EGTO Rochester Airport

Rochester Airport is a quaint and vibrant airfield that sits on a rise above the River Medway, just outside the historic towns of Rochester and Chatham, North Kent. Rochester Airport has an incredibly rich history dating back to 1933 when the Short Brothers famed for their flying boats elected to conduct test flights and ultimately built a factory at the newly created airfield. Throughout the Short Brother’s tenure, they built and tested aircraft at Rochester such as the Short S.29 Stirling heavy bomber and iconic Short S.25 Sunderland, known as the “Flying Porcupine”.

Throughout the Second World War, The Short Brothers continued to manufacture aircraft at Rochester to help with the war effort. The airport also housed the No. 23 Elementary and Reserve Flying Training School RAF, flying Avro Tutors. Throughout the early part of the war, the Rochester Airport was targeted by the Luftwaffe, and on one occasion a successful raid managed to cripple Short Sterling heavy bomber production by over a year.

After the war, Rochester Airport changed hands several times and throughout the 1950s and 60s Channel Airways operated Douglas DC-3s and de Havilland Doves from the airport for their cross-channel charters.

Today Rochester Airport is in a process of rejuvenation and is in somewhat of a transition. A lot of the old buildings from the 1930’s are still in place at Rochester and the stark contrast between the old and the new is something to behold. New buildings and a modern apron are being built and the old 16/34 runway has been decommissioned leaving 02/20 as the only active runway with a proposal to upgrade it to an all-weather surface in the future. Rochester hosts a large variety of general aviation aircraft along with a fixed-wing flying school and a popular Autogyro flying school. The Kent, Surrey & Sussex Air Ambulance is based a Rochester Airport and it is common to see their helicopters buzzing around the airport.

Rochester Airport has been recreated faithfully over many hundreds of hours by Burning Blue Design’s modellers and coders with on-site visits, and features:

• Over 90 custom 3D objects have been created exclusively for Rochester Airport, each with full Physical Based Rendering (PBR) allowing for far more realistic textures.
• There are thousands of carefully placed stock assets, every cone, shed, fence post and weed, along with an assortment of ground workers has been placed in the correct location ensuring the atmosphere of a working airfield.
• High-resolution color-corrected ground textures taken from Bing maps and manipulated for consistency and realism which far surpasses the quality of the stock Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 ground texture.
• Working custom Windsock.
• Actual aircraft from the have been included around the airport:
• Air Ambulance – Leonardo AW169 – Registration G-KSST.
• Air Ambulance – MD 902 – Registration G-KAAT.
• Autogyro – 915is Cavalon – Registration G-OSVN.
• Full night lighting placed across the airfield and within and around the hangars and buildings.
• Correct AI pattern procedures and accurate taxiway and runway placement have been incorporated into the release.

The surrounding area has been enhanced, this includes:

• The Medway Innovation Centre.
• The Kent, Surrey & Sussex Air Ambulance HQ building.
• BAE Systems Rochester
• Horsted Retail Park including its superstores, fast-food restaurants and hotels, all of which are visible from the airport.
• Roads around the airfield have been improved with correct markings and colours, this includes the M2 motorway.
• The surrounding industrial and retail estates have been updated to match their real-life counterparts.