Hixon link, for anyone desperate enough to want it...

[IanP]

I'll post it again anyway, although I doubt anyone is massively interested... My incredibly default looking version of Hixon was uploaded last night - it can be found at http://www.ianpsdarkcorner.co.uk/hixon/IJP_EGHX.zip

I hope both the people who are bored enough to download it have fun. :d

Ian P.

[Panther_99FS]

Thanks much Ian! :applause:

[olaf1924]

Thank-you Ian!

[CG_1976]

thank you Ian. do you have any plans for a RN or Royal Coast Guard scenery?

[IanP]

We don't have a military Coast Guard, in the same way that the US does... We have the "MCA" - Maritime and Coastguard Agency - who are just a co-ordination service for the most part. They use contracted civilian aircraft to provide rescue services, the RNLI for waterborne rescue and voluntary crews for coastal/cliff rescue. Most of our airborne search and rescue capability is currently provided by the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force still and they tend to be two or three aircraft stationed at bases primarily used for other purposes (RAF Valley, RAF Lossiemouth, RAF Boulmer, RM Chivenor and RNAS Culdrose are the ones I can list off the top of my head).

The upshot of all that is that there are no Coastguard bases in the UK in the same way that there are for the USCG. If you download my Valley AFD file, that's the home station of a detachment 202 Squadron, RAF, who provide SAR using bright yellow Sea Kings, and a detachment of the Defence Helicopter Flying School, who provide SAR training using Bell 412 Griffons.

It doesn't look like that will be the case for much longer though. There's a document on the MCA website here (http://www.mcga.gov.uk/c4mca/uksar.pdf) (PDF) which basically says that the military SAR capability will be wound up, with the ageing Sea Kings replaced by privately funded helicopters and RAF/RN crews "made available". That's been on the cards for some time, so it wouldn't surprise me if the idiots that control the purse strings are actually going to do it.

In terms of the Royal Navy, the about three stations that are still active aren't badly presented in FS, although they could do with better AFD files. When you remember that there are more Admirals than ships in the Royal Navy and the majority of our ships can't handle aircraft, you start realising how little of a Fleet Air Arm is actually left!

Did you have anywhere in particular that you want me to do? :icon_lol::isadizzy:

I'm actually looking at doing a couple more mid-war stations that were closed a long time ago next, but if anyone has any specific requests, just remember that they won't be 100% accurate representations!

Ian P.

[Seaking055]

Hi Ian

Me, I would love to see RNAS Culdrose done for FSX. I spent 8 years there on and off in the 70's.

the Culdrose in FSX is pretty bad with trees all over the place.

Hoping........

[IanP]

Yeah, okay. I thought Culdrose was better than that. I don't have trees all over the place, even with the sliders maxed out, but it is somewhat boring. That's a SAR base and a Navy base, so might keep Tim happy too... :d

I'll take a look at Culdrose as soon as I get chance. Don't know when that will be, but it may well be the next one I do, as the basics are already in place unlike Tempsford, which I was going to do next, but will have to do from scratch.

Ian P.

[Nick C]

Thanks Ian, installed the scenery which is great. I just need you to make an appearance on-line so that I may ask about the AI.

Translation: Get out of bed you lazy git! :d

[Nick C]

I think this is the correct P-40 mentioned in the readme.

Great repaint Jan :applause:

[SkippyBing]

Lee-on-Solent and Portland are effectively Coast Guard bases, Portland more so, Lee having a Police Air Unit and I think a Catalina there as well. I think the only other CG base is Stornaway which is also a civilian airfield.

Reference the Ships/Admirals ratio, there are 41 Admirals and around 100 ships, of which 42 are major warships i.e. FF/DD, CVS, LPD, SS and SSBN that doesn't include the RFA which has a number of major aviation capable ships. Still be nice if we actually ordered some new one....

[CG_1976]

Any SAR base will keep me pleased for hours.:applause: The only SAR base i have in Europe is Slingo in Ireland.

