Classic British Flight Sim

Hi Dan

The change of wind diredtion is a constant annoyance to me :@

I am often waiting at one end while the AI continue to use the opposite runway

Is there not a way round this one? It seems that once set in motion they won't update so in effect it doesn't settle until the stuff that entered after the change appears.
:-(

Garry

Hi Dan,

Thanks for both replies. Generous food for thought as usual ;-)

I don't think it's particularly a 'settling down' period as I know this happens. I often just sit and watch what's going on with one eye and keep the other on the TV so on occassion.. traffic could have been doing it's own thing for 40mins.. maybe an hour. As you've said, default runway with no wx is runway 9 and landed traffic almost without exception (I can't think of one anyway) turns off near the terminal then makes the RH-LH-LH turn to park up at the rear and this is where the problem is. The only aircraft I have that turns onto the LH taxiway in front of the terminal (when looking at the terminal from the runway) is the Dove which is always Billy NoMates

Also living at Jersey are a couple of Rapides which run between the other islands and St Malo and these were joined by at least 4 G registered AI that came with Reunion and Mt San Michel (nice of the French team to do this!!) . These default to the GA parking area beyond the main 'big boys' and don't improve traffic flow around the back so I've pulled the french imports for now. All of the GA will hold short of the main apron area if movement is imminent then tag on behind but I have had them caught up in a jam while trying to get to their parking area.

If anything, I'd expect either the parked aircraft to wait until the incoming flight has parked or for the landed flight to hold short of the apron but this isn't happening and it's the bigger aircraft parked and about to move off the apron to taxy out that are causing the logjam. There is no where for the incoming aircraft to go once they pass the runway 9 taxiway and if one of the larger aircraft have begun to move.. logjam :roll: I don't think it's the tiddlers at all as they seem content to sit and wait.. it's the big guys.. the ones who run into parked aircraft at LFPB

Fortunately, the flightplan for Cambrian (the one Ben sent anyway) has few aircraft and only one flight (a Viscount) went to JER so I deleted that flight and recompiled the file. It appears to have fixed the problem for now but my gut feeling is that it's only a temporary fix. It's a pity that more aircraft don't use the front of the airport but I don't think Garry Summons put any parking spaces there (though he did put statics which are 8-sided monstrosities and are long gone). I suppose I could add a couple.. perhaps 3 and make them airline specific. We'll see ;-) Given there's only one way in and one way out of the main apron.. it doesn't take a lot cause this sort of thing to happen but poor ATC there doesn't help.

ATB

DaveB :tab:

Garry Russell wrote:Is there not a way round this one?

Oh yes ;-)

Load the weather before you start the flight.....even if you have your weather setting to Real Weather....

If you don't do that normally it clears the weather, and you have nice weather for the first 15 minutes or so, then the update kicks in, and there you go....you know the drill...

If you download the weather first before starting up, you will have the current weather when you start, and the next update shouldn't be of any surprise ...

Garry Russell wrote:It seems that once set in motion they won't update

They do in FSX ;-)

Dave

If you'll let me see the AFCAD, I could see if there is a better way to adjust the traffic than deleting aircraft... (not a very satisfactory solution ;-))

The plumbing technique could very well be used here, and/or adding some other taxi-links here and there.

Adding airline specific parking would help somewhat but isn't either a proper solution. An airline specific parking should be available to other airlines as well .... Imagine how the airports would look like if all parking areas where airline restricted only ;-) ... a lot of empty parking spots, and a lot of aircraft piling up on those assigned to them........

Hi Dan

If I try to load the weather before the flight is activated FS crashes

When the flight starts the weather always loads as the flight is loading so it is in place before the flight becomes active.

The AI continue on their own thing and even if the visibilty drops to zero or there is a 50knt wind across the rw the AI carry on as normal.

They don't fit in at all well

Garry

Dave,

Your gut feeling is correct, deleting that Viscount flight won't solve the problem because I don't have that AI flight and I still get the logjams. You could assign that Viscount to one of the parking spaces in front of the terminal and that might help. That way it doesn't have to use that taxiway that leads to the back.

Dan may be on to the solution here - adding a taxiway to avert that bottlenck. That is very easy to do but you have to accept it may not be true to the real airport layout. I just used Google Earth and it looks to me like the AFCAD I have is fairly accurate. Of course this is a little difficult to discuss because we may all have different AFCADs and no, I haven't a clue as to where I got mine, but it not the default MS one.

DanKH wrote:Dave
Adding airline specific parking would help somewhat but isn't either a proper solution. An airline specific parking should be available to other airlines as well .... Imagine how the airports would look like if all parking areas where airline restricted only ;-) ... a lot of empty parking spots, and a lot of aircraft piling up on those assigned to them........

Actually even if a parking space is assigned to a specific airline other airlines can use it if there are no other spaces available. AI Aircraft look first for a space with their parking code, but if that is not available they will look for a space with shared codes (e.g. BAW, AAL) then they will look for an uncoded space, and finally another airlines space. As long as you leave some spaces as unassigned you should not run into problems. When I download and AFCAD with every space assigned, the first thing I do is revise the AFCAD to free up some spaces as unassigned. I do this because I still have some of the default MS AI flying around.

Hi Nigel,

My afcad is from UK2000 Part1 (the CI). Having just had a look, I don't see there'd be any problem allocating airline parking 'out front' as even at it's busiest time, I've not seen round the back full. They've been on both sides of the apron yes but there's never been enough to force an aircraft to use the one bay at the side or the other 5 at the front. There are 19 parking spots on the rear apron.. 1 x Ramp Cargo, 7 x Ramp GA Small, 10 x Gate Small and 1 x Ramp GA Large (this is the one you always get sent to if you land there and is the one with Mike the Marshaller)

Out front, there are 5 x Gate Small, 1 x Gate Medium and 7 GA Small giving 32 parking slots in all. With the FranceVFR aircraft in situ and my two BEA Rapides, 6 of the 7 Ramp GA Small are filled and when my Messenger flies over daily from Alderney, he fills it up (and parks on the grass!). The little grassed area to the west of the apron has no parking slots and was only ever populated with UK2000 static GA (also gone) so adding a few here and maybe deleting some of the others would keep the tiddlers out of the mayhem. This is probably the main reason the Dove parks 'out front' opposite the Rwy27 threshold as round the back is usually 'busy' :roll:

There's definately room to play ;-)

ATB

DaveB :tab:

Who the f*** is Mike the Marshaller. That turkey should be sacked as he is obviously not doing his job! Probably been lifting a few. :drinkers:

As you probably gathered I don't have UK2000 so we do have different AFCAD's That leads me to believe the problem is with MS ATC not recognizing there is a conflict about to occur, but why is beyond me. You certainly can assign those front spaces because it sounds like there are plenty of spaces available. I don't know if you are aware, so excuse if you are, but you can even control the sequence that ATS uses to assign parking spaces by using AFCAD. If you pull down the Lists menu and select Parking you can randomize the order or set any order you want

RTFM

ATC goes down the list in order to assign spaces unless there are coded spaces, in which case the plane will be sent to it's assigned space. For purposes of this example, assume none of the spaces are airline coded. If you have twenty spaces, ordered 1-20 then ATC will assign the first arrival to space 1, if available and if not to space 2 and so on. If a plane departs space 1, the next arrival get assigned to space 1. You can change the order to anything you want, say 15, 7, 1, 20, 3 etc. Doing that will prevent all the aircraft stacking up in one area. Your AFCAD may have already done that and the easy way to check is when you select your start position in FS - the order that the spaces appear is the order ATC uses to assign the spaces. So if you see Gate 1, Gate 2, Gate 3, etc all in numeric order you know the spaces have not ben reordered. Of course you can check the same thing in AFCAD as per above.

BTW, my AFCAD has a small parking area of ten spaces for the little ones near the threshold of rwy 27, in addition to some spaces "around back" roughly where your statics were, I am guessing. Those close to rwy 27 I could not see in Google Earth, but the resolution was not that great so it may be there in reality.

Bet all that is clear as mud, huh? Well time for a :drinkers: to clear my mind. Suggest you might want to do the same. ;-)

Hi Nigel Interesting conundrum isn't it Jersey

Yup.. I was aware of how the traffic spots get used but wasn't aware that the order could be pre-determined.. shuffled for want of a better word. Looking at the list of runways/parking from within flightsim.. it gives the impression that the order has been randomized but checking the order against the afcad shows a different story. I can't imagine the real gates are so numbered but you never know. Here's what the list in FS shows..

Active
Runway 9
Runway 27
Gate 15 - Gate Small
Gate 16 - Gate Small
Gate 17 - Gate Small
Gate 18 - Gate Small
Gate 20 - GA Large
Gate 22 - Gate Small
Gate 24 - Gate Small
Gate 9 - Gate Small
Gate 10 - Gate Small
Gate 12 - Gate Small
Gate 14 - Gate Small
Gate 5 - Gate Small
Gate 1 - Gate Small
Gate 30 - Gate Small
Gate 31 - Gate Small
Gate 32 - Gate Small
Gate 26 - Cargo
Gate 27 - Ramp GA Small
Gate 28 - Ramp GA Small
Gate 29 - Ramp GA Small
Gate 30 - Ramp GA Small
Gate 31 - Ramp GA Small
Gate 32 - Ramp GA Small
Gate 33 - Ramp GA Small
Gate 28 - Gate Medium
Parking 29 - Ramp GA Small
Parking 30 - Ramp GA Small
Parking 31 - Ramp GA Small
Parking 32 - Ramp GA Small
Parking 33 - Ramp GA Small
Parking 34 - Ramp GA Small
Parking 35 - Ramp GA Small

Still there?? Right. To make sense out of that little lot, the first option offered.. Gate 15 - Gate Small is the first parking slot on the southeastern end of the apron.. Gate 16 is the next one to the west followed by 17, 18, 20 (mike the marshallers spot), 22 and finally 24. These constitute the bottom row if you like running right to left. The next gates.. 9, 10, 12 and 14 run back left to right and are the top row of the southern apron. Gate 20 is always left free as this is the one ATC will always direct you to but if you can picture it in your minds eye.. traffic parks from left to right filling the bottom row then moves up and parks left to right.

Cargo and Parking 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34 and 35 are directly to the east of the apron and all have to transit the apron to get to the runway.. ANY runway.

Gate 5 - Gate Small is directly opposite the runway 9 taxiway and quite literally, on the side of the terminal buildings (western end). Gates 1, 30, 31, 32 are ALL parking bays on the northern apron.. the one nearest the runway.

Gate 28 - Gate Medium is grouped with 1, 30, 31 and 32 above.

And finally.. Gate 27 - Ramp GA Small thru Gates 33 are all at (or about) Rwy 27 at the eastern end off the front apron.

Still there :partyman:

What all that means is that although the gates look randomized.. all they do is fill up the rear apron starting bottom right, working their way along until 24 is reached (7 slots but 6 useable).. then they move up and run right until the lower apron is full (a further 4 slots). Only when this happens will traffic start to move off the apron (Gate 5) and then to the front or northern side of the terminal (gates 1 30, 31, 32 and 28(I have nothing flying in big enough to use 28).

I wonder if Garry Summons (UK2000) did it this way to stop possible problems with aircraft exiting the runway in front of the terminal (runway side)?? Whatever.. all it appears to have done is move the problem elsewhere I can't even begin to imagine the number of possible traffic permutations given the number of gates and.. as it stands.. one way in and out :o I can see me spending the rest of my life finding out

ATB

DaveB :tab: