JHS_Italy_revised airfields by Achim27619!

[Rami]

Good morning,

Achim has been generous enough over the last several months to revise the bitmaps, and in more than a few cases, completely revamp the airfields in his Italy package. This includes two new airfields in the Po River Valley, not too far away from Kelticheart.

This package now contains a total of thirty-one airfields, both on land and on points from the water. All airfields have been blended beautifully into the surrounding terrain, and certain specific airfields, such as Palermo on Sicily, have been beautifully reworked. There is also a correction in this package for the airfield at Decimomanu, which had part of its GSL layout missing in the previous version.

Just like in North Africa, there are instructions and a separate section on how to remove the older airfields, so that they do not interfere with the installation of new airfields.

Enjoy, and thank you very much, Achim!

[mvg3d]

Good morning,

Achim has been generous enough over the last several months to revise the bitmaps, and in more than a few cases, completely revamp the airfields in his Italy package. This includes two new airfields in the Po River Valley, not too far away from Kelticheart.

This package now contains a total of thirty-one airfields, both on land and on points from the water. All airfields have been blended beautifully into the surrounding terrain, and certain specific airfields, such as Palermo on Sicily, have been beautifully reworked. There is also a correction in this package for the airfield at Decimomanu, which had part of its GSL layout missing in the previous version.

Just like in North Africa, there are instructions and a separate section on how to remove the older airfields, so that they do not interfere with the installation of new airfields.

Enjoy, and thank you very much, Achim!

HI RAMI,
A SILLY QUESTION : THERE IS A WAY TO USE THESE AIRPORTS/SCENERIES IN FS9 ?

:wavey::wavey::wavey::wavey:

[kelticheart]

THANK YOU, ACHIM!!!!

:applause: :jump: :applause:


Verona-Villafranca and Ghedi-Montichiari near Brescia were among the most important fascist Repubblica Sociale Italiana airbases during 1944-45.

I can finally send in retirement GZR's frame-hog Ghedi scenery!

Since you did already Treviso, Reggio Emilia, Ferrara and Piacenza, now we have all the necessary airbases to build the entire Italian campaign, from the Sept. 9th, 1943 armistice to the surrender of the remaining German forces on April 25th, 1945.

Lots of non-Italian historians consider the Italian Allied liberation campaign as over when Firenze and Tuscany was liberated at the end of 1943. The Italian front a secondary one.Nothing is further from the truth.

At that point Allied HQ decided to avoid the risk a 1943-44 winter campaign among the Appennini mountain chain, whose territory favoured greatly ambushes from Whermacht forces. They had learned it the hard way, through the bitter Montecassino siege and the guerilla-like desperately slow march North through the Italian boot, marked by the presence of countless WWII military burial grounds.

The Po Valley, therefore the entire North of Italy, remained in German and fascist hands for the entire 1944, up until the end of April 1945. Better known as the Repubblica Sociale Italiana, a German-controlled puppet state as Chinese Kuomintang was in Japanese hands, for the civilians living in this part of the country, the most populated part of Italy, these 16 months were a nightmare. With WWII still going on, a civilian war flared during those months, among those who embraced the Liberation cause and those who choose to stick to the old regime. Brother against brother, fathers against sons, partisans fighting the nazi-fascist troops which, in turn, took bloody revenges on the civilians. Whole villages and families were wiped out.

Those months were also the theatre of an intense Allied aerial campaign, designed to burn the ground in Northern Italy behind retreating German troops, in the hope to shorten WWII and force Hitler to surrender by Christmas of 1944. Southern Italy became also the base for intensifying the Allied air supremacy bombing campaign against Germany and we have already a great CFS2 Tuskegee Airmen campaign to cover part of that era.

This is where CFS2 comes in the picture, for all of us lovers of WWII aviation history. Thanks to great Achim, we now have the primary Luftwaffe-R.S.I. air bases in Northern Italy to start building the very last slice, so much overlooked, part of WWII aerial warfare history. We have all of the aircraft models involved and their correct repaints. Among the tactical air-to-ground missions, the defence missions and the strategic bombing missions, there's plenty of inspiration to create for both opponents involved.

