................................................................................... 8

Animals.................................................................................................................. 9

Scenery areas........................................................................................................10

Map........................................................................................................................11

Airstrip characteristics........................................................................................12

Free Flights........................................................................................................... 31

Career mode.........................................................................................................32

Introduction.................................................................................................. 32

Menus............................................................................................................ 34

Jobs................................................................................................................. 37

Dispatcher..................................................................................................... 38

Saving your progress................................................................................... 39

Rewards......................................................................................................... 40

Money / Reputation..................................................................................... 40

Kneeboard..................................................................................................... 40

Glossary.................................................................................................................41

African Airstrip Adventures

Credits

Concept, graphics & career: Thorsten Reichert Project Management: Thorsten Reichert, Mathijs Kok Manual, documentation: Thorsten Reichert, Mathijs Kok Manual corrections: Christoph Beck Installer: Andreas Mügge

A big thank you to all testers involved in beta-testing this addon!

Copyrights

The manual, documentation, video images, software, and all the related materials are copyrighted and may not be copied, photocopied, translated or reduced to any electronic medium or machine legible form, neither completely nor in part, without the previous written consent of AEROSOFT. THE SOFTWARE IS FURNISHED «AS IS» AND IT DOES NOT COME FURNISHED WITH ANY GUARANTEE IMPLICIT OR EXPRESS. THE AUTHOR DECLINES EVERY RESPONSIBILITY FOR CONTINGENT MALFUNCTIONS, DECELERATION, AND ANY DRAWBACK THAT SHOULD ARISE, USING THIS SOFTWARE. Copyright © 2009 AEROSOFT. Thorsten Reichert. All rights reserved. Windows Vista, Windows XP and Flight Simulator are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other Countries. All trademarks and brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective owners. Copyrights are serious stuff. If you find any pirated copies of this software please notify us at info@aerosoft-shop. We will make sure reports of copyrights violation are rewarded. Aerosoft GmbH Lindberghring 12 D-33142 Büren, Germany

www.aerosoft.com www.aerosoft-shop.com

African Airstrip Adventures

System requirements

Pentium 2 GHz (Duo2Core Intel advised)

1 Gb RAM (2 Gb advised) 256 Mb DirectX 9 graphics card (512 Mb highly recommended) (1)

600 Mb of free available SPACE on the hard disk Sound card or onboard sound, Direct X 9 compatible

Microsoft FSX SP2 (or FSX Acceleration) Windows XP, Windows Vista (fully updated)

PDF reader, for example Adobe Acrobat Reader(2)

(1) This product is compatible with the FSX DX10 PREVIEW (2) Can be found on the Adobe website. As an alternative we recommend Foxit.

This manual is best viewed in ”Two-Up“ mode. Also enable ”Show Cover Page During Two-Up“. In Acrobat Reader both options can be found in the ”View > Page Display“ menu.

Contact support

Support for this product is done by Aerosoft. We prefer to do support on the support forum for the simple reason that it is fast and efficient and because customers help customers when we are sleeping. Aerosoft forums: http://forum.aerosoft.com We feel strong about support. Buying one of our products gives you the right to waste our time with questions you feel might be silly. They are not.

African Airstrip Adventures

Installation

Installation of this addon is pretty simple, just run the Setup.exe when the download is completed. After running the Setup.exe you're ready to explore Africa.

Still, there is one source of potential problems if you un-/install addon aircraft after installing this addon. The installer looks for a complete installation of Aerosoft's Bush Hawk XP and Twin Otter for use in the career mode. Those addon aircraft can be used if installed, otherwise variations of the Maule and Caravan will be used. The aircraft.cfg files of the following aircraft will be edited by the installer:

Bush Hawk XP Taildragger (if available) Cessna Caravan C208 Dash 8 Maule M7 (if no Bush Hawk available) Twin Otter 100 Wheels (if available) Beech King Air (if no Twin Otter available) Robinson R22

Don't try to edit those entries later if you're not experienced with this kind of work. You may cause the career mode to crash. If you have aircraft initialization failures trying to run the career mode, one of the aircraft variations seems to be missing or duplicated. In this case you probably need to uninstall and reinstall this addon. If you wish to keep your career progress you can always make backup copies of your saved mission file, which should be named 'AAA Career.spb' and can be found in the following folder:

USERNAME/Documents/Flight Simulator X Files/

African Airstrip Adventures

Welcome to Africa!

