Rafael Hernández Airport (IATA: BQN, ICAO: TJBQ, FAA LID: BQN) is a joint civil-military airport located in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. It is named after the Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernández Marín. It is Puerto Rico's second largest international airport in terms of passenger movement. It is located in Porta del Sol tourist region, in Puerto Rico's west coast. It is also home to Coast Guard Air Station Borinquen and to the Caribbean Branch of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations. Although the airport lacks non-stop flights from Asia, it is the only airport in Puerto Rico served by an Asian commercial airline, in this case by Emirates Sky Cargo.
Features:
Photo-realistic ground textures based on aerial images
Real Autogen
PBR texture
Photo-realistic textures for buildings, vehicles, etc.
I really like this scenery, very good looking and great value. I approached support with a help request and my issue was resolved within a matter of hours.
Overall a nice little scenery with many parts to like!
The very good:
- Perfect integration into the surrounding scenery: The airport fits flawlessly into ORBX OpenLC textures, well done! Also good care has been taken to annotate the Autogen all around the airport, almost no flat buildings to be overflown on final.
- And secondly, overall the texturing is quite nice with skilful use of shadows baked onto the buildings.
The bad:
- Speaking of texturing, it is inexcusable to have a flat Hercules present on the ground texture right next to the main taxiway. This should have been removed from the ground imagery!
- Windsocks: Dummy windsocks! Also inexcusable for a flight simulation add-on: The windsocks are dummies and do NOT show wind speed nor direction. Either use functional SODE windsocks, or if that is not within the capability of the developer, at least give the option to place default windsocks onto the airport. Yes they're ugly, but at least they work!
Another point to mention, some of the main buildings do feature crude 3D modelling only. The main hangar/terminal building is modelled quite nicely. However the big Lufthansa Technik hangar is completely flat and featureless when it comes to modelling. Being such a large building, it should have been there in more detail. Same goes for some other bigger buildings. Some are fine, others would have needed more detail.
3 stars overall, mainly because of the dummy windsocks, of which by the way one of the two has been forgotten to be placed into the scenery. This could have been a nice 4-star rating, were it not for this issue. Because as I said, flawless integration and nice texturing are a definitive strength here.
A beautifully made rendition of Aguadilla Intl' Airport that works very smoothly even with VR and the PMDG NGXu on my computer, using Active Sky weather.
I walked all over this airport with the Avatar comparing it to what I was seeing in Google Maps, and it seems accurately made to the real airport, even to the Aguadilla Bowling Alley just in the front of the main terminal.
I don't believe that the graphic hit is really any more than the default airport.
It is great to have another airport for Puerto Rico that will give a nice destination for the little island from TJSJ Luis Muñoz Marín Intl' Airport in a small regional turbo-prop or GA aircraft. Perfect for a low altitude sight-seeing flight.
I grabbed this jewel of an airport as soon as I seen it and I'm definitely not disappointed at all. It's a real value for the money.