Since my CFS2 field of expertise does not cover mission-campaign building skills, I'll gladly volunteer for gathering info and whatever material necessary to our campaign gurus in order to build a 1943-45 Italian aerial campaign/s. All of SOH Italian members are invited to join in.

Cheers!
KH :ernaehrung004:

[Rami]

HI RAMI,
A SILLY QUESTION : THERE IS A WAY TO USE THESE AIRPORTS/SCENERIES IN FS9 ?

:wavey::wavey::wavey::wavey:

mvg3d,

I'm not sure, to be perfectly honest. However, I do know that Achim keeps the scenery assembler (.sca) files for his own reference, so perhaps you could send him a PM (achim27619) and ask.

[Shadow Wolf 07]

Thank you for these Achim - thank you very much!

[achim27619]

Hi mvg3d,

honestly I don't know at all. I never had FS9 on my pc so I never built any airport for it. I know that FSSC can build airfields for FS2002 but again I never did it.

Does someone know who is building airports for FS9 and can provide a way of contacting that person???????? Every single souce file I created would be available for converting.

Sorry

Achim

[Devildog73]

Vielen Dank Achim!

I cannot wait to install them into the Tuskegee Airmen Campaigns.

But, I suspect that Rami may be ahead of me on this.:ernaehrung004:

Lee

[Rami]

Vielen Dank Achim!

I cannot wait to install them into the Tuskegee Airmen Campaigns.

But, I suspect that Rami may be ahead of me on this.:ernaehrung004:

Lee

Lee,

Already done. Any mission that involved an actual changed airbase was altered accordingly. He also did a lot of revised bitmaps, these do not alter the layout of the base, but allow it to blend better into the surrounding terrain.

[_486_Col_Wolf]

Just D/L'd this last night and installed it....Beautiful work as always! Thanks!

[Devildog73]

Lee,

Already done. Any mission that involved an actual changed airbase was altered accordingly. He also did a lot of revised bitmaps, these do not alter the layout of the base, but allow it to blend better into the surrounding terrain.

Achim is truly amazing! :encouragement:

[miamieagle]

This has improve our collective experience in fly in WW2 through CFS2. Thank you!:applause:

[kelticheart]

....He also did a lot of revised bitmaps, these do not alter the layout of the base, but allow it to blend better into the surrounding terrain.

Well, this is one hell of an issue, where I doubt if anyone will be able to come up with a solution.

Italy has a dramatic change of scenery textures, travelling north to south, that I was never able to display correctly. I did countless cocktails with various sets of available textures, but the results were always poor. The issue is as follows:



The North and the Po Valley are very well portrayed by SdC's ETO textures,
the central portion of the land (from Florence to Naples) is something in between SdC's and Pactex "rest of the world" textures. Some ETO area stock terrain texture tiles do display Central Italy correctly but, when mixed with SdC's one, they screw up the North;
South of the Mason-Dixon line (eheheheh....), Sicily and Sardinia come out well with Pactex desert textures, yet they are a bit too desert. Anyway, when combined with northern ETO textures, the result is poor once again. Desert patches or forested areas pop up where there shouldn't be any and vice-versa.:disturbed:


This is a landclass problem, not correctly distributed over the entire country. I don't see how it can be fixed.:dejection:

The only way I got around it is with two different CFS2 installs. One for the first part of the war, where MTO action was in Southern Italy only and the South, South-Eastern Med. Yet Italy, and Greece at that, both come out looking like Libya and it's not good.

Then an install for the 1943-45 theatre, where I get hardwood forests south of Rome! :biggrin-new:

Cheers!
KH :ernaehrung004:

[UncleTgt]

Stefano,

Your issue can be solved, no need for separate installs. If you can collect together 3 different texture sets (& they can be partial texture sets), you can use Russell Dirk's EZ Landclass to create new landclasses for each area. It's time consuming, but it can be done.

Load them into the sim, each as a separate scenery layer (Italy Central, Italy South). Put the appropriate texture set in the texture folder for each layer.

