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Air Force One/Marine One schedule

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crushnik
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Air Force One/Marine One schedule

Post by crushnik »

Was curious how difficult it would be to create a flight plan for Air Force One and Marine One using President Trump's travel schedule. Considering that the president doesn't fly on AF1 all that often, I thought a four-year window would have some variation. If that's even possible.

I installed AIFP, which seems fairly straightforward and can tell it to load MAIW flight plan .bgl files, but not too sure where to go from there. If anyone could point me in the right direction how to make this work with existing MAIW aircraft -- if there are models for Air Force One and Marine One -- then I would be happy to submit the finished product for everyone else to enjoy.
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Re: Air Force One/Marine One schedule

Post by crushnik »

Slowly figuring out AIFP, and I found the H-60 White Hawks, but no VH-3 in the Matrix aircraft library. I did find a package for HMX-1 which has both helicopter models as well as the green Ospreys... but it is for FS9. I use the latest version and hotfix of P3D v5. I've had to completely re-install a couple times in the past few weeks and don't want to go through that again somehow. Will the FS9 model break anything, or is there a better way to move forward?
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John Young
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Re: Air Force One/Marine One schedule

Post by John Young »

FS9 models won't generally break P3Dv5, but FS9 traffic files will cause other traffic not to show until you convert them.

You can use my FSX Presidential models of the Osprey and H-60. Search the Download Hangar for "HMX-1" and "Blackhawk Family" respectively.

John
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TimC340
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Re: Air Force One/Marine One schedule

Post by TimC340 »

If you are creating flight plans for P3Dv5, make sure AIFP is set to that sim (you'll need the latest version). Lockheed Martin changed quite a lot of airfield designators from the FSX/FS9 generation that was used until P3Dv4, and if you compile for anything other than P3Dv5, you may find your traffic files don't work as expected. You may also find that legacy MAIW and other third-party airfields aren't recognised for flight plan purposes if their ICAO codes have been reallocated by LM - many of the arbitrarily, with no logic whatsoever! AIFP will recognise and correct any errors, if it can. Some errors will need some work on your part.
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Victory103
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Re: Air Force One/Marine One schedule

Post by Victory103 »

Look for the CJJYAI Sea King conversion in the download section to get the VH-3s, textures should be converted for .dds. FSX and P3D allow for multi-week flightplans, I'm noticing alot of FP writers for air carriers are using this format now. You could take a one year glance of AF1 flights and entourage to include support C-17s and all rotary. I'm still looking at this multi-week method for mil flight demo squadrons since their air show schedules are published, just don't have the time to write FPs.
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crushnik
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Re: Air Force One/Marine One schedule

Post by crushnik »

Looks like I have all the aircraft I would need, thank you!

Now it's down to figuring out how to get my AI planes (adding C-32 for shorter municipal airports), helicopters, and tiltrotors to appear. C-5s and C-17s will be added down the road. Fortunately I know a bit about Airport Design Editor, so adding MIL_COMBAT parking areas on airports that I am directing vehicles to has already been accomplished. There doesn't appear to be that many moving parts to getting the AI Flight Plan tool programmed properly so it won't be long before POTUS can take a ride.

Does anyone know what would be involved in setting up a landing zone on the White House's South Lawn? I can make custom airports but haven't made a landing zone for helicopters that don't have a runway of some sort.
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John Young
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Re: Air Force One/Marine One schedule

Post by John Young »

I think that Brent already did that for The Whitehouse, at least for FS9. It's the same procedure that you already know for ADE, but the grass runway needs to be about 300ft in length to work with AI helicopters with an animated lift, as mine do.

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crushnik
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Re: Air Force One/Marine One schedule

Post by crushnik »

Excellent, thank you John!

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crushnik
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Re: Air Force One/Marine One schedule

Post by crushnik »

I think the issue is that since I reinstalled the simulator, whatever add-on structure that MAIW injected into the sim is now gone. I can create scenery all day long, but I don't know the first thing about adding AI aircraft. If someone has some insight on how to get the sim to recognize my AI aircraft I'd be grateful. Preferrably with an add-on.xml type setup so if I goof up I can fix it without having overwritten or installed anything into P3D's files.
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Re: Air Force One/Marine One schedule

Post by John Young »

You need an AFCAD file with a 300ft runway for the helicopters and adequate parking and comms frequencies.

The AI aircraft go in your P3D sim objects\airplanes folder.

You need a traffic file for your sim version compiled with AIFP using the 3 component text files. That will be placed in P3D\scenery\world\scenery.

How far have you got with those 3 elements and what is the bit you don't understand?

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TimC340
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Re: Air Force One/Marine One schedule

Post by TimC340 »

crushnik wrote: 22 Jan 2022, 19:39 I think the issue is that since I reinstalled the simulator, whatever add-on structure that MAIW injected into the sim is now gone. I can create scenery all day long, but I don't know the first thing about adding AI aircraft. If someone has some insight on how to get the sim to recognize my AI aircraft I'd be grateful. Preferrably with an add-on.xml type setup so if I goof up I can fix it without having overwritten or installed anything into P3D's files.
If you want to use an xml setup for addons, the best and easiest way to do so is through Lorby's Prepar3D Addon Organizer (2/3 down this page: https://www.lorby-si.com/downloads.html). Create directories for scenery, simobjects, effects, sound, scripts, texture, wherever you like on your computer. Use the 'add scenery' button for addon sceneries, and the 'add components' for aircraft and everything else. the app will also pick up any other addons you have and allow you to manage them (if you need to) from within it. It writes all the xmls and puts them in the right place; all you have to do is decide what you want to add.
crushnik
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Re: Air Force One/Marine One schedule

Post by crushnik »

Thanks for responding John. I can generate a BGL traffic file, but I saw somewhere that if you get an error message while building the flight plan, it just won't work unless you start over -- which I did not. I also think based on @TimC340's comment (thank you also) that I need to point the simulator to the MAIW AI traffic folder. Fortunately I was finally able to install the Lorby Addon Organizer (the false-alarm antivirus warning I used to get whenever I wanted to download the program always scared me off and it looks like they have gotten whatever triggered the alarm sorted).

While MAIW's Matrix doesn't seem to have survived my last re-installation of P3D, the file structure is all still intact, so hopefully there is a way with the Addon Organizer that I can link the AI aircraft without installing everything in the P3D directory, like how all my scenery is installed using the Add-On method.
John Young wrote: 22 Jan 2022, 21:43 You need an AFCAD file with a 300ft runway for the helicopters and adequate parking and comms frequencies.

The AI aircraft go in your P3D sim objects\airplanes folder.

You need a traffic file for your sim version compiled with AIFP using the 3 component text files. That will be placed in P3D\scenery\world\scenery.

How far have you got with those 3 elements and what is the bit you don't understand?

John
crushnik
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Re: Air Force One/Marine One schedule

Post by crushnik »

The Addon Organizer did the trick! No I just need to recreate my traffic BGL and I should be in business. If I get my 8-week presidential travel schedule sorted out I will see about sharing it with the MAIW community. Thank you to everyone for answering probably painfully basic questions. :)

Chris
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