KSTP - St. Paul Downtown / Holman Field - St. Paul, MN
St. Paul Downtown airport is one of the top reliever airports in the Twin Cities area. As the name implies, it is situated near the downtown area of St. Paul and as such it is home to many area business hangars and sees a fair amount of business jet traffic as well as Piston Engined aircraft. It is surrounded on two sides by the Mississippi River and will partially flood when the river is high. It is also home to the Hangar of the Saint Paul Army Aviation Facility which sees a fair number of Blackhawk helicopter operations in any given day.
The airport has three runways, the primary is 14-32 which is just shy of 6500'. The other two crosswind runways are 13-31 at 4000' and 9-27 at over 3600'. There are two main FBO's on the field and the airfield is a part-time Class D airfield with the associated tower.
Update 3.1 Note:
This version adds CHS Field - Baseball in St Paul, a current landmark that was a building site when Bing Maps last covered it. I have messed around with the fencing around the FBO as well. (Still shimmers)
Update 3.0 Notes:
- Taxi Signs now have a reverse side to match reality at most Airports in the USA.
- Holmans Table has been tweaked to provide railings to Balconies, doors onto the Balconies, and a clock, none of which would have been possible without a great photo taken by Devan Mayer and posted to Google Earth.
- The 3M Hangar facility has now been modelled, replacing the amazing job Ben did in constructing this out of Asobo Hangars.
- Holmans Table and the 3M Hangars now use LODS to reduce the vertex count. There is still a lot more work to do on other buildings to trim things down.
Known Issue:
For reasons beyond my comprehension, ATC insists on sending users that are parked at Holmans Table, -and wish to take off on runway 14-, on a round trip via Echo to Delta cross runway 31, Alpha, Alpha One. Just turn right onto Echo and ignore the rest.
Update 2.0 Notes:
- Airport Services
- Marshalls will appear at all parking spaces where aircraft can exit forward. Pushback is available where forward exit is not possible.
- Lighting
- All the edge lighting has been positioned as precisely as possible, rather than accept the auto positioned lights that can end up in the middle of taxiways. These lights at present are likely to remain on during the day, but this means they are on in poor lighting, which fits well with other new features.
- Tower Complex and Hangars
- The hangars on the western side have all been modelled, and parking spaces, regardless of size, have been set as GA_SMALL so that Airport Services only provide the marshaller.
- Beacon now has inclement weather sensitivity, so it comes on if the rain or snow falls at a rate over 5mm/Hr.
- Flood Defence wall has now been modelled, with custom lights on top.
- Holman's Table has been modified with more accurate tower presentation.
- Taxiways have been checked to make sure ATC directions and AI Aircraft follow real world instructions.
Dependancy
Please ensure that MNSD-MODELLIB-AIRPORT-MODELS is installed in the Community Folder to provide the new beacon.
Known Issues:
Weather can enter open hangars. Awaiting Asobo fix to Environmental Occlusion.
Lights have very short visible distance, also awaiting Asobo.
Notes:
- Taxiway redesign - Addition of numerous taxiways to bring the airport to it's current layout
- Taxiway names - Brought the airport to the correct taxiway names and signage
- PAPI's updated to the current airport format based on 2021 AIRNAV data
- The majority of the AI hangars were removed and replaced with stock hangars of similar shape and size. Hangars also added to those missed by the default Asobo implementation (the MN Army National Guard hangar was pulled from the World Update KSWF airport)
- Night lighting added to many of the hangars
- One hangar was added from the colinj library. Thanks colinj!
- Static scenery objects added
- Blackhawk helicopter and Falcon Jet object from the JB's Scenery Models package. Thanks JB! (The Falcon Jet was added to the location where "The Learning Jet" currently sits. This IRL is a retired Fedex 727 but I couldn't find a 727 static object. The Falcon was a trijet so it was used)
- Beacon objects added and location corrected (including the beacon on Dayton's Bluff north east of the airfield across the river)
Update Notes:Version 1.1
-Three custom created buildings added:-
1. Old Terminal Building - now Holman’s Table.
2. Army National Guard Aviation Hangar.
3. St Paul Flight Center
-Extra Fencing:-
Concrete Flood Defence Fence and revised general link fencing. Fences are overlapped where a gap would be left though having insufficient space left for a full fence.
