Well it took a couple of years, but, finally releasing an update to my KBED airfield update.
For those unfamiliar with the airport…
Nestled between the city of Boston and the birthplace of a nation, Hanscom Field is 20 mi outside of Logan Airport in Boston, located at the apex of 4 towns, Bedford, Concord, Lincoln and Lexington. A fighter training base in WWII, Hanscom Field made its name as a computing and radar development base for the Air Force, and is still active in that capacity, though in a much smaller way than it used to be. Centered in the Technology Belt around Boston, it has been home to organizations such as MIT Lincoln Laboratories, Draper Labs, Raytheon and many other companies. With two runways 7000 and 5200 ft in length, it can easily handle aircraft as large as the C-5, and was a base of operations for the US Air Force Military Airlift Command along with Westover Air Base for a time.
Now that the US Air Force has reduced its operations here, it is also largest General Aviation airport in Massachusetts, and is considered a feeder airport for Logan airport. It has also hosted scheduled airline flight operations off and on since the '80’s. Southern Airways decided to switch operations from KYHA Hyannis to KBED and KACK as of the end of May, 2021. As an Air Force base close to Boston, it often hosts the President of the United States and many other luminaries, such as the Beatles in 1964 when they played the old Boston Garden for their first tour in the United States. You’ll note the “red carpet” on the US Air Force portion of the ramp at the end of the taxiway.
I absolutely LOVE seeing all the live traffic visiting this airport now every day, following it back to Flight Aware, and so on. Pretty cool.
Quite a few changes after having visited the airport:
- Corrected the content of the taxiway signs on the west side of the West Ramp.\r\n
- Fixed some issues introduced with SU5
- Updated for SU12
- Added a heliport at the Boston Med Flight Hangar on the West Ramp
- Tons more detail added. I haven’t said it before, but got the taxiway lighting done. Opened up taxiway N. Added more detail to the parking including listing many of the airlines that visit KBED at the gates to get them to park there. I removed the Living World Config setup that used to be in the package and created a separate package for it so users can install it separately if they so desire, since it will affect all of northern North America if you install it. Cleaned it and the Airport Services config file up. See separate Readme on installing the LivingWorld Config file.