[IanP]

This one is only a new AFD file to allow for some AI to appear, but if you get the MAIW "RAF Hawks" packages, convert them to FSX using AIFPC and add this, it'll give you a home base for RAF Air Sea Rescue.

Valley is home to a detachment of bright yellow Sea Kings in the real world. I used the Alphasim one ported in for a while, but don't have that installed at the moment. Chris Brisland did me a repaint of the Merlin into RAF SAR colours suitable for the station, but to the best of my knowledge hasn't released it.

The AFD is available from here:
http://www.ianpsdarkcorner.co.uk/valley/EGOV_IJP_1_0.zip

Oh... and I'm definitely a glutton for punishment. The below was a couple of hours last night after I got very fed up of doing "proper work"... ;)

Cheers,

Ian P.

[EgoR64]

:wavey:

Super work, Thanks IanP.

Thanks for Sharing !!

Many Cheers !! :ernae:

[Roger]

Thanks Ian:ernae:
I think it's UTX that's put a motorway through the middle!

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y203/rogera/Hixon.jpg

[BASys]

Hi Folks


For Info -
The MoD and MCA together provide
a 24 hour military and civil SAR service for the UK SAR Region
from 12 bases around the UK.

MCGA
2x Sikorsky S92A - Sumburgh Airport (Shetland)
2x Sikorsky S92A - Stornoway (Isle of Lewis)
1x Augusta Westland 139 - Portland
2x Augusta Westland 139 - Lee-on-Solent

RAF
Sea Kings at -
Boulmer
Chivenor
Leconfield
Lossiemouth
Valley
Wattisham

RN
Sea Kings at -
Culdrose
Prestwick



Scenery -
Not wishing to stunt anyone's creativity, :d
just save yourselves some work reinventing the wheel(s).

Take a peek at the free FSX 'airport' sceneries already available -

UK2000 VFR Airfields DEMO (http://www.uk2000scenery.org/forum/index.php?topic=2818.0)
Includes Portland, (plus 6 others).

Compatible Freeware Airfield List - Updated 3.9.08 (http://www.horizonsimulation.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2761)
With links to airfield specific topics.
There's a nice looking Culdrose in there.

NB -
Some are better standards than others.
Include default exclusions.
All fit into GenX.
Most have mesh-blends, (no plateaus).
Some require addon libs.



HTH
ATB
Paul

[IanP]

There are some very nice sceneries available via the Horizon site for the Horizon photoscenery, that's the problem. There's no flatten and you get trees, roads, bushes, everywhere if you try and use them without it because people who develop specifically for photoscenery don't bother with exclude files. They don't need them.

I may have a look at just creating a flatten to go under the one for the photoscenery, but they also tend to be blended to go with the Horizon mesh, which again doesn't work unless you have the Horizon photoscenery.

Just as an aside, if you read that MCA policy document, it specifically says that military crews - i.e. not aircraft - will be doing ASR in the future and implies, as it is open to competitive tender, that the aircraft will be privatised. Don't expect to see those Sea Kings for long.

Edited to add: Roger: The road crossing the taxiway along the south edge is correct. It was there during the war and is still there now. I assume they must have closed the road when the airfield was active, although as there are only a couple of roads into and out of Hixon, the locals must have been mightily peeved about that. It is, indeed, put there by UTX.

I'm also told that on the default scenery, an inaccurately placed railway line which should run along the Western side actually cuts through a couple of the dispersals. If anyone complains, I may remove those dispersals for non-UTX or photoscenery users, but won't otherwise.

Edit 2: Many of those sceneries also use FS9 objects. Great if you aren't using DX10, or in many cases just SP2, but if you are using SP2 then those buildings don't work.

Ian P.

[BASys]

Hi Folks

Ian -
Agree with what you're saying. :d

There are probably issues with most
if not using GenX or VFR Real.

Though they're worth using as a template to create a derived version,
as they do contain runways/taxiways positioned as per IRL.



Copying the airport boundary from the default,
(and if required, repositioning),
will reinstate the autogen excludes.

There's been several discussions about not using FS9 libraries.
There may be issues with some objects in DX10,
though should be identified in the relevant airport thread.
There shouldn't be anything other than a minor FPS impact in SP2,
(as that's what's supposed to be used for GenX).

You can delete any problem objects, substituting FSX defaults.
Detect them by adding the following to your fsx.CFG [SCENERY] section
// Alert missing objects
MissingLibraryAlert=1



Sometimes it might just be easier to start from scratch. :d



re: SAR
Cheers.
Been following developments for the last 4 years,
as we'd a part created AI SAR set for ODG.



HTH
ATB
Paul

[Seaking055]

Many thanks Ian for taking Culdrose up, you can really get close with google earth now, a lot of changes have gone on since I was there.



This one is only a new AFD file to allow for some AI to appear, but if you get the MAIW "RAF Hawks" packages, convert them to FSX using AIFPC and add this, it'll give you a home base for RAF Air Sea Rescue.

Valley is home to a detachment of bright yellow Sea Kings in the real world. I used the Alphasim one ported in for a while, but don't have that installed at the moment. Chris Brisland did me a repaint of the Merlin into RAF SAR colours suitable for the station, but to the best of my knowledge hasn't released it.

The AFD is available from here:
http://www.ianpsdarkcorner.co.uk/valley/EGOV_IJP_1_0.zip

Oh... and I'm definitely a glutton for punishment. The below was a couple of hours last night after I got very fed up of doing "proper work"... ;)

Cheers,

Ian P.

[IanP]

I think my previous post came across rather harsher than intended... Sorry. This happens when your entire website just went "stuffedup.com". :banghead:

It's all down at the moment so none of the files are available. I'll get something back up ASAP and re-upload the airport files, hopefully with a front page that will actually tell you what's there this time (which is why I had to clear the entire site - the base packages won't install to a non-empty directory structure....)

What I have found, although I've not tested them in DX10, is an entire library of FSX hangars, which I have used to redo Cosford already to an extent (the Cold War Exhibition building is still missing and is unlikely to appear in this version!) so I'll do some more testing with them and report back results.

Ian P.

[CG_1976]

AIFPC, Were do i find that tool?

[IanP]

I believe I got it from Avsim, although I can't find it there now.

Post #57 has a working link on this thread: http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4746&page=3

Ian P.

[CG_1976]

Got it thanks, Now what can help me scan aircraft in FSX to use for Ai. I ahve a few SAR Ac's and HC's to use but i need to know how to put them into the AC text.

[IanP]

You have to add them manually - or use AI Flight Planner, available from Avsim, in which case you don't need AIFPC, as AI Flight Planner can save directly into FSX format.

I used AIFP to do the Wellingtons and one random DC-3 for Hixon and it didn't take very long at all - that was starting from scratch, not basing the file on an existing one.

Edit: Re-reading your post, it sounds like you want to just scan your aircraft directory, pick them and have them fly as AI. It doesn't work that way. You can create random flight plans for your traffic using the SDK, but they will be truly random. Otherwise you have to build your own flightplans for specific aircraft to/from specific places. You can do that in Lee Swordy's TrafficTools format and convert them using AIFPC, or can build them in AI Flight Planner. You can also do them through the SDK if you want, but any way you choose to build flightplans, they will not just happen - you have to create them.

Ian P.

[BASys]

Hi Folks


I think my previous post came across rather harsher than intended... Sorry.
This happens when your entire website just went "stuffedup.com". :banghead:
Ian -
No worries whatsoever,
you made perfectly valid points. :d

Also appreciate your website frustration.
Glad to see you're up & running again.

Do like some of those mountain headers.
Are they Marinelli/Drupal defaults ?

ATB
Paul

[CG_1976]

Thank you Ian. Actually i just got Trnasload Virtual's Coast Guard AI into FSX useing exsiting fs9 bgls and converting useing AIFPC. Worked like a charm and now with fsx blg ai i getting better fps.