Flight 35: Yarmouth to Halifax Shearwater

Turbo Duke at Halifax Sheerwater

The scenery files for this airport actually are contained in the folder for Simaddons's Halifax scenery.  The runways in the Simaddon version do not match up with the FSX version.  How do I know this?  I had removed the Halifax scenery because I thought I was done with it after leaving Halifax.  After I landed, I saw a lot of default buildings and scenery.  After I reinstalled the Simaddon Halifax scenery, I found my plane was no longer on a runway.

To add to my confusion, this does not appear as an airport on the Garmin GTN 750.  Instead the Garmin shows it just as a helicopter base.  Well, I wanted to take a look, and there are runways!

Wikipedia offers some answers to the mystery, explaining that Shearwater is actually a military helicopter installation:

Shearwater is the second-oldest military aerodrome in Canada. In August 1918 the US Navy established Naval Air Station Halifax on the shores of Eastern Passage to support flying boat patrol aircraft. The seaplane station was taken over by the Air Board in 1920 for civil flying operations, and later developed by the Canadian Air Force and the Royal Canadian Air Force. The station became known as RCAF Station Dartmouth through the Second World War.

Post-war, 1948, the Royal Canadian Navy took over the facility, naming it HMCS Shearwater, also known as Royal Canadian Naval Air Station Shearwater (RCNAS Shearwater).  The combined land and sea-based aerodromes were used to station carrier-based maritime patrol and fighter aircraft. Shearwater was also the home to early experiments with ship-borne helicopters—something which was copied by navies around the world. During the 1960s, the aerodrome at the former RCAF Station Debert was attached to HMCS Shearwater as a training location for carrier landings.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s the Shearwater airfield was scaled back significantly as the facility transitioned to a heliport with surplus lands identified and transferred to Canada Lands Company. Prior to 2002, Shearwater had two asphalt runways:

• 16/34 at 8,998 ft (2,743 m)
• 10/28 at 5,692 ft (1,735 m)

By 2002 only runway 10/28 remained open. As part of the Department of National Defence's Shearwater Heliport Conversion Project, runway 10H/28H was reduced in length to the east end only in July 2007. At the same time, runway 16H/34H was reopened, however for helicopter operations only.
These changes allowed for heliport operations including instrument approaches and were accompanied with the construction of other non-airfield facilities in support of the Maritime Helicopter Project. Shearwater Heliport opened 31 July 2008, consisting of a new 16H/34H and various helipads for helicopter operations only.

As part of the heliport conversion project, the old runway 16/34 was permanently closed and placed outside (east) of a new fence for the Shearwater Heliport, as shown in the Canada Flight Supplement^[

Shearwater Heliport's primary mission remains as a heliport in support of the Royal Canadian Navy's Maritime Forces Atlantic warships with shipborne helicopters operated by 12 Wing, a unit of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Both sceneries used in the flight, Yarmouth and Shearwater, were produced by Simaddon and are found in their Halifax base pack.

It should be apparent by now that I am not particularly big on planning for this trip.  It's just as much about exploring and having an adventure as it is about circumnavigating the world.  I want to see things and places I have not seen before in Flight Simulator, and visit little corners of the world which are easily missed of overlooked by the average flight simmer.