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Delete a default airport?

Gridley

Gridley

Messages
66
Country
us-massachusetts
I'm wondering how one would go about completely removing a default airport. It has been brought to my attention that there is a duplicated airport in FS9 - sheets. Formerly X34, now it FA42. The problem is that X34 is wildly mislocated (or perhaps the airport really did move), and at a very high altitude for the region near Melbourne Florida. Departing from KMLB you can easily see the plateau of grass strips to the north.

Now I've had no problem getting rid of the physical parts of the airfield - the grass and flattens. It's the facility data itself that I'm having trouble with. I edited the X34 AFCAD and deleted everything except the reference point, but apparently that is not a valid AFCAD, as it has no effect and does not replace the default data. There must be a minimum of necessary information in the bgl for the AFCAD to be loaded? What I will do is relocate the airport to the correct location near FA42, and create a dummy runway beneath one of FA42's but I suspect there is a better way to actually remove the airport...

Thanks for any info!
 
Have you tried just a XML exclude command? I would expect that should remove most of the airport.
 
No - not sure what you mean by XML exclude command Arno...

I've used an LWM exclude to remove the airport grass, and I've actually edited the FL926210 and FL926220 bgls to remove the flatten, but now I've got two grass runways floating in the air.

I opened X34 in AFCAD and deleted them, deleted the start points, and moved the airport reference point over to FA42 where it should be, put that new AFCAD in Addon Scenery\Scenery but the stock X34 is still showing up, runways and all...so I assume that it's not a valid AFCAD for some reason.

Do you think I need to write an XML that makes use of the DeleteAirport command within the FSData? I assumed that AFCAD used that method to replace the existing data...

I could also edit the X34 afcad to match FA42, but I really want to just nuke X34 altogether...
 
Hi,

I would just try the XML exclude commands in a small XML file. Maybe you don't even need the DeleteAirport command in that case. I would not use AFCAD if I only wanted to remove everything.

Another option would be to decompile your new AFCAD file and see if the correct excludes are in there.
 
I'll look into that, Arno. I didn't think you could exclude things like runways that way...

Thanks!
sg
 
I am not 100% sure, as I never tried to let an airport dissapear completely :). Or maybe it would be an idea to just write the Airport command with the proper Delete commands manual in a XML file. Should not be that much code.
 
Tried - didn't work. I made sure the airport reference point was within the box and used the excludeALLObjects method, and while all of the local autogen was gone, the floating runways were not, and X34 still shows up in the FS9 facilities list...

So, pursuing the second idea, I decomped the afcad:

Code: 
<?xml version="1.0"?>

<FSData version="9.0"
xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="bglcomp.xsd">

<Airport ident="X34"
  region=""
  country="United States"
  state="Florida"
  city="Groveland"
  name="Sheets (FA42)"
  lat="N28 31.97253"
  lon="W081 50.80281"
  alt="35.97M"
  magvar="3.00">

  <DeleteAirport
    deleteAllApronLights="TRUE"
    deleteAllAprons="TRUE"
    deleteAllFrequencies="TRUE"
    deleteAllHelipads="TRUE"
    deleteAllRunways="TRUE"
    deleteAllStarts="TRUE"
    deleteAllTaxiways="TRUE"
    >
  </DeleteAirport>

  <Runway number="18" designator="NONE"
    lat="N28 31.97237"
    lon="W081 50.80271"
    alt="35.97M"
    length="152.40M"
    width="0.30M"
    heading="177.00"
    surface="GRASS"
    primaryTakeoff="NO"
    primaryLanding="NO"
    primaryPattern="LEFT"
    secondaryTakeoff="YES"
    secondaryLanding="NO"
    secondaryPattern="RIGHT"
    patternAltitude="1000.0F">
  </Runway>

</Airport>

</FSData>

It looks like that's the code I need to remove the airport. I'm going to remove the runway again, and recompile. See what happens then. Maybe I should be placing this AFCAD outside of [FS9]\Addon Scenery\Scenery?
 
As long as it has a higher priority than the airport you try to exclude it should work fine. I would indeed try this XML without the runway code.
 
That's got it.

I deleted the runway block, recompiled and it works like a charm. X34 still shows up in the go to airport list, though it's got no parking or runways or anything...however the unsightly plateau north of KMLB is now gone (when combined with the other fixed files). I'll post it to our website (http://fs-freeflow.com) and avsim after a couple of folks test it for me...

THANKS!
 
An interesting side-note: I figured out why my other attempts to relocate X34 to FA42's location didn't work - I was moving the airport reference point outside of the LOD5, thus the AFCAD didn't function properly. Obvious now that I think about it- the reference point of an AFCAD must reside in the same LOD as the stock airport it is replacing to function properly.
 
Thanks for that info. That is useful to know. I remember a discussion on AvSim where someone also tried to move an airport and that did not work. Must be due to this LOD stuff as well, I guess.
 
Gridley,

I'm having the same issue. I am trying to completely remove an airport that doesn't exist anymore. Easy enough to get ride of the scenery stuff but not sure how to get rid of it from the facility database. I assume it's easy to get ride of the XML code referencing it in the .bgl but how do I get the bgl to XML and then XML to BGL when done? How do I know what to remove?
 
Engjell Berisha said:
Gridley,

I'm having the same issue. I am trying to completely remove an airport that doesn't exist anymore. Easy enough to get ride of the scenery stuff but not sure how to get rid of it from the facility database. I assume it's easy to get ride of the XML code referencing it in the .bgl but how do I get the bgl to XML and then XML to BGL when done? How do I know what to remove?
Click to expand...

You cannot remove it entirely without hacking the stock airport Bgl file and we strongly recommend that you do not do that.
 
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