Just like I did with my reefs & atoll scenery layers, knowing the game engine loads any scenery layer terrain bitmap & only checks the defaults if it doesn't find one allows us to multiply the different bitmaps we can use.

Go fly, & using the FSUIPC link to EZ Landclass, slew around the map & check the edges, where one terrain set butts up against the other. If the game is being asked to blend two different bitmaps with the same ident, the hard edge will show up. Change one of the offending tiles to something else, recreate the bgl in EZ Landclass. Exit CFS 2, copy the new bgl to the correct location, load the sim 7 go fly to check results.

It's tedious, but it can be done - you just have to want to do it.:witless:

[Blood_Hawk23]

No matter how hard we try to stay in the workshop, we always get dragged into the garden.

All kidding aside. It would be a good project for someone.

[stuart277]

Hi Achim
Thanks for this revision and all of you efforts with CFS2:applause::applause::applause:
Cheers
Stuart

[kelticheart]

Achim,

I deeply regret it, but I have to report a problem with the Ramitelli location in your Italian scenery. I feel real bad because it seems that, after all you did for providing us with a decent Italian WWII airport scenery, I come up with some problem, thus showing poor gratitude for your volunteered efforts and hard work. :icon_redface:

Yesterday, as soon as I completed the installation and corrected my airbase.dat with the new entries (B.T.W.: I could not find entries for the two new Ghedi and Villafranca airports), I took a VFR flight to enjoy the scenery. I took off from Ghedi, flew over the Garda Lake and over Villafranca and then headed for Ramitelli.

I was very surprised when CFS2 map showed me that Ramitelli lays just South-West of Ancona. I stopped the flight, went back to the installation and checked my airbase.dat entry through MB. When I saw that it was not just a wrong airbase.dat entry, as zooming in the map of area showed me the actual bitmap of the airport lays near Ancona, while it should be hundred of miles south near Foggia instead, I felt sick. I deleted everything in the scenery database, re-installed Italy again, this time using an empty CFS2.gsl file containing only your scenery, but Ramitelli sat again in the wrong place.

As far as I knew, all of primary 15th USAAF bases in 1944-45 were located in the northern part of Puglia region, province of Foggia (the spur of the Italian boot). All of what I read about the Tuskegee squadrons indicated that they were based around Foggia, Ramitelli among them. But I did not trust my brain data banks, so this morning I did some research and this is what I found.

I used "Ramitelli" as a Wikipedia search key, Wiki came up with a page that talks about the "Foggia Airfield Complex" right here:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complesso_aeroportuale_di_Foggia

I was lucky enough it displays an original Allied map, attached below, where even all 15th USAAF fighter and bomber squadrons using the "Foggia Airfield Complex" are clearly indicated, including Ramitelli for the 332nd F.G. Wiki's page says that the exact number of airports and strips of the "Foggia Airfield Complex", built there first by the Regia Aeronautica and the Luftwaffe, expanded and enhanced by the Allies after their liberation, was never calculated exactly but about 30 is the current estimate.
Follows a list of the airports and the description for Ramitelli goes as follows:

"Located near Campomarino-Termoli. A temporary dirt strip, built at the beginning of 1944 and home of the 332nd FG, 15th USAAF, famous for being the first all-Black pilots USAAF fighter unit. Paved with Marsten steel matting with a parking dispersal area, it was used by the 332nd FG until the end of WWII. Used by the 523rd Air Service Group and the 949th Air Squadron Engineering after May, 1945, it was closed in October, 1945 and the airfield dismantled. Today traces of the main runway can still be detected from aerial pictures, the land being completely restored to farming."

I tried locating the traces of the main runway on the Google satellite picture of the area without success. I bet it would be possible, with the help of a more detailed WWII miltary map.

If I didn't do anything wrong with my installation, the problem with your Ramitelli location remains. Can it be fixed without a huge effort?.... Please? :adoration:

Cheers!
KH :ernaehrung004:

[kelticheart]

Stefano,

Your issue can be solved, no need for separate installs. If you can collect together 3 different texture sets (& they can be partial texture sets), you can use Russell Dirk's EZ Landclass to create new landclasses for each area. It's time consuming, but it can be done.

