PilotEdge Forums

I can never seem to open up an airport, or pick an existing airport in WED. Am I doing something wrong, or is WED only for creating new airports?

The problem is, the default X-Plane database is way too for WED to open. What I've done in the past is just copy the section for the airport I'm going to work on out of the default database and create a new apt.dat file and paste it in there, then create a new airport in WED, and select the option to import from apt.dat, point it to the file you just created and voila.

One thing to make sure of is that you also copy the top lines from the default apt.dat with the version information, etc so WED can open it.

I was practicing today by building the apt.dat file for the new St George Muni KDZX (or KDXZ?) Anyhow, it was good practice, especially when I realized I had made the runway 36000 feet long and dropped the airport over the top of Dick Stout airport <and a small hill in the middle of the runway.>

When you say to copy over the section of the main apt.dat file, how do I do that? Do I open it up in notepad and copy/paste the data? I don;t want to have to create new airports for all of the airports I have already skinned (I have about 33 airports available for PE users.)

Daddy O wrote: Do I open it up in notepad and copy/paste the data?

Exactly.

Cool. I have been copying in wordpad, and pasting in notepad. Seems that wordpad adds some subtle formatting.

I have been working on the new St George airport. Just the WED file so far, scenery to come later. Gotta learn to add a VOR, and still trying to figure out the code for the taxiway signs.


So, all future airports realeased on www.xplanes-scenery.com will have accurate signage and scenery. I also worked on Chico the other day and removed the erroneous taxiways and added the missing tarmac. That thingt was so badly modelled that I wasn't sure if I was landing at the right airport during the focus flight the other day.

You can't add VOR's in WED, that would be nice though. You have to add navaids in X-Plane itself. I can't remember where exactly to do it (It's been awhile).

That could be a problem, the new St george airport has its own VOR. But Eigene said that the new St George is in the latest update to Xplanes. I hate to update (it's a real PITA with multiple PCs on a nested network) but I guess maybe I could. At least I would have their airport map to work with. There is almost zero information on the new airport, even on their own site. One of the approach charts had a rough sketch of the taxiways, but nothing even showing the terminals or buildings. Even on their own airport site.

I'll keep working on airports in Socal. I'll try to finish all the major airports not already covered on Xplane.org, then do the little airparks.

Kieth; what's on the menu for next week?

VORs live in [xplane root]\Resources\default data\earth_nav.dat

You would simply submit the VOR for addition to the master database to Robin Peel, if that hasn't been done already.

Kieth; what's on the menu for next week?

Fish or chicken. But, I'm having the lasagna.

What is it that you're actually asking?

I believe it was Shawn that did the excellent SBA scenery...so I'm sure he knows how to add the taxiway signage. It's also fairly important that they be added in the right places (if they actually need to be placed by hand). I just looked at KSBA in the stock apt.dat file and saw these entries towards the end:

20 34.42709830 -119.85375892 0.61 0 3 {@L}A{@R}07-25{@L}{@@}A
20 34.42692619 -119.83950294 90.00 0 3 {@L}A{@R}15L-33R{@@}{@L}A
20 34.42687508 -119.84079205 88.88 0 3 {@L}A{@R}15R-33L{@Y}{@@}{^l}M{^r}{@L}A
20 34.42664479 -119.83995090 269.11 0 3 {@L}A{@R}33L-15R{@@}{@L}A
20 34.42666548 -119.83876009 268.60 0 3 {@L}A{@R}33R-15L{@L}{@@}A
20 34.42701699 -119.83548003 90.52 0 3 {@L}A{@Y,^l}G{@@}{@L}A
20 34.42650104 -119.84675518 269.16 0 3 {@L}A{@Y}F{^r}{@@}{@Y,^l}F{@L}A
20 34.42637673 -119.85163378 270.00 0 3 {@L}A{@Y}P{^r}{@@}{@Y,^l}P{@L}A
20 34.42740366 -119.83788619 344.81 0 3 {@L}B{@R}07-25{@L}{@@}B
20 34.42866089 -119.83798493 166.46 0 3 {@L}B{@R}25-07{@L}{@@}B{@Y,^l}H{^r}
20 34.43069548 -119.83904019 343.76 0 3 {@L}B{@Y,^l}C{^r}{@@}{@L}B
20 34.42339940 -119.83727150 345.29 0 3 {@L}B{@Y,^l}E
20 34.42937763 -119.83822111 165.35 0 3 {@L}B{@Y,^l}H{^r}{@@}{@L}B
20 34.42482512 -119.83771683 346.15 0 3 {@L}B{@Y,^l}K{@@}{@L}B
20 34.41992740 -119.83600788 258.83 0 3 {@L}B{@Y}B{^r}
20 34.42709838 -119.83779393 165.17 0 3 {@L}B{@Y}B{^ru}{^l}A{^r}
20 34.42653495 -119.83828894 345.67 0 3 {@L}B{@Y}B{^ru}|{^l}A{^r}{@@}{@L}B
20 34.42410840 -119.83715984 166.81 0 3 {@L}B{@Y}E{^r}
20 34.42541736 -119.83758501 166.79 0 3 {@L}B{@Y}K{^r}

So, that's definitely where the signage lives.

If there are multiple people that want to work on this project (the project to get accurate taxiways and signage into the master database), I would suggest finding out who those people are, building a master list of towered airports, and then have people nominate which fields they're going to work on.

Those who contribute to the project will receive some free time on the network once we're live, based on the fields that they worked on.

Another option would be to have a single person (who's intimately familiar with taxiway placement) post-process each of the towered airports (once the taxiways layouts are done by someone else), adding the taxiways and signage.

There's many ways to skin this cat! Pick the stuff that you want to do and propose something

Somewhere I saw a handy little reference guide for all of the signage coding. It's been several months since I did any serious work using WED, so I'll see if I can't dig it up and send it to you. EDIT: Nevermind, I was remembering something from FSX airport creations. The WED manual provides all the necessary code information.

BTW, anyone else not able to use the Terraserver function in WED lately? It used to work for me, but not any longer and not with any of the versions of WED that I have.

-Chris

I have terraserver turned on, but it does not seem to work. I figured either I was doing something wrong, or google earth had changed too much for WED8.5. Been too busy with the airports to dig into it though. It does make adding accurate taxiways a lot easier. Another option is to do like they did with the demo airport LOWI where they actually use a high res photo of the airport and built the WED and overlay files over that. Makes it easy to know where the put everything.

Kieth, you are right about making it a team activity. I am trying to crank out quality airports, but they take a while to do. When I was asking what was on the menu, I was inquiring what was next for Beta night. If would love to have enough forewarning of the beta airports that I could check them for accuracy and have properly skinned airports ready. KCIC and KMOD were two recent airports that totally did not match the charts.

So is there anyone else interested in building the airports with me? I can host them on my site, or they can go up on X-plane.org (since they will likely contain copyrighted scenery I don't know if Kieth will want to host them on his for-profit site.) There are plenty of towered <and untowered> airports in the PRK to keep several builders busy for years.