by Thierry Pétris (ROTW)

Here is an airport of the Massif Central (Haut Languedoc, in Lozère) which worths the detour for many reasons.
First of all because it is as always with Thierry, very realistic, and then because it is located in a 2D scenery entirely done again which was put online in same time and which can be downloaded by going on this page.

We know it, and I confirm he is, Thierry is a purist who never builds an approximative airport and when he creates it, he needs so much photos that the situation becomes exhausting (with Pierre, we are working with him on another airport, he never has enough of it).

That's true the result is always a real happiness, and it is necessary to make a complete tour of every building if we want to miss nothing. By the way, that makes me think to the Astérix comic strip in which, even during the third reading, we discover in the pictures some details we didn't see the first time.

But, one of the attraction of Mende, it's the delicate piloting because of its geographical situation. It escapes from nobody that this field was located on a plateau over 3300 ft, more precisely on the edge of the plateau. The VAC map gives the following warning in its "particular instructions":

"RWY 31 strong down drafts when northerly winds"

That it's said ! So, caution, if you don't want to "break wood" (at least), be careful and don't let you embark to low as in the following view below.

Remark: the Mende airport needed to have the taxiways corrected. To use this scenery, you must have installed the version v11 of the French taxiways available on this page.