Load them into the sim, each as a separate scenery layer (Italy Central, Italy South). Put the appropriate texture set in the texture folder for each layer.

Just like I did with my reefs & atoll scenery layers, knowing the game engine loads any scenery layer terrain bitmap & only checks the defaults if it doesn't find one allows us to multiply the different bitmaps we can use.

Go fly, & using the FSUIPC link to EZ Landclass, slew around the map & check the edges, where one terrain set butts up against the other. If the game is being asked to blend two different bitmaps with the same ident, the hard edge will show up. Change one of the offending tiles to something else, recreate the bgl in EZ Landclass. Exit CFS 2, copy the new bgl to the correct location, load the sim 7 go fly to check results.

It's tedious, but it can be done - you just have to want to do it.:witless:

Thank you for your suggestions UncleTgt!

I haven't got EZ Landclass, where can I find it?

Cheers!
KH :ernaehrung004:

[UncleTgt]

Simviation has it

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/syb2.cgi?section=misc&file=ezlc2.zip

have fun!:eagerness:

[kelticheart]

Simviation has it

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/syb2.cgi?section=misc&file=ezlc2.zip

have fun!:eagerness:

Ta, mate! :playful:

Cheers!
KH :ernaehrung004:

[Rami]

Good morning,

There were a couple of airbase.dat entries missing from the package, so I included them here. I also updated the package...

[achim27619]

Stefano,

just to make me understand correctly: Do you want me to move Ramitelli to the location shown on the map provided? That is no problem. If you want Ramitelli to look as discribed as a provisional dirt airfield with a steel mats covered runway I have to make a new one. But even that is not a big problem. Give me a couple of days and you have it. Just say so.

Sorry for that mistake. When I made the first Ramitelli I took the information from the 417 airfields and never checked.

Cheers

Achim

[Rami]

Achim,

Please keep me in the loop on this...because moving that airfield alone will force a complete re-do of the fourth Tuskegee campaign - I'll have to revamp and re-time no less than 38 of 106 Tuskegee missions.

[achim27619]

Andrew,

sorry, I didn't think of that. Moving and/or remaking Ramitelli is no valid option.

Stefano,

how about making an additional airfield in that place naming it slghtly different??????

Cheers


Achim

[Blood_Hawk23]

name it Termoli or Madna. unless you have them. You could name it Ramitelli N.

Kelti,
If you want help with Google earth let me know. I still have everything from my KMZ project for Korea.

[UncleTgt]

Stefano (or anyone else that wants to give it a try), this table of bitmap = landclass equivalents might be useful




Thank you for your suggestions UncleTgt!

I haven't got EZ Landclass, where can I find it?

Cheers!
KH :ernaehrung004:

[Rami]

Andrew,

sorry, I didn't think of that. Moving and/or remaking Ramitelli is no valid option.

Stefano,

how about making an additional airfield in that place naming it slghtly different??????

Cheers

Achim

Achim,

Sorry...I took advantage of yet another snow day to run errands during the afternoon and pick up my car from the repair shop.

1) Yes, you can re-name the "current" Ramitelli in the airbase.dat file to whatever town that airfield is closest to, and keep the .bgl files and bitmap the way they are. (Unless you can find a way to rename them without changing the base itself)

2) Then you can crate the "historically correct" Ramitelli, and name that airfield Ramitelli in the airbase.dat file. Kind of a weird work-around, but that could work.

3) Unless Lee Lesher is willing to re-do those 38 missions, we'll just have to live with the missions being flown of the "historically incorrect" Ramitelli.

Think of this the same way way that the Manston / Ramsgate issue was solved in Britain. Ramsgate is where the "historical" Manston is located, because Manston in CFS 1 was accidentally placed in the airbase.dat with the longitude set at "West" instead of "East," hence its mislocation.

[achim27619]

Hi Stefano,

here is your airfield. You just have to christen it..........

