About This File
Muskoka Airport (IATA: YQA, ICAO: CYQA) is located 4 nautical miles (7.4 km; 4.6 mi) south of Muskoka, Ontario, Canada.
The airport is classified as an airport of entry by Nav Canada and is staffed by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). CBSA officers at this airport can handle general aviation aircraft only, with no more than 15 passengers.
From 1942 to end of World War II, it served as a training facility for the Royal Norwegian Air Force. Known as "Little Norway", it replaced the Toronto Island Airport as their main training base in Canada. The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) used this as an auxiliary airfield to CFB Borden during World War II.
Reference:
Wikipedia 2018Muskoka Airport official page.
Personal comments:
FlyGTA Airlines, which is a Canadian air operator serving southern Ontario and one that provides sightseeing tours over Toronto and Niagara Falls has chartered flights from Muskoka airport to St. Catharines/Niagara and Toronto-Billy Bishop airports. There is also Cargo service to Hamilton, North Bay through Skylink Express from CYQA. So it is a fairly important airport but one that hasn't yet been represented in X-Plane.
Muskoka airport is also known as Little Norway Memorial in commemoration of the Norwegian men and women that trained in Canada during the last World War. Canada has so many WWII airfields, similar to Muskoka Airport and one has to wonder how, without continuous use and subsidies they can continue to operate and serve the local needs. Eventually, I suspect nature will reclaim the land and a lot of history will be lost.
Muskoka airport is at an elevation of 922 ft / 281 m with a single asphalt runway, 18/36 that has a decent length of 6,000 ft or 1,829 m. There is also a much smaller grass runway, 09/27 and this is 2,199 ft (670 m) long. I would suggest a sightseeing morning tour of 5 airports in this series that would take you back to Muskoka airport well before dinner. CYQA-NW-CNK4-S-CYEE-S-CNY3-E-CNA3-NE-CYLS-N-CYQA. Each step is under 60 nm. There are several other airports in this series, CYZR,CYCK,CYQS,CYCE and CYRO which are likewise to be found in this very important region of Ontario.
Enjoy your flight.
Installation:
Put unzipped folder, Canada_ON_CYQA in X-Plane, Custom Scenery folder. Restart X-Plane. If scenery does not show up, make sure that it is above Global airports and any Mesh Scenery you may be using, in the scenery_packs.ini file. Remember to disable other sceneries of the same airport, if you have any. If the scenery does not look like the pictures, then you must have picked up another scenery in your Custom Scenery folder.
If you receive any error messages during loading, please update X-Plane to the latest version.
Do not be misled by the tiny size (Less than 30 kb)of the file. This is a LEGO-BRICK scenery and uses the megabytes of art assets already included in your installation of X-Plane. It will compare favourably, at times better, to other (much larger sized) sceneries of this area and will probably exceed your expectations. I believe that in order to enjoy a flight simulator you shouldn’t need to fill up your computer with gigabytes of data or rely on many third party libraries unless of course you fly exclusively in one small area.
Important Note:
Even though there is no tower at this airport and all traffic is CTAF (Common traffic advisory frequency), I did put in a tower in order to animate AI aircraft. Without it there would be no traffic. In all other details and placement of buildings etc. I have tried to keep this as realistic as possible. Note: The version I have submitted for future releases of X-Plane on the Gateway site will only have CTAF frequency but in all other respects, the scenery is identical.
I am trying to recreate smaller, often neglected Canadian airports that do not get much TLC in X-Plane (or in any other flight Simulations). I like to be as realistic as possible with the limited library I work with. I do not have all the tools to recreate the details that make an airport look as it looks in "real life", for example, the discarded fast food container stuck in the fence; the puddle of oil; the crack in a hut window; the bald patches of grass and a myriad other details that you would see in real life. The photos I download and the satellite maps I use as reference are not always up to date and even if I wanted to painstakingly recreate every actual structure, this is impossible to do with the library I use and still keeping it a LEGO_BRICK airport which I want to do so that it is included in future releases of X-Plane. Therefore, in order to keep my airports as appealing and interesting as possible, I may occasionally sacrifice a small amount of geographical accuracy.
Of course, it takes away a little from reality but (strangely enough), this actually adds to the realism in a scenery.
Equally Important
Please take the time to rate and leave a short comment or constructive criticism so that I'd know I am on the right track with these sceneries. I understand that one normally doesn't return to the download page after you've installed the scenery but try anyway. Comments do motivate scenery designers!
Also please report any bugs or problems you come across while using this particular scenery.
Thank You and Enjoy the scenery!
MSF ( Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières )
Like yourself, this organization flies all over the world and they do tremendously good work. If you like this scenery, please consider giving a small donation to them.