This addon will bring you closer to the fascination,

the wildlife and the beauty of Kenya/Africa.

The African Airstrip Adventures take FSX to the adventure level. With this addon you can finally experience all the wildlife you expect to find in Africa. Although this is a Flight Simulator X addon, it is not meant to reproduce Kenya as it is. Lots of names and places are fictional, even if based on real places and objects. The reason for this is that we wanted to fill the gap between the simulation and the gaming aspect of FSX. When Microsoft announced that FSX would include a realistic living world, we were all eager to go for safaris in Africa or follow birds on their way across the planet. Soon enough we found that - apart from eagles soaring in thermals - there are no animals to be found outside certain missions.

African Airstrip Adventures

With the African Airstrip Adventures we correct this absence. This addon covers an area of approximately 40,000 square kilometers around Mt Kenya, the country's highest peak. More than 20 airstrips, custom scenery and landclass, landmarks, lodges, vehicles and of course thousands of birds and mammals bring FSX to life more than everything you've experienced before. But that is not enough. For the very first time in FSX, you can now start a career as a pilot in a fictional charter airline, the small 'African Safari Charter'.

Take on several different jobs, organize your schedule, choose the best aircraft for your assignment, maintain your aircraft, transport passengers and cargo, go on safaris - and of course master the challenging airstrips, which will afford all of your flying skills.

The career mode is not simply a mission, it's an unlimited adventure, with job offers popping up randomly. You can combine jobs, having to keep track of the aircraft's load limitations and your time schedule. If you manage all of that you can climb the reputation ladder, collect rewards and have hours and hours of fun as an 'African Safari Charter' pilot.

African Airstrip Adventures

Before you start

This is Africa, so prepare for the unprepared! Animals on runways, aircraft failures, airfields that can hardly be recognized as such - this addon offers it all. The biggest challenge of all is, undoubtedly, the roughness of the airstrips. Most of them are so bumpy, you would not believe that it is possible to land a plane there - let alone take off! If you don't know both, your aircraft and the landing strip, you will most likely crash on your first attempts.

There are some things you should keep in mind if you want to keep your aircraft in one piece:

1. Learn the airstrips by heart. Taxi along the runway, memorize crests and holes, look for the best spot to touch down or lift off.

2. Memorize the airstrip's area. Some of the airstrips are very tough to spot, only few are marked in the GPS. Read the airstrip characteristics below and use the ADF or the airstrip markers (only available in career mode).

3. Use your STOL-skills (Short TakeOff and Landing). If you know how to use flaps, brakes, throttle and reverse thrust you will find it easier to avoid heavy bumps and holes on the airstrips.

African Airstrip Adventures

Performance

FSX has a weird way of using your PC's capabilities. FSX contains almost no animals by default and one of the main reasons is performance. We packed almost as many animals into this addon as FSX could handle. That means that only high-end PCs will be able to run it smoothly with all sliders max'ed. For a smooth experience we recommend these graphical settings:

Scenery slider Autogen slider

old - medium PCs normal sparse

med - up to date PCs (very) dense normal / dense

very good PCs very/extr.dense very/extr.dense

If you want to improve your framerate, you can also deactivate the following BGL files in your Aerosoft/African Airstrip Adventures/Scenery folder:

filename content impact on performance

AA_Ani-Birds.bgl birds heavy LakeNakuru-Flamingos.bgl flamingos heavy Ani_LakeNakuru.bgl more flamingos high AA_Landmarks_Scenery.bgl telephone lines medium AA_Trains_Tweaked.bgl trains medium

Those files seem to affect some systems more than others. In order to deactivate those files, alter the file extensions to "OFF" instead of "bgl". FSX then ignores the files. Your framerate should increase up to 10 fps by this.

