FSX
I was just showcasing what ORBX has already done, just in case anyone was interested.
-Woog
I was just showcasing what ORBX has already done, just in case anyone was interested.
-Woog
I agree about Bluesky and V2.2 airport addon. I just uploaded it and after one look downloaded it again. It adds better looking water and some landclass but messes with the airport and THEIR NGZ is inactive and nothing but the two runways. All the taxiways and the old runways are bgl and would have to be overlaid in ADE. Also their ships are buried somewhere in one of the twenty-some BGL making them a permanent fixture and not an object like the CVA-64 which can be removed and an AI version of the carrier replace it. I'm not bragging about making some great airport here just saying for me I'm going to use what I built adding to it as I can with updates released. My next update project is to add asphalt and factories/warehouses across the Oakland Channel and concrete the piers. May place some commercial ships there static for now and ai in the future. Not sure where any fighters should be parked. They might be better placed as ai with flight plans. I don't have any photos of them parked anywhere, only seaplanes in 1959. All it takes is time, right? For now, I think I'm going back to flying in and out of NAS Alameda for awhile. If the Lord keeps winding my clock, I got next week to work some more on it.
I agree with you about ORBX being beautiful. Do you have ADE1.65? I would be interested if their NGZ is accessible to be reopened in ADE1.65 and runways re-activated; comms etc. Or because it is their OWN scenery that it is locked from tinkering with. I may take a hop over to their forum and see what's what. I have some of their free stuff including BOB which is very nice.Originally Posted by Woogey
tgycgijoes, the NAS Glenview tower on the east side of the field was built in 1978-79? When I left the NAS in 1977 the ops dept. had blueprints for the new tower. It included a remote radar room for the cpn4 radar and had a better view of the ramp area.
Thank you for the information. I was in the reserves at Glenview and then a Squadron CO of Nimitz Squadron Naval Sea Cadet Corps until the base closed in 1993. Flew from there back and forth to Alameda and then to North Island with cadets for summer training. My XO was a Company Commander at Great Lakes RTC so we also did a lot of training there.
No biggie but I wonder why that second tower (one with no beacon) doesn't show in the ADE? It's like a ghost building. I am sure everyone else that installed the V2.2 can see the two control towers like I
do but not in the ADE. I can add and delete your stuff and save it and compile it but it won't reflect my changes. I know I must be doing something wrong.
Anyway, I enjoy the scenery as the stock FSX version is just plain bland.
Yes their AFCAD is fully accessible, in fact I've already started modifying it to better reflect a 1985 NGZ. you can do the same thing with blue sky, just turn off their's, and replace it with the one that you've already done. It's really pretty easy to go into the scenery folder, scroll down till you find their version of the NGZ.bgl, and rename to NGZ.bgl.off after that you can either drop your version into the same blue skies scenery folder, or just leave yours in the add-on scenery/scenery folder, if that's where you currently keep yours.
Thanks. I have downloaded BSS four squares of the area we have been using. I also went to ORBX and downloaded their free North America airports. I checked the list and was so excited to see that they have modeled the airport with the flying school here in North Carolina. I am going to install the airports and check it out. Maybe tonight. Thanks again. I will look forward to seeing pics here of your ORBX mod.
S.
I saw this last night and downloaded it, too. Its a good color reference. I am playing around with Blue ky Scenery
Don't know if and how this would be relevant to the beacon issue but some of the pictures of actual beacons look to be two sided and look to be very old.
Very interesting.....
http://www.geocaching.com/mark/details.aspx?PID=HT2913
Hey Butch,
Very interesting. I am thinking of making a new air station over Blue Sky Scenery which really looks pretty good for ground cover and it's free to download. I downloaded and installed the four squares that cover the area of SFO and OAK. Woogy is also playing with ORBX he said that you can access the airfield bgl. We'll see what he comes up with. Thanks for this its cool. I used to fly out of Palwaukee (Chicago Executive) flying school in a Cessna 150 years ago and right by the road that bordered the airport was a tower with the beacon on top just like these. Have you ever seen an airport with two beacons? Did they move it from one place to the other? Food for thought. I can add the beacon onto a metal tower instead of on top of the control tower. I will look at this site more tomorrow after I do my programming for Thursday/Friday/Saturday for this week. I have contacted the National Archives for the airport chart and approach charts from their storage. Jeppsen only keeps the most current for legal reasons.
