Palm Point RC Club

About

Palm Point RC Club is an imagined flying field on a low tropical island about half a mile long. It is not a real place. It was built for this simulator as a full 3D landscape, so the camera and the model can go anywhere on the island rather than staying inside a photograph.

The field sits on a flat shelf above the beach. The asphalt runway is about 490 feet long and 33 feet wide, laid in strips of slightly different shades, with sealed cracks, repair patches, hand-painted lines, and weeds growing along its ragged edges. Mown grass overruns extend both ends, and the lagoon lies straight ahead of the pilot, so the whole landing pattern is flown over sand and water.

Behind the pilot is a club pit area modeled on real California club fields, the same ones that appear as photo landscapes elsewhere in this simulator. There are four chain-link pilot bays with padded top rails, a row of weathered timber starting stands, a large open timber shelter with picnic tables and a frequency board, a shipping container used as the club workshop, and a gravel parking area. Coconut palms stand in a grove behind the parking area and in clusters along the beach, kept clear of the runway approaches.

Three landmarks give a flight somewhere to go. A rock arch stands in the water off the western point, lined up with the runway so it can be flown through straight after takeoff. A timber jetty runs out into the lagoon to a boathouse on piles. On the eastern headland a red-and-white lighthouse and its keeper's cottage sit on stone foundations. A square stone helicopter pad crowns the taller of the two hills behind the field.

In the simulator

Palm Point suits every skill level. The runway is long and wide enough for a first landing, the approaches at both ends are open, and there is nothing tall near the centerline. For more experienced pilots the island is laid out as an FPV circuit of roughly a mile: through the arch, low along the jetty, around the lighthouse, and home over the hills and the palm grove.

The lagoon and the sea are real water, so float planes can take off and land on them and boats can run there. The jetty deck and the hilltop stone pad can both be landed on, and a painted helicopter pad sits beside the apron. Buildings, fences, palm trunks, and the arch are solid, while the roof of the shelter can be taxied under. The four orange cones at the corners of the apron are loose objects — clip one and it falls over.

Shadows from the buildings and palms are painted into the ground, and the sun sits ahead and to the left of the pilot, about halfway up the sky.