First working report: Inspection of the place

Deciding that getting too smashed to forget taxes was not really cool, I've decided to begin this project instead, to get my mind elsewhere.

And it was there that I've stumbled on a something.

Fact is that on FS9 at  LAT 6° 20’ 0” S - LON 145° 54’ 0” E, on the very spot these coordinates point... it's 5421 feet high (calculating the about 3 feet default C172 clearance from ground into it), and if I try to define there a 5100 feet MSL airport, this is put in a beautiful deep gorge surrounded by sheer ravines.

Before you even start, I've tried excluding the world mesh I use. No dice. The height MSL remained the very same on that very spot. Try yourself if you do not believe me.

And that is not even the worse of the problems... on that point (C172's nose to 140) the terrain is sloping. Gets lower in a declivity on the right while on the left gets higher and at 15 maybe less feet always on the left from there there's a ROAD...

Now, I can see from the photos that a road is there in reality too, but what concerns me are the STREETLAMPS the FS road sports at regular intervals... those are a pain to try and exclude and they could compromise the airport's usability.

So I've decided to edge the runway a little on the right, not a lot... let's say another 30 feet, not more... LAT 06° 20' 01" S - LON 145° 54'. 00" E is the place the new center of the airport will be.

And this generates a problem with FS9's management of slopes... I fear the apron of this airport will be on a 30 or so feet tall platform, as I will try and keep the runway flush with the above spoken of road, at... well, 5433 feet above sea level, circa.

Better that than a precise airport at the bottom of a ravine, you'd admit.

IF everything decides to proceed smoothly from now on, expect better news for the next days.


PS
Not sure I'll be able to replicate the concrete pad on the 32... I will try, but it's not so easy.

Nope. Not going to "that'll do" it. And anyway, I think something good has come out of it already... not quite payware level... more default-like style... but it's there already, and I'm not going to roll back to a lesser thing.

Especially after that I had a fight to the death with ADE9X, that did not display the scenery objects anymore after saving, leading to overlap of different objects that were, at one moment, an eyesore...

Anyway, a fully usable version is ready. Want to try it? Mind you, it may still be quite rough, so it may be considered a beta. Just tell me what doesn't work and I'll try to put a patch to it.

first and foremost, gave the airport the ICAO name of AYAY, as you specified, then, due to FS limitation the hill on the 14 pretty much disappeared, but on the 34 is VERY marked (St Barth style, almost). Was able, with a small trick, to make the concrete pad appear, put a fuel switch with petrol pump, tried to shape the connection between apron and runway a little like in reality (with mixed results), though I was lead to understand that the airport's traffic is managed only by unicom decided to put a small eye candy tower, a hangar and a terminal. Five predetermined parkings only for GA. No VASI nor PAPI lights nor any other bauble... here's what it's came out from my struggle:



In the pic, for frame width reasons, is not visible the pretty much incumbent hill on the tarmac end of the 34, but it's there, while you can easily see that on the 14 there's no hill at all... send your complaints at Bill.Gates@Microsoft.Com ...I did what I could.

Send me a mail add and I'll send it to you ASAP.

The unzipped .BGL file being less than 4Kb, and zipped doesn't reach even 2Kb, would be a waste of time to upload on a file sharing file.

File sent. Unzip and copy the .BGL file into your FS9\Addon Scenery\Scenery\ folder and fire up the sim. Have fun and let me know if it works for you.

Copilot? Inbuilt in the cockpit? What kind of plane are you using? I know NONE having a virtual copilot embedded in the panel.

If you can't see out of the plane in landing maybe your Vref is too low and your plane is flying the final too nose-up for its good. Only big irons reach landing speeds in a nose-up attitude. Try dropping a notch of flaps more and/or take the plunge a little faster.

Seen the kind of airport, the biggest plane to use among the [civil] contemporaries would be an ATR 72. Everything below that is legal and I can't see why you should deprive yourself of it.

Practice, practice, practice... since the real thing doesn't have glideslope lights, nor these were implemented in the virtual one, things are harder, but not impossible.

Keep me updated, then. In the unfortunate happenstance something with the AI doesn't work as it should, some variables may need to be ironed out in the airfield makeup.

AI landing may be... not so easy to obtain on some runways. It all depends on the AI plane used. Even some (badly programmed) STOL AI planes sometimes find a runway like the one I did for you too short for a comfortable land and stop. In a case like this one you may see a lot of go-around and then, when the allotted time for the AI will end, they'll do a magical teleport from air on to a full stop on the runway or even directly on a parking spot.

Of course YOU or I may be even able to successfully land a full weight A380 on it, but I'm talking about AI here... Artificial Idiocy, you know...

Content yourself with seeing them park and take off regularly... only the Lord knows all the times I tried to make AI land on short strips work, but failed every time.


PS
To make your AI watching easier, if you haven't it already, download form a free add-on site the Traffic View Board with all the updates. It's quite the nice add-on for AI spotting.

Yeah... even more insane things do the AI do to stupidly follow the general rules...

The are just too stoopid to understand that the rules were made to find exceptions to them.

Sometimes I'd like to find a little time to put together a small AI traffic file for Lukla, then set the wind appropriately and virtually seat there enjoying underground flight capable planes burst out of the mountain to try and land downhill. One of these days, I will.