Richard
looks pretty good now that I got it in there right ! Keep up the good work !
Last edited by Corvette99; April 5th, 2016 at 17:56. Reason: correction
Thank you for the support and encouragement from everyone. Its a lot of fun sharing. There will be another update later this week. As before keep posting your shots, comments or suggestions here.
Glad you enjoyed the link. I would like to see a picture of the metal tower you mentioned to know what building you had in mind for that beacon. That is a great idea to try to get some airport charts for that area. Maybe that will help sort things out.
-Butch
Last edited by gray eagle; April 6th, 2016 at 06:59.
on top of the building - don't know which one.
This looks like a two light version - I would think a Mil version would be three lenses - white - white - green. Paint on beacon looks old and pealing so guess it is original.
Wonder if the seaplane guys went by this one or if they used one of their own?
http://www.geocaching.com/mark/datas...spx?PID=HT2913
Excerpt from a data sheet from ^.
STATION DESCRIPTION
HT2913
HT2913''DESCRIBED BY COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY 1953 (FAR)
HT2913''AT THE ALAMEDA NAVAL AIR STATION, ON THE NORTHWEST CORNER OF THE
HT2913''SOUTHERLY OF FOUR LARGE HANGARS, THE WESTERNMOST ROW OF HANGARS
HT2913''AT THE AIR STATION, ABOUT 1280 FEET NORTH OF THE CONTROL
HT2913''TOWER, AND ABOUT 80 FEET ABOVE THE GROUND ON TOP OF THE
HT2913''BUILDING. A 36-INCH DOUBLE-DRUM TYPE ROTATING BEACON, SHOWING
HT2913''WHITE ON ONE SIDE AND GREEN ON THE OTHER.
Buy the looks of things and dedctiption ^ looks like a two side beacon llght was used which goes contrary to use of three light beacon for Mil airports.
http://www.airfields-freeman.com/CA/...nd.htm#alameda
An undated photo of NAS Alameda's control tower. I think that looks like a beacon on top center of the control tower.
A 2003 photo by Erick McCarthy looking south along the parking apron,
with the hangars & control tower of NAS Alameda visible on the left. This one I don't understand. Did they move the beacon after the base closed?
Every time you come up with something, it makes me more curious and I find out more things to do to the airport. I'm not upset, just kidding. I have not been able to find out when military airport started using the green-white-white code though I remember it as far back as 1968 when I started student pilot training with the Navy Flying club at Norfolk airport. I also used to drive from the parking lot adjacent to Pier 12 where America was berthed in port on taxiways of NAS Norfolk which had traffic lights controlled by the tower since civilian cars did not have radios to communicate with the tower, whenever any jets were taxiing. I haven't thought about that in a long time. I DO have printed out all the regulations for Navy airfieds from the Air Traffic Controllers Course which I have amongst every other pub from NAS Pensacola library for Navy Student Pilots downloaded on PDF. Here is an excerpt:
Location:Not less than 1,000 feet from the centerline or centerline extended from the nearest runway
Not more than 5,000 feet from the nearest point of the usable landing area, except if surrounding terrain restricts visibility of the beacon or beacon serves more than one airfield. When terrain obstructs viewing the beacon, distance
can be increased to no more than 2 miles.
Not in the line of sight from the control tower to approach zone of any runway or to within 75 feet vertically over any runway.
Located 750 feet or more from the control tower. The base must be at least 20 feet higher than the elevation of the floor of the tower cab.
