Agusta A109's

[John Young]

No, the Belgian 109's are just much older and pre-date the Swedish configurations by about 13 years.

[hawk_sh]

John, those A109s look great.


I remember having these issues of AI aircraft swapping between AFCAD files after landing from my work on the Patuxent River scenery.

However I do not exactly remember which measure solved the issue, but here are a few suggestions you might want to try.

Do not place the runway of the overlay AFCAD exactly on the centerline of the runway of the main AFCAD.
Put in an offset so that the helicopters would land on the left or right side of the main runway.

Move the airport coordinates of the overlay AFCAD slightly so that they are not identical with the main airport coordinates.

Remove tower (view) from overlay AFCAD.

If nothing works you could add some A109 parking spots in the north to the main AFCAD file.
The helicopters would still swap to the wrong AFCAD file after landing but move to the right location at the airport.
I used this cheat at Pax River on one occasion where I could not sort it out another way.

[bismarck]

John, those A109s look great.


I remember having these issues of AI aircraft swapping between AFCAD files after landing from my work on the Patuxent River scenery.

However I do not exactly remember which measure solved the issue, but here are a few suggestions you might want to try.

Do not place the runway of the overlay AFCAD exactly on the centerline of the runway of the main AFCAD.
Put in an offset so that the helicopters would land on the left or right side of the main runway.

Move the airport coordinates of the overlay AFCAD slightly so that they are not identical with the main airport coordinates.

Remove tower (view) from overlay AFCAD.

If nothing works you could add some A109 parking spots in the north to the main AFCAD file.
The helicopters would still swap to the wrong AFCAD file after landing but move to the right location at the airport.
I used this cheat at Pax River on one occasion where I could not sort it out another way.

My two cents. If I'm not wrong, during test at Pax, also different frequencies of Tower, Approach and so on, helped. Every overlaid AFD I did, use different frequencies.

Giorgio

[John Young]

One of the first things I tried Giorgio, but with no success. Similarly with placement of the overlay to one side of the runway (the other side is needed for taxi anyway). That doesn't work either. It's really weird. Tim's been at it for a good few hours now and has tried a few other things, but again with no success.

John

[Firebird]

Sounds like Culdrose allover again.

[TimC340]

As John says, I've been at this for a couple of days now. I've got a version now which employs extreme separation simply for the sake of testing, and the arriving helo traffic jumps the scale equivalent of hundreds of meters to the main AFCAD to go and park as far away as possible, ignoring parking that's set right next to the arrival hold node!

I will get to the bottom of this, even if it means a complete rebuild of both AFCADs!

[JohnTenn]

A question

Was the helo afcad made from the original afcad?
As in the original one stripped down.

Creating the helo afcad from scratch may be a solution.

John

[John Young]

No, it was created from scratch with AFCAD2 John so that I could use 1ft invisible paths in the overlay. Just in case the 1ft width might be the problem (it's been fine when I've done that many times before) I have tested with 20ft wide paths but still the arriving 109 jumps AFCADS.

John

[TimC340]

Yes, I've increased the path width to 12/15m to check that as well.

[Firebird]

I think that the nub of the issue is that no runway/taxiway/apron surfaces (that have links) can overlap. It confuses the game engine, as would two Airport reference points that are close.
I think that I am right in saying that if you can find the magic formulae to overcome this then you are indeed wise men and should be hailed as such.

Some years ago i added a helo runway to the MAIW Airfield, and hit the same issue. On that occasion aircraft would not contact the ground controller when leaving the main MAIW runway. It was hard to get the two to work together.

[bismarck]

I don't think Steve. Overlaid AFD at LIRE (LIDX and LISX) were extracted from the original LIRE. The only differencies are the parking spots.

Giorgio

[TimC340]

I'm sorry, Steve, but I disagree. As Giogio says, that's exactly what he did for Pratica - and Grosseto. I did a completely new base and QRA overlay AFCADs for Grosseto for FSX/P3D, and I have done a few others for helicopter operations. I think there may be a few others in the MAIW library too. However, I haven't found a repeatable formula!

[John Young]

I have the New Zealand A109 model done for FS9, so tomorrow I'll attempt to set it up on a helicopter AFCAD overlay with the default Ohakea (NZOH) and see how that goes. It might reveal something, if only the same problem.

John

[Firebird]

Fair enough, guys.
I must have been doing something wrong that I couldn't fix at MAIW. Likewise I couldn't solve the EGDR issue either. If you have had some success with overlays of those parts then more power to you.

[Garysb]

I had to put a dummy runway on the taxiway so they lift from there at EGDR

Cheers

Gary

[John Young]

Cracked it I think!

You do indeed have to move the Airport Reference Point so it's different to the one in the main AFCAD. Thanks for that tip Hartwig.

I set up an overlay over the main runway at Ohakea for a New Zealand 109. The first test, with the same ARP as the default, resulted in the A109 freezing (there are no parking spots in the default AFCAD) after exiting. I then moved the ARP and hey presto, no problem – the 109 landed and went off to park correctly in the overlay parking spot. I then confirmed that in the opposite direction.

Next test was to move the ARP in the overlay at Beauvechain and test that – it worked fine in both directions with the A109 exiting north to park correctly each time.

Just waiting for Tim to confirm the same result and I can finish off the Belgian component. I'll also need to do the same for FSX and P3D.

John

[John Young]

I've set up the New Zealand 109's at Ohakea (NZOH) and they are operating fine in all 3 sim versions. Like the Belgian 109's, I also took the opportunity to incorporate the RNZAF NH90's into the flight plan too because they share the same 3 Sqn ramp. However the two paint schemes clash:



I'm not totally sure what shade of grey RNZAF helicopters are painted, but I did find a reference to their C-130's as FS26118 (Gunship Grey). This is the colour I've used for the 109's which is also a good average of several photo samples I tried. The other possibility is BS381C 633 (RAF Blue Grey) that I also found. Both these colour are similar and quite dark. The NH90 RNZAF grey in the download package however is much lighter, hence the clash.

Does anyone know for sure what colour grey should be used please? I'm tempted at the moment to find the paint kit for the NH90 and change the grey to match the 109's, but I just wanted to check in first.

John

[miljan]

I guess it's the same.

[John Young]

Thanks Miljan, that does tend to confirm FS26118. I'll repaint the NH90 in that case.

John

[miljan]

You are welcome. Decals and model kit producers tend to help alot when it comes to colors.