Hi guys. Here's a good one for some of the modellers and scenery people (I'd like to try to learn a bit about scenery myself).
Near where I live in Iowa (~30 miles north of me) at Blairsburg is what appears to be the largest wind-power generation project in the US, and possibly the world. It's called the Century Wind Project, and involves 100 very large wind turbines covering what seems to be about a 49 square mile space. Something this large would make a nice addition to flightgear, as the midwest tends to be fairly boring to fly over (not that I'm a pilot, but I have seen it from the air). It's owned by Mid-American Energy, which is the big utility provider in the area. Anyway, my idea ran into a bit of a snag. I asked for assistance with obtaining positional data for the turbines, and was flat out told no, citing safety and security reasons. Since large objects must be listed with the FAA for aviation uses, perhaps some of the more experienced hands at scenery and modelling could help this. Would one of the aviators (or aviatrices, are there any of these using FG?) from the Iowa/Minnesota area be willing to share any available data on the actual location of the generators? I'd hate to have to guess at locations based on intersections and the knowledge that the generators are roughly 3/4mi apart in the N/S direction. They certainly aren't in perfectly regular rows and columns. Another blow to my idea is that I don't have a GPS, and I'd probably be trespassing if I walked up to a generator with one anyway. In summary: I want to try to add some real world scenery to the midwest (mid-north-central Iowa) that would be a striking sight from a plane (It's striking from the ground, to say the least). The utility company probably won't share the information needed to place objects and guesswork probably won't be accurate enough to look right. I don't know much about doing scenery, though I've read a few good tutorials. I might have to make the models of the turbines, as well. It's a nice little project to cut my teeth on, given that I want to work with something real, as opposed to placing a hanger or building at an airport (I don't go to many interesting airports). Any takers who want to help? JD ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Flightgear-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-users
