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Post by awralls on Jul 30, 2020 2:52:29 GMT -5
This is brilliant stuff; thanks so much for revisiting this excellent thread.
I wonder, if you have the time and inclination, you would ever care to provide a plain persons guide to making period navaids using the SDK compiler?
Cheers,
Andy
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Post by Defender on Jul 30, 2020 11:03:01 GMT -5
Hi Andy, I've used a programme called Easynavs for that and I think Connieguy uses that too. It's created by Herve Sors who I think is the acknowledged expert on navaid matters. Easynav is used to add navaids and an associated programme BGL Navaids is for editing or even deleting. Both were originally intended to allow folk to keep modern navaids up to date but of course are just as useful for backdating. Here's his website, sors.fr/aero/navaids.htmlIf you need help please ask and just to add the usual note of caution be sure to keep backups. Bill
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Post by connieguy on Jul 30, 2020 15:49:49 GMT -5
Hello Andy. Thank you for your interest. I am not as skilled at these things as Bill and use a very simple method based on something he originally sent me, so I needed to clear things with him before posting this. Basically, all you have to do is use Notepad to create an xml file. The text for my Greek file is as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!-- Created by Scenery Design Engine (SDE) on 15/02/2016 --> <FSData version="9.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="bglcomp.xsd"> <Ndb lat="39.60728" lon="19.90148" alt="30.48" type="HH" frequency="403.00" range="185200" magvar="0" region="LG" ident="SWK" name="CORFU RETRO"> </Ndb>
<Ndb lat="38.08215" lon="21.42059" alt="30.48" type="HH" frequency="326.00" range="185200" magvar="0" region="LG" ident="SWX" name="ARAXOS AB"> </Ndb>
<Ndb lat="37.87052" lon="23.74354" alt="30.48" type="HH" frequency="372.00" range="277800" magvar="0" region="LG" ident="HN" name="ATHENS RANGE"> </Ndb>
<Ndb lat="35.06935" lon="26.15707" alt="30.48" type="HH" frequency="309.00" range="92600" magvar="0" region="LG" ident="ZO" name="SITIA RETRO"> </Ndb>
<Ndb lat="35.34103" lon="25.15449" alt="30.48" type="HH" frequency="259.00" range="185200" magvar="0" region="LG" ident="SWH" name="IRAKLION RETRO"> </Ndb>
<Ndb lat="36.24206" lon="28.08517" alt="30.48" type="HH" frequency="339.00" range="185200" magvar="0" region="LG" ident="SWR" name="RHODES RETRO"> </Ndb>
<Ndb lat="39.04612" lon="26.61129" alt="30.48" type="HH" frequency="398.00" range="185200" magvar="0" region="LG" ident="SWY" name="MYTILENE RETRO"> </Ndb>
<Ndb lat="37.9442" lon="22.98065" alt="30.48" type="HH" frequency="393.00" range="185200" magvar="0" region="LG" ident="PD" name="CORINTH RETRO"> </Ndb>
</FSData>
//92,600 - 50 nm 185200 - 100 nm 277800 150 nm
Once you have a basic file like this simply copy and paste it to a text file and then modify it to suit the NDBs you want to create. The Latitude and Longitude given on the Military Airfield site are often described as approximate and sometimes are very approximate indeed, so I always establish the location on Plan G, which can also be used to provide the decimal coordinates that are required. I don't know whether the 'alt' setting is of any importance, but I always leave it at 30.48 and everything seems to work; similarly with 'type' and 'magvar'. Others may wish to emend my comments on this. 'Frequency' is the one given by the Military Airfields site except when FS9 has an NDB with that frequency at that location, in which case I change it. 'Range' is in metres, and the final line reminds me what they are in terms of nautical miles. 'Region' is the first two letters of the ICAO code for the airports within that country - EG for the UK, LF for France, LG for Greece, etc. 'Ident' is the two or three letters given by Military Airfields. All this should be saved as a file with .xml as the ending. My FS2004 SDK bgl.comp folder I also use to create exclude files occasionaly and it contains the following files - bglcomp.exe bglcomp.xsd EULA.rtf FS2004BGLCompSDK.doc Generic Building Textures.xls imagetool.exe LibraryObjects.xls readme.text resample.exe tmfviewer.exe All these files are dated 2003 or 2004 and I think simply come with the SDK. In addition, I am fairly sure, you have to install something called Microsoft msxml I had problems with this but did eventually find a download which worked. The procedure is then very simple. You put the xml file in the bgl.comp folder, select Icons as the view option and then simply drag the xml file on top of the bglcomp.exe There will be a quick flash as a black screen appears and a bgl with the same name as the xml should then appear in the folder too. If it doesn't you have made a mistake in the xml. That bgl can then be put in Add On Scenery - scenery or in a separate folder within Add On Scenery with a scenery folder containing the bgl(s) but no texture folder; in the latter case, of course, it needs adding to the FS9 Scenery Library.
When I have done all this I run the Plan G Create Database procedure and check that the navaids are where they should be. If they are not, it is always worth making sure that you haven't forgotten minus signs for latitude and longitude when appropriate. You can add further NDBs to the xml and recompile any time you want, but it is a good idea to keep a back-up in case you make an error at that point. Hope this helps. Please ask if there is anything I have failed to clarify. Comments from others - and there may well be some - welcome.
Ken
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Post by awralls on Jul 31, 2020 14:34:28 GMT -5
Ken/Bill,
Thanks muchly. I'm inspired! I'm definitely going to have a go and I'll come with any Qs once I make a start.
Cheers,
Andy
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Post by connieguy on Aug 3, 2020 15:25:25 GMT -5
That's excellent, Andy.
I have no information on historical navaids in the Near East so my flight from Tel Aviv to Tehran used only NDBs associated with those two airports. Navigated by tracking out on the reciprocal of the Tel Aviv radio beacon and then by sextant, there was visual confirmation of my location when I passed over the rather distinctively shaped northern end of Lake Tharthar slightly north of track and shortly afterward saw below me many lights which I assume were associated with settlements near the Tigris. In FS9-land, of course, lights helpfully burn all night. After that I knew from the weather forecast that the wind would turn southerly and allowed for that, but was still blown further north than I expected, I suspect because the wind strengthened after dawn. On this occasion I had not taken a second forecast to cover the later stages of the flight. Tehran lies at nearly 4,000 feet, landing in my experience is always on R29 and there is high ground to the south-west which delays progress below 9,000 feet. Even so, there is plenty of time to descend to the runway once lined up on it and in making the landing the only navaid I used was the ILS.
The flight from Tehran to Karachi was scheduled by Air France to leave the former at 09:50 (UTC+3:30) and reach the latter at 15:45 (UTC+5), a flight time of roughly 4 hours and 30 minutes for just over 1,000 nautical miles. In navigational terms it seems very likely that there was a radio beacon with a range of at least 100 miles at Karachi and only a navigational error of some magnitude would hinder this being picked up at the end of a flight of that length conducted largely by ded reckoning and the information on wind strength and direction supplied for points on the route by a weather forecast; and in this case I took two forecasts, the second for three hours after take-off. However, I was also hopeful that it would be possible to be guided by landmarks on the way in a similar fashion to Lake Tharthar on the previous flight and the Greek island on the first leg. To that end, I have a good quality global mesh in the form of Pilots FS Global 2010 and also the Open Topography relief map for Iran and Pakistan which comes with Plan G. Thus, there seemed a good chance that features shown on the map would be recognisable in flight, and in addition the route passed through the settlement of Zahedan where there is now an international airport. In an area where settlements seem to be very few this looked like the equivalent of a Pacific island. The reality proved rather less straightforward.
Contact Two! Mehrabad Airport Tehran, 6th August 1957. Scenery by Cal Classic. Mesh by FS Global. Lockheed Super Constellation L-1049G by Manfred Jahn and the Connie Team
The Open Topograohy map of the first part of the flight with the flight plan and the Plan G breadcrumb trail marked in white. Tracking out on the reciprocal of the NDB VR was not very successful here, although the RMI needle seemed to be in the right place. Although I looked carefully I was unable to recognise any of the high ground shown around Waypoint OPKC01.
Waypoint OPKC03 with the sighting of Zahedan and the mountain range to the West. Sighting of Mount Taftan.
Zahedan passes to the north. Although it appears quite close the breadcrumb shows that it was actually about 25 nm away.
The high ground to the west shown on the map while Zahedan was in sight. These mountains were rather more readily visible than they appear to be in this screenshot.
A sextant shot of the sun taken in the vicinity of Waypoint OPKC03 at the time of the sighting of Zahedan. I am somewhere on the blue line of position and clearly somewhere near the waypoint. In fact the breadcrumb suggests that I was about level with it but 25nm to the south.
Shortly after the sighting of Zahedan I was somewhat startled to see this eminence approaching on the starboard bow. This is the volcanic mountain of Taftan which reaches a height of about 4000 metres. The crews who flew this route must have been very familiar with it as a valuable point of reference about halfway through the flight, but there is little on the Open Topography map to mark it as any different to the surrounding area.
The later part of the flight. I realised at this point that I was south of the track because I was over rough ground when I should have been over desert. The lake which is shown on the map is a seasonal one and absent from FS9.
I have been observing the heavens throughout the flight in the program Stellarium, which has provided the azimuth and elevation data necessary for the sextant shots. Near the Sun Venus has also been visible (although absent from the sim - there are no planets in FS9) and at 09:52 I decide that the azimuths of the two have diverged enough for a proper sextant shot. The clouds are also worth noticing, because it is possible they are a sign of the proximity of the coast.
The shot shows me to be south of the track but rapidly approaching the coast. Here it is plotted on the flight plan in Google Earth.
The sea at last, and with it we pick up the Karachi NDB. I was not over generous in loading fuel and this is something of a relief.
I think there has been poor visibility in Karachi every time I have landed there and this flight is no different - 4 nm in this case, but there is an NDB which allows lining up with R25 and an ILS. There may have been GCA but on this occasion we will dispense with it. The runway lights appear out of the murk just in time, after we have passed over the NDB.
And there is a decent touchdown, two minutes late on the schedule after taking off one minute early,
Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Karachi. Scenery by Cal Classic. And we have learnt something about simulating navigation during the day in the classic period. It is in some respects more difficult than the real thing, because I needed better maps and the FS9 landscape is not as informative as what real crews saw out of real windows. However, I hope for further progress. It is a long way to Tokyo.
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Post by Erik on Aug 3, 2020 16:52:21 GMT -5
Excellent as always, thank you Ken!
Erik
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Post by Tom/CalClassic on Aug 4, 2020 11:14:14 GMT -5
Great story, and a classic trek to Asia.
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Post by connieguy on Aug 4, 2020 11:32:41 GMT -5
Thank you very much, Erik and Tom. The 1700 nm to Rangoon is next.
Addendum. Bill has just sent me a Flight article from February 1959 on a Comet 4 proving flight to the Far East. There was no ILS or GCA at Tehran, but there was a VOR. There was an NDB at Zahedan but it was not working.
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Post by Jorge on Aug 4, 2020 15:07:21 GMT -5
Very nice, Ken!
Mom worked for Air France from 1964-1994. She worked the counter in San Juan, then Rates Desk starting in 1979 in NY. Unfortunately she only got to work with propliners for about a year since the DC-3 that did the runs from PR down to Guadaloupe and Martinique was replaced with the Caravelle fairly soon after she got hired.
Anything with Air France is always welcome!
Jorge Miami, FL
PS: The "alt" on the ndb is in meters and asl from what I understand. Not sure what effect, if any, this would have on the range you manually set (i.e. a higher altitude to clear a mountain that would otherwise obscure the signal in real life). Also, I'm not sure if a higher altitude would let you increase the range past the 112nm limit we have seen in the past.
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Post by Erik on Aug 4, 2020 15:51:49 GMT -5
Hi all,
Somewhere I think I read the altitude of beacons in FS is used to calculate slant ranges, so the actual distance from transmitter to receiver taking their respective altitudes into account. This is then likely only useful for DME elements as the effect on the reach of other types of beacons will be hardly noticeable.
The four NDB classes are taken from real life and therefore still in use even with P3D, all from what I read. In FS they are COMPASS_POINT (also called Compass Locator elsewhere), MH (Medium Homing), H (Homing) and HH (you've guessed it). Their typical ranges are 15, 25, 50 and 75 NM respectively. Since their range is programmed separately in FS, range and class can be mismatched with the only consequence being that one could get a bit misinformed when using map view, where the classes are displayed but not the actual ranges. Plan-G does this the other way around, as it displays range but not class upon mouse over on its map (augmented by a very nice graphic display option under the right mouse button).
Erik
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Post by connieguy on Aug 5, 2020 14:26:08 GMT -5
Gentlemen. Thank you for your comments. There is some valuable material on classic NDBs here: calclassic.proboards.com/thread/9352/range-ndbs-classic-periodBoth Bill and I have found that no matter how big a range you give an NDB the limit in FS9 is about 150 nm. The FS9 ranges come from real world practice, I guess principally in the USA, although some FS9 HH NDBs have a range of 112.5 nm. Like Erik I use Plan G for flight planning and as he says it gives the range of navaids. 'Nondirectional radio marker beacons normally operate in the frequency band from 200 to 415 KHz... They are of three classes: those with power of less than 50 watts (MH); those with power of 50 watts up to 1999 watts (H); and those with power of 2000 watts or more (HH). The service area of MH beacons usually does not exceed 25 miles. H beacons are normally usable for about 50 miles; HH beacons up to 75 miles.' T.C. Lyon, 'Practical Air Navigation' (11th edn., Jeppesen, 1972), p. 51. John Hewson's Flickr albums cover Rangoon, Manila and Vietnam 1963, but we also need the airways maps which show both routes and sometimes navaids not associated with airports. At the moment we have those for Western Europe as far east as Greece. Does anybody know where others might be obtained?
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Post by Erik on Aug 5, 2020 15:46:10 GMT -5
Ah, great addition about the power classes. And on the maximum range: I suspect that to be set internally to 275 km in FS(9) as that equals 148.49 NM, which matches the experiences reported. At this time I cannot help with the route maps, unfortunately.
Cheers, Erik
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Post by Defender on Aug 5, 2020 17:07:22 GMT -5
Yes these NDB ranges match the published ranges of the London and Manchester area early 50's NDB's. En route 50nm, terminal area 25nm and marker NDB's 10nm.
But FS9 can't match the 320nm reported by a BOAC 707 at 37,000' over Greenland tuned to Prins Christiansund. Flight Global article.
Bill
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Post by connieguy on Aug 10, 2020 11:52:07 GMT -5
I have kept a logbook of my flights for quite a long time and the first thing I did to prepare for Karachi to Rangoon was look at what was recorded about it last time. One thing was the relatively poor performance of the aircraft in high temperatures and with a heavy fuel load; another, the frequent thunderstorms over India and Burma; a third a number of changes of wind direction; and finally a landing in a storm with a visibility of 4 nautical miles. The measured distance was 1705nm and I took off 2 minutes early and landed 14 minutes early, at 01:41 (UTC+6:30). This flight will be flown with only period navaids, but the route is virtually identical. Bill sent me a low resolution map of Indian airways which showed that there was an airway from Karachi going through Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Bhubaneshwar and then across the sea to Rangoon (now Yangon). It was not possible to extract navaids from it so I used the existing FS9 NDBs of 75nm for Ahmedabad and Nagpur and 112.5 nm for Bhubaneshwar. John Hewson sent me an Avigation map of the airway from Rangoon to Bangkok which revealed that there was a Rangoon NDB RGN on 380 which no longer exists and another one on 397 just off the end of Runway 03. This does still exist and has a range in FS9 of 22.5 nm. John's chart also suggests that the range of RGN, which I have recreated, was at least 100 nm. Below is my kneeboard chart for Rangoon which shows all the navaids now present in my FS9, although it might be noted that 380 and 397 are all that are necessary to make a good approach and landing in anything but very poor visibility, when the ILS comes in distinctly useful.
I took off a minute early with a ground temperature of 32C and carrying 26,274 lbs of fuel. Change to High Blower was at just over FL120 but climb thereafter was sluggish and I flattened out at FL150 at an OAT of +5. As on the previous two legs, the cowl flaps had to be left partly open to control cylinder head temperatures throughout the flight and although I later climbed to FL170 and could have gone higher at a later stage, I left it at that. A pressure altitude of FL170 is in any case a density altitude of almost FL200 at 5C. Below is the Plan G breadcrumb trail for the first part of the flight, together with the flight plan.
