Classic British Flight Sim

I have spent some hours during the past two days re-installing my AI program for Ford.

The first problem encountered was aircraft parking in incorrect positions on the airfield. Despite checking that I had parking spaces identified with the 'atc_parking_codes=FFLT' on the AFcad2 and also that the Ford Station Flight aircraft all had that relevant entry saved in the acft cfg file when the scenery/afcad was activated designated aircraft did not arrive at the proper parking spaces.

I am using the default DC3 with repaints to represent personnel being brought to a meeting at Ford in DC3s from the USAF, RNethAF and RAF. When I first designed the AI program all those aircraft appeared on the airfield as programmed. This time, after 'the crash' and abrand new FS9 installation, some of the repainted aircraft just do not appear.

I thought that perhaps my AFCAD and TTools programs might have been corrupted so I downloaded and installed fresh versions. That did not solve the problem.

I have read and re-read the manuals to no avail. I cannot see what has gone wrong for the other parts of my AI program using the Sea Venom, Shackleton, Meteor T7s, Canberras and Sea Hawks work well acft parking as planned and arriving and departing on time.

I am sure it is something quite simple but very irritating and is my fault.

After finding two Sea Hawks facing one another on a taxiway, stuck and unable to taxy I altered my Afcad to take two taxiways out of use for AI traffic, in effect all aircraft have to go the long way round and by doing that such AI face to face encounters can be avoided. Somehow the modified AFCAD is not being saved to FS9 so I do feel a bit like the infamous 'oozlum bird' - getting stuck going nowhere!

Can anyone help please?

I presume that you are saving the AFCAD to location:-

X:\...............Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery\scenery

Because that is where they belong...That location is permanently live in the Scenery Library. Other locations may not be live and should be avoided. Anyway, it is good practice to have ALL your AFCADs in one place

Peter, thanks for that. In this case my AFCAD2 for my Ford scenery has always been in the Ford airfield scenery file rather than in the FS9/addonscenery/scenery file!!

I had better try putting it in the latter file before doing anything further. First FS task for tomorrow!!!

Thank you for your advice.

By the by I am now using FSScene Europe and Africa for my FS9 scenery texture, such a relief not to see 'brown winter' any more in the UK!! Your recent screenshots of looping aircraft and the Hunters at Stradishall brought that to mind. My fiel;ds are the correct UK shape but I shall have to nip over to germany to see what FSScene makes of the shape of German fields.

ATB, Hobby

Hi Peter
This morning I deleted my Ford scenery from the FS9 Scenery Library prior to modifying my current Ford AFCAD2. Mods completed and the file 'saved as' I followed your suggestion and placed the modified Ford AFCAD2 in the FS9/Addon Scenery/Scenery file.

Then I made a big mistake!! I moved all the other AFCAD2.bgls from all my Addon Scenery scenery file to the FS9/Addon Scenery/Scenery file. I then added the Ford scenery back to the FS9 Scenery Library.

Off to 'create flight' - all started well but then 'runtime 6025 error'!!!!!!

Back top FS9/Addon Scenery/scenery file and move all AFCAD2.bgls except Ford back to their own FS9/Addon Scenery/airfield scenery name/scenery files!

Defragment.

Select Fs9/create flight - this time no 'runtime 6025 errors'.

Back to AFCAD program and read manual again - a problem I found when I was working recurs again - I always warned those who worked for me and had to write reports for Company Managers and Directors that they should bear in mind that a reader will read, or more truthfully recall, what they wish to read - not necessarily what is written. What is written can often be ambiguous or unclear. I plead as guilty as the next man to that problem, it is very difficult to avoid ambiguity without breaking down what one needs to say into simple sentences and then one is in the risky area of insulting the intelligence of the reader.

What brought the above to mind was reading the AFCAD2 manual section 'Saving an Airport'. That paragraph reads:
Quote:

"When you do want to save changes to the airport then click Save or Save As. A Save As window will open with a default file name assigned such as AFC_KORD.bgl, and the destination folder will default to the FS9 Addon Scenery folder."

Should that read 'and the destination folder will default to the FS9 Addon Scenery/scenery folder?'

Also I am not sure that ''Save as" actually saves any mods. unless one clicks on 'save' first. I am still unsure what order the 'save' and 'save as' commands should take so that any mods just made are well and truly saved and applied to the FS9 AFCAD2 bgl and when such mods become operative in FS9.

I have always assumed that fS9 should be re-started after any AFCAD2 or scenery modifications.

Still get that Chipmunk parking in the wrong place - pilot and passenger will have to just walk back a long way from/to HQ when flying!!

Save will always save as the same title loaded and back to its destination..."Save as" will always suggest the title AF2_PAMA.bgl etc. but then you can change it. I do that by scrolling to the original and clicking on its name...This puts the full name in the box which might be PMc_AF2_PAMA.bgl etc. Then when I click it asks me if I wish to overwrite the old one and I say yes.

The point is that if you click "Save as" and then accept the default title then it would in my case be AF2_PAMA.bgl and that would be useless as that would now create a second AFCAD file for my airport, causing problems...It would be better if "Save as" would place the file name that was loaded, into the slot, instead of trying to force a convention.

This maybe the source of your problem....To check, start AFCAD and click that yellow opening folder icon at top left...Then when it has finished finding Airports, type the ICAO for your airport in the slot and click Search...It should only come up with two normally...ONE Mod and ONE Stock (an exception is sometimes made by coding taxiway signs or approach coding as an additional AFCAD. In any case by loading one of the Mods and clicking File > Properties you can find the name and location of the file.

I am betting that you have been saving additional AFCADs with your changes.

EDIT...Yes FS9 will NOT show any AFCAD changes till it is restarted.


From your text I am assuming that you are NOT attempting to write an AFCAD file from AFCAD into FSX...It will NOT do that...For FSX you may only write the file from AFCAD to FS9 and then copy it to FSX and it will then work in a limited sort of way (just another thing they broke).

For Peter:

After modifying the AFCAD2 I followed your suggestion and clicked on 'Save As' - this time I renamed the modified AFCAD2 from "AF2_EGFR.bgl", the title which had appeared in the window, to "MK4_AF2_EGFR.bgl" and clicked OK.

I then navigated my way to the FS9/Addon Scenery/Scenery file in which I found both 'AF2_EGFR.bgl' and my modified 'MK4_AF2_EGFR.bgl'. I deleted the former bgl.

Earlier this morning I had modified a Chipmunk acft.cfg and inserted the parking code 'CHIP' I then 'saved' that acft.cfg.
I had made a parking spot on the new MK4 AFCAD with the parking code 'CHIP.'

On restarting FS9 I was somewhat disappointed not to find the Chipmunk occupying the designated parking spot and immediately rechecked and resaved that acft.cfg in the aircraft file. Had the re-naming of the AFCAD2 worked?

Back to the AFCAD program and this time I used the AFCAD program to modify directly that Chipmunk acft.cfg surprised to find initially that my earlier modification to the aircraft cfg (atc_parking_codes=CHIP) and subsequent saving did not appear in the AFCAD program 'parking codes window. Quickly entered 'CHIP' in that window and 'OK' then off to restart FS9.

Low and behold there was the Chipmunk standing in the designated parking spot. The renaming of the original AF2_EGFR.bgl had worked. Second lesson learned = when entering an AFCAD parking code in the aircraft cfg and after saving go to the AFCAD program select that acft cfg directly from the AFCAD program and select the acft which has just had the new parking code saved in the acft.cfg and check that the required parking code does appear in the 'parking code' window of the AFCAD program. If it does not appear enter that parking code and then click 'OK.'

This has gone on a bit but I have been taught a good lesson by Peter and other forum users may have gained knowledge from my own misadventures.

If your doing addon scenery I always create a separate folder for it, for example, I'd create a EGAC folder under the addon scenery folder and under there create a scenery folder and a texture folder. Obviously if your only doing AFCADS the texture folder will be empty, but this is a much better practice than lumping all your afcads into the generic ..\addon scenery\scenery folder as it becomes a complete nightmare to keep track of whats going on.

Ben Watson wrote:If your doing addon scenery I always create a separate folder for it, for example, I'd create a EGAC folder under the addon scenery folder and under there create a scenery folder and a texture folder. Obviously if your only doing AFCADS the texture folder will be empty, but this is a much better practice than lumping all your afcads into the generic ..\addon scenery\scenery folder as it becomes a complete nightmare to keep track of whats going on.

Each to his own Ben but that is poor practice because if the scenery folder is uninstalled or disabled then so is the AFCAD...The Addon Scenery/Scenery is always active and that is the best place for AFCADs...It is also easier to check for duplicates etc when they all live in the same folder. There are special cases for having "High Level AFCADs" and "Ground Elevation correction AFCADS" but doing it your way is the way to nightmares

Not really Peter. Easy to get everything Mixed up if you download an addon airport. At least you can manage your airports / afcads via the add remove scenery function, if you lump everything into the generic scenery folder you have no way of managing what shows and what doesn't. As a general rule all that should be kept in the generic folder are things like library objects as these can be common to multiple sceneries (but even this can sometime give problems). As you know, an AFCAD for one version of an airport is unlikely to work with a different version of the same airport. Lets take heathrow as an example. If you modify an afcad for the default and then download one of the custom ones, lets say the UK2000 one for example, your modified one will not fit. If you had your modified AFCAD in its own folder, you could simply disable your modified one and enable the UK2000 one using the user interface. This is good practice. But As you say, each to their own.

Unless there are specific instructions to the contrary for a scenery add-on, I put all my AFCADS in a ..\addon scenery\AFCAD\scenery folder. I created the AFCAD\scenery folder for this purpose so it is easy to find my AFCADS and they are not mixed in with other bgl files. Works for me.

Nigel²