SurClaro Flight Simulator Resources

Last week I read in the newspaper that a few Canadian soldiers were targeted for violence over in Afghanistan so I decided to call up an airport in Afghanistan and have a look around. I'd forgotten the actual town or city in the article so I chose Faizabad - OAFZ, and flew from there to about 30,000' to see the lay of the land. Now Faizabad is a wierd enough airport as it is, just a grass strip and nothing else, in the middle of a smooth, rocky depression in the terrain. Then I spot this big, flat-topped mountain sitting in the middle of the snowy white flatlands way off in the distance. As I get closer I realize it is indeed an airstrip on this 10,000' high bloody rock in the middle of nowhere, and I immediately figure it is one of the displaced or half-done airports I made myself with Chuck Dome's Runway 3 program, which will pull the terrain up to your new landing strip if you locate it at 10 or 20 thousand feet. Nope, it's a grass strip called Talulqan - OATQ, a default airstrip. It sure seems out of place in the terrain though and I'm curious if this is one of the many 'Anomolies' that MSFS2002 holds. Have a look if you have FS2002 (or try FS9?) for challenging approaches at both spots and if you have an opinion on the unusual scenery I'd be interested to hear back.

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 9:05 pm Post subject:

Wow, this just gets weirder and weirder. I did a search on an airport database (worldaerodata.com) and it couldn't find it. I did a search on Google, and only one link gave me some information: http://www.rsvpair.com/findAirport/icao/OATQ
Notice it says that the Airport elevation is "27886.8".

Another link that does not exist anymore had a description on Google: "After 'Bombs Away' climb to Angels20 DIR Talulqan (OATQ) N36 45.25 E69 31.92 HDG
04 at 75 mi out of OATQ descend to 2000'AGL for Bomb run - the Taliban enc ..."

After putting the coordinates into Google Earth, I discovered that both the latitude and longitude of the description above and the latitude and longitude in your first picture were close while the latter one fitted the description that they were "75 miles out of OATQ".

A bit later: I was going to put a screenshot of the two coordinates when I zoomed in to see if the coordinates actually were the ones that I typed in. When zooming in, I was surprised to see "Talulqan Airport". Unfortunately, Google Earth was very blurry in this area and I could not distinguish the airport.

I have two shots of the area, but when I put my mouse on Talulqan Airport, it says its elevation is 2744 feet. I don't believe this as Google Earth probably just doesn't have enough information to supply the tall mountain.

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 9:16 pm Post subject:

I did some more searching and found this link: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/afghanistan/airfield.htm

Look at the table and find OATQ. The coordinates they provide are precisely the same EXACT place as the airport in Google Earth.

Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:01 pm Post subject:

Cool info Heeshung, thanks. But what do you see in Fs9 if you fly to, or start from Talulqan? Is it the same 10,000' high rock in the middle of nowhere with a grass strip on it? Shocked