African Airstrip Adventures

Animals

There are thousands of animals in the African Airstrip Adventures. The following animals can be found:

The Big Five: other animals:

- Elephants - Giraffes

- Rhinos - Zebras

- Lions - Flamingos

- Leopards - Several sorts of birds

- Buffalos

How to spot animals

Just like in reality it is not as easy to find animals as you might think. Despite the fact that there are innumerable animals in Kenya, you need to learn how to find them. Even professional safaris often have to wait hours to find what they've been looking for. Obviously, a roaring aircraft engine might shoo them away, so don't be surprised to find less animals than you might have expected. Still there are some rules that help finding animals in the African Airstrip Adventures:

1. Animals don't like humans. The best places to find animals are uninhabited areas like the Simba Taru, the Aberdares Range or the huge plains around Buffalo Spring.

2. Animals don't like to stand in the bright sunlight all day long. Sometimes you will find animals beneath or around trees, where they rest in the shadows and eat. Most of them like water to hunt, drink or take a bath, so watch out for small rivers or lakes to find animals there. The best time of day to spot animals is in the morning or when the sun sets. If you fly at low altitude, the sun reflects on the fur of animals and makes them easy to spot.

African Airstrip Adventures

Areas

Mt Kenya - peaking 17,000ft, is the highest mountain in Kenya and the

most concise landmark in the African Airstrip Adventures. You can see it from every point of the scenery, so you can use it for orientation whenever you seem lost.

Airstrips in the vicinity: Embu, Nanyuki, Laikipia AB, Mt Kenya, Embori East, Embori Ranch

Aberdares Range - a 160 km long mountain range, is part of the eastern rim of the Great Rift Valley. You'll find lots of animals and safari tours in the Aberdares Range as well as a huge variety of birds.

Airstrips in the vicinity: Mweiga, Kisimutu, Naivasha, Nakuru, Nyahururu

Rift Valley lakes - a collection of lakes, formed by the East African Rift, located west of the Aberdares Range. Best known is Lake Nakuru with its thousands and thousands of Flamingos.

Airstrips in the vicinity: Naivasha, Nakuru, Nyahururu

Simba Taru - a big plain between Mt Kenya and Aberdares Range, delivers perfect conditions to spot the Big Five and all other famous animals of Africa.

Airstrips in the vicinity: Mweiga, Nyeri, Kisimutu, Nanyuki, Laikipia AB

Buffalo Spring / Isiolo - wide plains and sparse vegetation make this area another perfect range for safaris and animal spotting. You'll find lots of buffalos and giraffes there.

Airstrips in the vicinity: Buffalo Spring, Isiolo, Saragei, Il Ngwesi, Simangua, Matoni, Borana

African Airstrip Adventures

Map

For each of the airstrips you can find individual characteristics. Most of the airstrips are equipped with small radio beacons that will alleviate finding them using the ADF or GPS. Still, finding them is one thing - landing safely is another one.

You need to be very careful with those runways!

Make low passes first to check for animals on the runway, winds (operational windsocks on all strips) and other things that might prevent a safe touchdown.

African Airstrip Adventures

Airstrip characteristics

Borana:

How to find: Close to Simangua on summit Runway: 07/25 dirt Fuel: None Notes: Very dangerous! STOL!! Don't use west end of rwy NDB: None (Use SIM 360.0)

African Airstrip Adventures

Buffalo Spring (HKSB):

How to find: Can't miss it, lights at night Runway: 13/31 dirt Fuel: Self-service Notes: Stupid buffalos, man, they're dangerous! Good thing they built that fence lately NDB: 380.0 BUF

+ 32 hidden pages

Aerosoft African Airstrip Adventures User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual