FS98/FS2000 Boeing 747-123 Highland Express (G-HIH0)   repaint by Gerry McLaughlin
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Highland Express was a low-cost airline which operated this single 747 from London Stansted and Glasgow Prestwick airports to New York during the 1980s. I believe it was started by entrepreneur Randolph Fields with some assistance from Richard Branson, but it was all quite a long time ago and I have not been able to find out much about the airline. Services did not last too long, and at one time the Prestwick-Stansted sector was operated by a variety of smaller aircraft including a BAC1-11 of London European (another short-lived airline) and a Boeing 707 of Omega Air.
The aircraft was always very smart looking, but being an early 100 series 747, it was not over-endowed with power.

This model is a repaint of the excellent B747-200 of Qantas (City of Canberra) by Chris Shelly. Chris altered the original AFX file by Bill Alderson and has given us an extremely nice747 which is quite demanding to fly but is probably a lot more realistic than many of the other 747s available on the Net. It does not have an autothrottle (since real 100 series aircraft were not equipped with them), so it is necessary to be very vigilant with the speed when flying. If you let it get too slow on the approach, speed will suddenly decay very rapidly and the aircraft will sink like a brick! You will not recover unless you have quite a few thousand feet to play with. So set up your approach nice and early, get the aircraft stable in the landing configuration then keep that speed constant! 
Take offs at MTOW are also a nightmare. You will need miles of runway - don't attampt to rotate until you are doing about 180 knots, get the gear up quickly but keep the aircraft rock steady in the climb until speed has reached about 240 knots. Even then do nothing dramatic and certainly do not try to climb at much more than about 1000 feet/minute. At 10,000 feet, accelerate to 300 knots but stop the climb at 24000 -26000 feet until you have burnt off quite a bit of fuel (about 1 hours worth). Then you can climb higher, but not any faster than 500 feet per minute.
Below 580,000 lbs weight you can climb without restriction.

As with all aircraft, download a good panel and sound - it makes a huge difference to the flying experience.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This aircraft is a repaint of the excellent Qantas B747-200 of Chris Shelly, who also modified the AFX from the original of Bill Alderson (Cyber Air). Bill's excellent 747 is obtainable at the Freeflight Design Shop, along with many other great aircraft. Visit their site at HTTP://www.geocities.com/~freefltdesign/
FDE: Alessandro Dallago (licensed pilot) (Eurouomo@aol.com)

INSTALLATION

Just inzip the file into your Aircraft folder and it should create it's own folder.  If not then create a folder called B747HIHO (or something more descriptive like 'Highland Express 747' if you like) and place all contents into that folder and place it in the aircraft directory. If you use a new sound and panel you will of course have to edit the sound and panel Word files, but the panel and sound makers will tell you how to do that.

Note that there is some bleed-through in FS2000. Apparently this is a problem with all FS98 aircraft used in FS2000, particularly large ones, but since I do not have FS200(I have enough trouble running FS98!) I dont actually know how bad it is. Chris Shelly's notes with the original aircraft suggested that a 3D card will help.

Nothing in this zip file should harm your computer. However, just in case you think that it has, by downloading this file, you have accepted responsibility!

LEGAL STUFF

Everything in this zip file is copyright. The original AFX is Bill Aldersons, the modifications are Chris Shelly's and the repaint into Highland Express is mine.

No part of the file may be used for any other project without the copyright holder's permission.  Nor may the plane be used for any commercial use including placing on a CD to be sold. 


We recognize that some words, model names and airlines painted herein are the property of the trademark holder.  They are used for identification purposes only.  This is not an official product.

Enjoy!

 Gerry McLaughlin
 gmcl122@aol.com

 11 July 2000    