Color Scheme: Lighted land military airport Alternating dual peaked (2 quick) white between green flashes
Lighted land civilian airport Alternating white and green
Lighted water airport Alternating white and yellow
Lighted heliport is alternating white green yellow
An identification or code beacon is required when the airport rotating beacon is more than 5,000 feet from the nearest runway or where the rotating beacon serves more than one airfield.
This beacon is a nonrotating flashing omnidirectional light visible 360 degrees. The identification or code beacon flashes a color-coded signal at approximately 40 flashes per minute. The signal is assigned a code of characters to identify a
particular airfield. The identification beacon shall be operated whenever the associated airport rotating beacon is operated.
I have to see if I can find a suitable tower for the beacon stock. I also saw that I have to find and locate on the airport 2 red/white checked water towers down by the carrier piers. Finally need to figure out how to place VASI (landing assist) lights for the runways. This is fun but it seems the work is never ending. Thank you for being a helper. Talk on ya later.
Richard
Hope that the links were of some help with some pictures of various buildings at the old Alameda airbase. Glad to help and was hoping that I would not be to pesky and annoying.\
Will your next revision eliminate the 2nd tower in V2.2 with the beacon located atop a different structure?
At old NAS Millington, the had the mill beacon atop a tall red/white checkered tower. When Brac 93 closed the base, it became a civilian run airfield and the old rusty tower was removed, a new civ
beacon light was placed on the top of the white control tower. I tried looking for Airport Diagrams for Alameda with none to be found. A few years ago they were probably
posted every where.
Hope that the links were of some help with some pictures of various buildings at the old Alameda airbase. Glad to help and was hoping that I would not be to pesky and annoying.\
Will your next revision eliminate the 2nd tower in V2.2 with the beacon located atop a different structure?
At old NAS Millington, the had the mill beacon atop a tall red/white checkered tower. When Brac 93 closed the base, it became a civilian run airfield and the old rusty tower was removed, a new civ
beacon light was placed on the top of the white control tower. I tried looking for Airport Diagrams for Alameda with none to be found. A few years ago they were probably
posted every where.
Hey there partner,
I just finished removing that tower in the middle of the airfield because after what I just found in the Cultural Landscape Report which is one of my text and photo sources..."Along with constructing two new runways, the Control Tower instrumentation was improved allowing for instrumented landings. The new runways posed a problem because the east end of Runway 7-25 was not visible from the Control Tower. The solution was to build a secondary control tower (this is where I got confused) on the roof of seaplane hanger Building 20, to provide a partial view of the east end of the runway. This took place in 1952. Also saved all these beacon tower photos and will look for a beacon to install on top of the hanger. I believe that maybe the white beacon is programed to blink twice as it goes around which is why the beacon is only two lamps. I did a ton of beacon searching on the internet this past couple hours.
Beacon atop what remains of NAS Glenview's Hangar One. Two lights, green and white. I grew up in Northbrook, IL next door to the base, saw it in operation every night. Beacons at Miramar and Whidbey Island were the same, never saw one at a NAS with three beams.
After much as you know searching by us I have found the answer I believe of the illusive beacon tower. You have obviously photo evidence of it on top of the hanger and this shows it.
Wow, That is great news. I guess when we pool our investigative talents we can come up with some kind of solution. I must say that map is a great find. It looks like its location does support the picture
I posted earlier. So, with that said, and found, what kind of plans do you have on your next update - as far as tat beacon goes. Based on you map here, it looks like you could delete that 2nd tower
with your beacon on it as I don't see that here. Will the old one (the original one) remain? I'm betting yes and that you will add or locate the hanger/building and build a beacon on it. I'd almost bet
that the first control tower could get the heave ho as well and just leave the Admin Building.
NAS Alameda Operations Building
After much as you know searching by us I have found the answer I believe of the illusive beacon tower. You have obviously photo evidence of it on top of the hanger and this shows it.
When you really master this base how about a main gate?I think it was later changed to Alameda Point.
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