USS Portland and Cruiser Scouting Squadron 5 Detatchment 3

[tgycgijoes]

I wanted to be able to launch the Curtiss SOC Seagull by Paul Clawson from a Cruiser Catapault after launching off the USS Idaho which comes with the FSX download. AiBoatTraffic just didn't work so I "disected" the Idaho and found that it was an "airport" so...I turned the VEH CA33 yanco USS Portland cruiser into scenery with MCX and created an airport with four runways each 10'x60' in ADEx. Uploaded the Portland bgl into the Object Library and placed it in the airport. The latest version of ADEx is so cool because the object is not just a colored rectangle but an actual model so I was able to place the runway starts directly on the catapaults port and starboard. Runways 1 and 2 are orientated 000 degrees relative to the centerline of the ship as are the catapaults amidships. Runways 3 and 4 are at 45 degree angles for launching the seaplanes since the catapaults are stationary in the model of the cruiser. I tried it out in FSX and it works perfectly. Unfortunately there is no way to have movement of the cruiser because it is a scenery item as an airport not an ai boat or pilotable ship. What I AM doing is using ADEx I am relocating the lat/long position of the cruiser/airport based on a schedule I created of plotted positions from Pearl Harbor the starting point using a route created in Google Earth. That's the last two days work most of which was trial and error figuring out how to do it. I got to have fun today as the photos show. I downloaded and used a really cool program for my first patrol called formation ai. It is so simple and it works great.

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My wingman and I flew for about 1/2 hour out at 150 knots patrolling the area west of Pearl practising formation positions, really a lot of fun. You can program up to 4 aircraft. Then turned around but you can't turn the ai aircraft unfortunately so I let him go on. (Will go in a straight line for 1000 miles it says) I closed the formation ai program and returned to the cruiser using RFN TACAN to locate it perfectly. Landed and taxiied on the water alongside to be picked up by the crane and put back on the catapault.

[tgycgijoes]

With the Prokey version of ADEx it is possible to change the location of the airport which is what I thought I was going to do. Wrong! You can change the lat/long BUT the runways, cruiser and runway starts each has its own location and do NOT move with the airport when you save its new location. I actually spent two hours calculating the changes from the one to the other and after all was said and done, its not worth it. The cruiser is going to be where it is off the coast of OAHU when I use it. Very disappointing that they do not slave to the airport at least that's what it looks like to me. I guess because once an airport is created at its location it stays there or is deleted.

I am going to contact "Scruffyduck" and see what he says. I went to their forum and it looks like this is the case though.

[tgycgijoes]

As you can see from the date, this was done two years ago. Since that time I like to think that I have learned a lot about textures and also ADEX. Notice above the original panel lines on Paul Clawson's textures which I redid with reference from my Profile Publication on the SOC Seagull.

Now to the cruiser: Back in 2017 for some reason, I was able to make the runways "transparent" so that they did not overshadow the catapault rails but with all the updates since then, something happened and it's not possible anymore. I had a conversation with Scruffyduck over at FSDevelopers this past weekend and he actually said he and the other developers wished they never had opened this can of worms. Microsoft never intended to have runways able to be made transparent and ADEx and FSX SDK don't play nice together when it comes to transparent runways no matter what I tried to do. That being said, I am going to go back to the beginning of this project though and list what I HAVE accomplished. The SOC-1 Seagull by Paul Clawson was originally intended to be a CFS2 aircraft. It was then converted to FS2002/2004 with simple textures. Then, in February of 2009 it was converted to a native FSX Acceleration model with working VC. It's not an exact panel but the beauty of the model is that you can access and change it which is my next task now that I have it working in FSX. The panel is illustrated and labeled in the Profile.

I found the most documentation on Cruiser Scout Squadron 6 in the Profile so I chose to make that my new subject. VCS6-Det 1 is a four plane section stationed aboard USS Minneapolis, CA-36 the flagship for Cruiser Scouting Squadron 6. Above I left off with how you could not move the cruiser from one location to another. Technically true...but I hate to take no for an answer, ask my wife, LOL! No matter how hard I tried to place a Seagull on the catapault of a cruiser using Carrier Convoy Creator, it ended up inside the hull so I gave up on a moving cruiser. I went back to my original way of having a cruiser and converted Yanco-san's USS Minneapolis from the Battle Of The Coral Sea Group model mdl file into a bgl file so that it can be used as a library object in Airport Design Editor which I found out how to do back in the NAS Alameda project. Success!!! Again by trial and error I found out that if I make the runways 5 feet wide and 20 feet long and "UNKNOWN" surface they for practical purposes disappear in the sim accomplishing "transparent" runways. I don't know if this will work for you on grass surfaces you'll have to try it. I found in one of my 1940 USAAF airports that "grass" runway surface on top of scenery grass is still visible.

Next, I opened up Google Earth Pro and located "the airport" 15 miles offshore from San Clemente Island off of Naval Station San Diego where she spent 1938. Created a new airport with an elevation of 32 feet the height off the water of the top surface of the catapaults by trial and error. USS Portland is 36 feet above the water. Then added the four runways numbered 01 starboard direction of the catapault and 02 port side. Unfortunately, Yanco-san did not design the catapaults to rotate so the 45 degree angle to launch is simulated by the runways 03 and 04 respectively. Now for the experiment.

If I couldn't relocate the CA-36 in ADEx, I created a whole new airport 60 miles further on a heading of 200 degrees magnetic or 3 hours at a speed of 20 knots. The airport had a new name, C36A at the new lat and long and it worked. I can create a flight plan using the two "airports" or cruiser locations and though the CA36 "airport" is still there, its 60 miles astern or invisible in FSX so for my purposes, the cruiser has moved from one location to the next. Below are three new screenshots: On the catapault facing forward, ready to launch port side (this is accomplised by going to "MAP" "Go to the airport" and select runway 04 instead of 02. The parking brake is set to activate the catapault in RCBCO-40 you can see the gauge at the top of the screen with the green light meaning ready to launch and the third shot is airborne. I am looking forward to having a lot of fun searching with the Seagull. If you want to share any of my ideas, I will be happy to help you setup a scenario.

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