Cheers


Achim4060

[Rami]

Achim,

That would be "Ramitelli"...and Stefano (Kelti) usually logs in during the week, so expect a reply from him on Monday. It looks outstanding! :medals:

[Blood_Hawk23]

That does look outstanding.

Achim,

At some point I need to sit down with you and learn how to do that. those roads and paths look amazing. thats how I want my WWI aerodromes to look.

[kelticheart]

Achim,

the quickness you responded to my "alarm" call about Ramitelli historical location puts me to shame. You, as all of us, must have other real life priorities to attend to, instead of responding to another hobbyist (is this word correct?) request.

I fully agree with Rami's and BH's comments about the new airfield, it looks gorgeous and I believe also the runway orientation reflects the historical one, running almost parallel to the shoreline.

I also did not think how much hassle moving Ramitelli would have caused among the mission/campaign designers, where waypoints, fuel consumption and other vital components of mission building come into play. The entire Tuskegee campaign would have to be rewritten because the 332nd F.G. moved to Ramitelli from Napoli-Capodichino at the beginning of 1944 and remained there since the end of WWII. (data taken from official Tuskegee website here: http://tuskegeeairmen.org/wp-content/uploads/112-Victories.pdf)

In order to assign a name to the new scenery which would not conflict with the "old" Ramitelli, let me do a little further research about Ramitelli, both on Wikipedia and Google satellite maps of the area. Unfortunately, I never travelled through that part of the country, otherwise I would have had better info. I already have in mind something that would serve both the purpose of avoiding scenery conflict, yet ensure that, whoever downloads your Italian scenery, will know this is the true Ramitelli location.

My idea is naming it after a small village nearby called "Torre di Ramitelli" (Ramitelli's Tower). It probably was the reason why the 332nd FG home base received its name.

But let me confirm it with a little further research. As Rami pointed out, I log in during the weekly free time at my office, since I have here the leisure of a lightning-fast wide band connection. My boss knows about my extra connection and has no problem with it, as web usage fees are paid by the company flat rate, no matter that we use it or not or how much we use it. Him and I have the agreement that he doesn't care how I manage my time, as long as my deadlines are met. I never missed one in almost fifteen months of job attendance. I'll do a some extra time at the office today and by tomorrow we will officially assign a name to the new scenery (thanks again, Achim!).

Moreover: since I caused this headache, I hereby volunteer to do the gls work of populating the new airbase with hangars, barracks revetments and such, relieving you from the responsibility to do it.

For as much as your scenery looks nice, we must remember Ramitelli was a temporary wartime airbase. It did not exist before the Allied built it, so it must have that sparse, "thrown together in a hurry" look typical of frontline advanced airfields as, for example the first strips built in Normandy or in the Pacific as soon as the Allied conquered the area. The picture above looks way too overbuilt, in my opinion.
A medium-sized, corrugated metal hangar plus a small one, (two of the stock ones repainted in ETO textures by Capt. Kurt, for example), just a few Canion's small brick houses, lots of tents, crates and oil barrels abandoned around should give that temporary, interim look Ramitelli must have had back then and it can actually be seen from the rare WWII footage here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMX7UhidKIY
(see also parts 2, 3 and 4)

In fact, I have another suggestion: Ramitelli strip was paved with Marsten steel matting, another "temporary look" detail. Instead of laying a matting object on it, which would affect negatively the scenery fps performance, can you paint it directly in your scenery texture as it's done in several PTO stock strips? Below attached a shot showing a Tuskegee post-combat conversation on the matting.

Just mail to me the usual three necessary files to install the scenery in my CFS2, I'll drop any other project and start working on this one immediately.


Cheers!
Stef :ernaehrung004:

[kelticheart]

Achim,

check this, VERY IMPORTANT:

http://www.ronaldv.nl/abandoned/airf...ampobasso.html (http://www.ronaldv.nl/abandoned/airfields/it/molise/campobasso.html)

in the above link there are coordinates (Ramitelli: 41°54'08"N 015°07'03"E) and other info of the three Allied airports, part of the Foggia Airfield complex, Canne, Madna and Ramitelli. From this web page modern aerial I think I'll be able to locate on Google Satellite the exact location for Ramitelli.