Caveats:
Connomar started learning Blender just before Christmas. These are the 2nd-5th models ever created using this package, so there is still a huge learning curve ahead.
The models are one LOD size only. I have yet to crack the art of LODS. I don’t see any degradation of performance on my 2016 PC, so hopefully all will be well.
There is no signage on any of the buildings, simply because I haven’t worked out how to make that work yet. It looks fine in Blender. You may notice the attempt at adding text to a back-plate on the Flight Center, but there are no letters.
Textures Credit:
The textures used were either hand drawn, or more often, downloads from Textures.com.
Installation:
If you have a previous version, please either delete or move the folder to a location outside of MSFS. Extract the zip file and put the package in your Community folder.
About MNSceneryDesign:
MNSceneryDesign is a combined effort between users connomar and spidermanMN.
2 months ago
CaptainMoonlight
A suggestion I have is to open up some more of the hangars and populate them with usable aircraft parking spots, equipment, lockers, etc. That adds a great deal of life beyond the typical static aircraft and parked vehicles. Here are some links. The first one I believe includes blender objects ready to use.
https://flightsim.to/file/16007/msfs-object-library-with-150-models-ranging-from-towers-hangers-terminals-to-cones
https://flightsim.to/file/26325/open-hangar-library
3 months ago
3 months ago
MNSceneryDesign
fppilot
3 months ago
MNSceneryDesign
9 months ago
9 months ago
MNSceneryDesign
ajnaguy
This is very nice : Thank you for the update: I would love to have just a very short description of the three folders involved and what they are for 😊
11 months ago
No Problem.
The one that ends tsassets contains scenery objects which are basically nothing but a set of planes, that are automatically placed in front of taxiway signs, which have been generated and placed exactly behind existing signs, but reversed. This provides a mask against the yellow background, for ILS and Hold Short signs, so pilots can see they are clear of the runway or ILS zone.
The mnsd-modellib-airport-models contains things like the windsocks, which unlike the standard ones, are orange and lit. You may also noticed the umbrellas in front of Holman's Table. They actually open up once over a certain temperature. There are wigwag lights in there too, along with different street and airport lighting, Air conditioners, etc. For a full list, download the library version from this site and look in the download for the pdf file.
All the rest of the models are in the kstp-st-paul-downtown-holman-fld folder.
I hope that answers your query.
Martin
11 months ago
MNSceneryDesign
BostonElf
Being from MN, this is my go to GA airport for pattern work. Excellent addition!
2 years ago
Harlie
Work with SU9 `??
2 years ago
I just tried it and had no issues.
2 years ago
MNSceneryDesign
BostonElf
This does look really good. This is so much better than default. Keep up the good work!
2 years ago
I do notice that the runway markings have abrupt areas when using aftermarket textures. I have both REX and Zinertek and notice a sharp cut off of runway markings. As if there was a gap. According to REX, these should only replace only default runway/taxiways.
2 years ago
Sonosusto
Sonosusto
Not sure if this happened to anyone else, but... this made a huge hole in the airport and so when I spawn in the plane falls into a 100 foot deep whole in whicn the buildings are at the bottom.
2 years ago
Thanks for letting us know. I found that out yesterday, but didn't realize this was the version that was released. Fix coming tomorrow. Sorry for the inconvenience.
2 years ago
MNSceneryDesign
flyinggoosey
Holman's Table was the missing piece. Nice work.
2 years ago
mcguirk
Combined forces! Excellent!
2 years ago
ryanbatc
This had exactly the same filename as the other KSTP upload on here.
2 years ago
This is an update of the version published under just my ID. The changes to version 1 have been incorporated in this version, but we don't seem to be able to remove the old one. As we improve on the posted versions, they will be published as MNSceneryDesign, instead of independently as MNSpiderman and connomar. I hope that clarifies things.
2 years ago
connomar
newtestleper