The least successful leg was the first. I tracked out on the reciprocal of the Karachi NDB but this did not produce a good result and I might have been better flying VFR by means of the coastline in the early stages. When I picked up Ahmedabad I was able to get back on track, but of course errors on that scale cost time.
Ahmedabad passes below as the sun goes down.
These early legs were long ones and NDBs with a range of 75nm were not as helpful as more powerful ones might have been. Again I wandered north on the approach to Nagpur but eventually passed overhead, while doing considerably better with Bhubaneshwar probably assisted by the NDB range of 112.5 nm. Its lights, too, eventually passed below:
The previous night the flights to Tel Aviv and then Tehran had been accompanied by clear skies which were full of stars. On this flight the skies over India cleared sufficiently at one point for the bigger stars to be visible but their appearance was brief and by the time I reached Bhubaneshwar I was prepared for the fact that it might not be possible to use the sextant over the sea at all; nor, of course, would I be able in the dark to use a driftmeter either. Fortunately knowing from the earlier flight that the winds might change significantly I had deliberately put three waypoints over the sea into the flight plan so that the weather report could give me a decent idea of what would happen to wind speed and direction. I also took a weather report on take-off and then one for four hours later. This second report stated that at Bhubaneshwar the wind at FL190 (I was at FL170) would be 046/35, at INDO000 119/15, at INDO01 163/34 at INDO02 229/34 and at VYGW 223/21. Thus the winds would veer from north-easterly to south-easterly, to southerly to south-westerly and they would increase in strength; a crosswind of 34 knots on a heading of 108 magnetic needs to be taken reasonably seriously. In dealing with this ded reckoning was the only expedient. My E6b computer was used to work out the heading offset necessary at each of the waypoints, although there was no way without a driftmeter of working out exactly when the wind changes would occur. Even so, part 2 of the breadcrumb shows just what ded reckoning can sometimes do, probably given a fair bit of luck. When the Rangoon NDB was eventually picked up the aircraft was only 7.1 nm north of the track.
The welcome sound of Morse as RGN is received at 18:42 UTC. The needle points at 120 degrees when dead on track would have been 110.
ATIS informed me that landing would be on R21 (in the real world the radio operator would probably have been told this by Morse) and the clock that I would be hard put to meet the schedule. Deciding when to descend I always find the most difficult part of propliner operations especially when, as here, the landing is not straight in. However, in this case I made a reasonable job of it and came into the runway fairly tight. I also descended into a storm, as on the previous flight. There had been storms and a lot of lightning at times over India, but always below me and there was no turbulence. Now the aircraft began to kick slightly and I was somewhat bemused at an OAT of 12C to see the manifold pressure needles fall to zero. This was carburettor icing, which my virtual flight crew dealt with rapidly on the command 'Engine Heat'. The needles recovered, OAT rose higher and the same command turned carburettor heat off. In the real world all this would have been done by the flight engineer. Although ATIS had advised of a visibility of 3nm it was in fact far better than that. The runway was visible a considerable distance away and although the ILS was tuned in the rmi needle pointing to the NDB beyond the end of the runway would have been adequate by itself.
Flaps were fully down, and the landing gear, and the landing lights were switched on when we went to Flaps 80. And the aircraft was trimmed for landing, this aircraft I have flown so often I feel that I know it like the back of my hand, as real crews must have done; even so, as I approached the threshold, that point when one is never more fully awake, there was some turbulence and the altitude calls told me I was too low. A burst of power corrected that, but in reducing it again I overdid it, descended too quickly and there was a slight bounce and skip on landing. Realistic enough in the circumstances, no doubt, and one feels for crews who did overnight flights of 7 hours and then had to land in conditions like these. And we were two minutes ahead of schedule after all. Not as good as the last flight here, but getting off track in the early stages probably cost vital minutes, and Air France crews were clearly expected to be able to deliver.
Rangoon International. Scenery by Cal Classic.
Finally, my thanks to Bill and John Hewson for vital information on the charts. John tells me that he will be uploading the airways charts from Rangoon to Tokyo via Bangkok, Saigon and Manila as a Flickr album.
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Post by jwh on Aug 11, 2020 5:29:19 GMT -5
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