Plus, another two recce pictures below, showing the exact shape of Ramitelli first and the three strips, left to right of Canne, Madna and Ramitelli. See, I was wrong, Ramitelli does not follow the shoreline, but it's oriented roughly 355 degrees. The third shots shows the primitive, muddy life conditions in front of a Nissen hut at Ramitelli.

The exact dates for the 332nd F.G. permanence at Ramitelli are June 1944 - May 1945.

Canne and Madna could be an idea for another little project? http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/images/smilies/friendly_wink.png

Cheers!
Stefhttp://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/images/smilies/ernaehrung004.gif

[kelticheart]

...this is what I got by entering the coordinates for Ramitelli in Google Satellite search field.

The red arrow pinpoints latitude and longitude location. In the last zoom I did, the almost ghost-like shape of the WWII airfield is clearly visible. The runway can be seen almost entirely, while the top part shows both taxiways. Even some of the dispersal areas attached to both taxiways can be seen.

I also found this link, which seems to be an extremely interesting one not only for Italy, but for the entire Europe:

http://www.forgottenairfields.com/italy/

Achim, let me know if you need more info or what I found so far will suffice. I definitely suggest to call the new CFS2 scenery Torre di Ramitelli from a nearby archaeological area.



Cheers!
Stef :ernaehrung004:

[achim27619]

Stefano,

it would have been nice to have this information some days earlier. But I don't want to cry over spilled milk. Here is my suggestion: I make the scenery for the three airfields, send those to you and you do the gsl-work (if that it alright with you). If I can paint in the steel mats I really don't know but I try (that is qiute a challenge).
But that will take me a couple of days so be patient.


Andrew,

we still have the problem with the old Ramitelli. Would it be possible just to change the name wihtout blowing the campaign to pieces?? We don't want to have two Ramitellis in Italy, do we.

Cheers

Achim

[kelticheart]

Hi Achim,


Andrew,

we still have the problem with the old Ramitelli. Would it be possible just to change the name wihtout blowing the campaign to pieces??

why not call it "Torre di Ramitelli" as I suggested above? This name is real, no fiction. There's a small village + archaeological site nearby called as such. Besides, this name will remind everybody that it is the historical airfield.


Stefano, it would have been nice to have this information some days earlier....

Achim, it only took me typing "Ramitelli" in Google search field to get the airfields info (I mean the "Forgotten airports" website) and "Tuskegee" afterwards, to get the first map I posted here, pictures and more historical information.

I do it at work, and I cannot use too much of my work time to roam around in Internet, even if my boss trusts I get my job done no matter what!

In a couple of minutes you would have gotten the same information, and it's 99% written in English. Google translater can take care of the remaining 1% in Italian.


....If I can paint in the steel mats I really don't know but I try (that is qiute a challenge).

You don' have to do them from scratch! A couple of years ago, Shessi posted here new textures for the stock CFS2 strips. I am sure he would not object about copying his steel mat textures, much better sized than the stock ones which look huge, right Shessi?
Another one who repainted the Marsten mats is Psullykeys. Psully's textures must be in SOH library somewhere.
Since you decided to do all three airfields, let me check which one, between Madna and Canne, was covered with the matting together with Ramitelli.


....I make the scenery for the three airfields, send those to you and you do the gsl-work (if that it alright with you)...

Fine, I offered to do it already! :encouragement: I will follow your correct choice of keeping the object count as low as possible, but I will use better looking objects than the strictly stock ones, Canion's finer and better scaled radio antennas, and his brick houses, for example. Did you see the operation and briefing building picture, now almost in ruins, at Ramitelli in the "Forgotten Airfields" website? Canion library has a couple of them almost identical to the real one!


....But that will take me a couple of days so be patient....

We all waited for as long as it takes to do the scenery right up until now. Believe me, if I were good with painting tools, I would share the burden with you, but I am not and I would screw things up instead of helping.
Like, for example, your new Ghedi scenery. You see, that airport is a complex made by Ghedi, still military, airport and nearby Montichiari civilian airport. There are taxiways joining the two complexes and, in WWII, they were both there and both military. Montichiari, originally an unpaved secondary runway for Ghedi, was converted to civilian use only after WWII, becoming the official airport for the city of Brescia, which lays ten minutes away. The old Ghedi-Montichiari GZR scenery reflects the entire complex, but not being GSL-ized, it's a frame hog and its buildings look way too modern for a WWII Italian airport. I couldn't wait to replace it!

If I were good with paintbrushes, I would add Montichiari to your Ghedi. I wish I were....I am much better at noticing fine details and adding a sort of "eye-candy" touch to a scenery.

I think it does not matter how long it takes, as long as it is done right.

Lots of care has been taken to build new finely detailed aircrafts by many people, others built photo-real weapons and paylods, Rami, Talon and others profuse intense labour into searching historical data to build campaigns that are actual re-enactments of what happened in WWII, Mask Raider built Pacific airbases that can be compared perfectly with pictures taken during the period....

Why not applying the same care to European Theatre sceneries? I rest my case..... :adoration:

Cheers!
Stef :ernaehrung004:

[kelticheart]

Ok Achim,

I just viewed the Imperial War Museum, Spitfire RAF footage posted at the Forgotten Airports website here:

http://www.ronaldv.nl/abandoned/airfields/it/molise/campobasso.html

Go to "CANNE" airport and watch the film yourself. Shortly after the beginning the camera operator films a landing from the cockpit.

Canne runway paved with steel matting is clearly visible. This settles the matter for Canne: Marsten matting here as well.

On to search info for Madna. :running:

Cheers!
Stef :ernaehrung004:

[kelticheart]

Achim,

I could not locate better info about Madna other than, once again, from the great "Forgotten Airports" website.

According to this,

http://www.forgottenairfields.com/italy/molise/campobasso/madna-s555.html

From what I understood, Madna was built in October-November 1943 (A MONTH!) together with Canne, Ramitelli, Biferno and Nuova.

I think we can make an educated guess by assuming that all of them, given the unbelievably short construction time, were paved with steel matting.

This technique was used all over the world, tested in the Pacific first and then North Africa, Italy and Normandy. A piece of land was flattened by bulldozers first, then fine levelled with graders and pressed to withstand the weight of landing aircrafts. Finally, paved with Marsten matting sections welded together.

If you can come up with an easy way to reproduce a steel matting texture, do all three of them.

Cheers!
Stef :ernaehrung004:

[bub]

Kelti,
If you look in psullykeys downloads, there should be some steelmat replacement runway textures. I think this is what you're looking for.
Bub

[Rami]

Achim,

I won't blow the campaign to pieces, but Kelti's suggestion about the same seems appropriate to me. I'm sorry about not responding earlier; I was unable to log into SOH for a period of about twenty-four hours.

[achim27619]

Ok Gentlemen,

the matter of the names seems to be settled: the old Ramitelli remains Ramitelli and the new one will be Torre di Ramitelli if I am not mistaken.

Cheers

Achim

[kelticheart]

Kelti,
If you look in psullykeys downloads, there should be some steelmat replacement runway textures. I think this is what you're looking for.
Bub

Thanks, Bub! That's exactly what I meant, Shessi did some work on those textures as well. Did you see the picture Achim? Those would be perfect for the sceneries you are working on, besides, if I am not mistaken, any addon using stock textures helps keeping the sim framerate down.


...the matter of the names seems to be settled: the old Ramitelli remains Ramitelli and the new one will be Torre di Ramitelli if I am not mistaken.

Yes, Achim. No mistaking, I think it's the best compromise. Thank you!

UncleTgt:

Sorry, I never thanked you for the table of bitmap = landclass equivalents you attached to this thread, which I duly downloaded. I looked at it and I think I understood how it can be put to use.

As soon as I am done helping Achim with the gsl work for these new sceneries, I'll get back into my attempt to correct Italy landclass. If I find myself sinking into a quagmire, may I shout for help in your direction? :stupid:

Thank you!
Stef :ernaehrung004:

[UncleTgt]

Stefano,

No problem, holler if you get stuck:dizzy: