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    Library How to

I Found A New Cool Airport

tgycgijoes

tgycgijoes

Members +
I have returned to North Carolina from Georgia; back in my home state for a change. I went out to Skyvector as I like to do and look for small airports to fly to. FSX default isn't even close to what it really looks like, not even the taxiways, its runway is the only thing I kept and extended it by 2 feet. Its in Elizabethtown and is KEYF Curtis L. Brown Jr. Field. The field is named for the former Air Force Colonel and NASA Astronaut. Brown left NASA in May 2000 and became an airline pilot for American Airlines and later Sun Country Airlines. He was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame in April 2013. He is currently the chairman of the board of the directors of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. It is a nice single runway airport averaging 39 flights a day mostly general aviation with a few military flights thrown in. It has one row of hangers which will be created in Sketchup as will the terminal. As usual I will contact the airport manager and get all the questions I need answered to make it as accurate as possible. Watch this post. :costumed-smiley-071
 
The First Addition

I have some really good access from the road adjacent to the airport and could get a really good shot of the beacon. I created it in Sketchup and then added the red obstruction lights to it in MDCx though they aren't really visible with the bright beacon but that's ok. The tower is spot on since there is nothing like it in FSX's library. They are all for larger airports. I would like to have a smaller beacon but this is the only one available. If anyone can give me a smaller one I would really appreciate it and modify it.


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A Good Day's Work

I spent today working on the first three hangers at Curtis L. Brown Jr. Field KEYF. At first glance from the air they appear identical but when you get down to the street level, there are distinct differences between the three. I have a shot from street level in Google Earth first. The doors are all down but I chose to have them open. Only two choices with no animation for them and I wasn't going to do SODE like I did in the previous hanger at Newnan-Coweta. Here are the two screen shots. See if you can spot the differences between the three from this photo. The furthest of the hangers has three doors roadside and security lamps on three sides; the middle hanger has two doors one on each end street side and the electrical panel on the left; and the third hanger, the closest one in the photo has two doors in the same locations as the middle one but the electrical panel is on the right. Hangers middle and closest ones have security lamps on the end, one on each side. It's like playing "Where In The World Is Waldo" to spot the differences. It's sometimes very difficult if Google Earth or Google Map Street level views are sparse. There are no apron side views. I am assuming those sides are just blank sided sides.




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I can't believe how picture #1 above looks just like a photo of the real thing...

...on second look it is a picture. I need better glasses.
 
Is It Live...

p14u2nv said:
I can't believe how picture #1 above looks just like a photo of the real thing...

...on second look it is a picture. I need better glasses.
Click to expand...
If you are old like me you remember casette tapes and the old commercial:

Is it LIVE or is it MEMOREX? The second shot is the airport in FSX above is a real photo I used as part of the creation in Sketchup, as well as Street level references. It has nice street references but unfortunately none from the taxiway side.
 
Here Is Today's Creation

I tried to create this in Sketchup with a rectangle and a jpeg texture from a shot in Google Earth and it worked. The fuel tanks are Sketchup objects as is the Phillips 66 Fuel Sign on a pole. This is the aerial view of that apron. I have the parking spots exactly positioned and there is a fuel trigger by the tanks. Good day's work. I have to just slightly tweak the alignment of the apron to line up. I like it!:biggrin-new:

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tgycgijoes said:
If you are old like me you remember casette tapes and the old commercial:

Is it LIVE or is it MEMOREX? The second shot is the airport in FSX above is a real photo I used as part of the creation in Sketchup, as well as Street level references. It has nice street references but unfortunately none from the taxiway side.
Click to expand...

I also remember the tv commercial of the Opera star breaking the Champaign glass with her voice and then the tape did the same too! I think that if I looked hard enough I have some 8 tracks and a deck and some VHS tapes in a box in the basement!
 
I remember

p14u2nv said:
I also remember the tv commercial of the Opera star breaking the Champaign glass with her voice and then the tape did the same too! I think that if I looked hard enough I have some 8 tracks and a deck and some VHS tapes in a box in the basement!
Click to expand...
Now that you mention it I remember that one too.
 
Today's Efforts

Worked today on the next hanger, I am consecutively numbering them down the row because Google did not label any of them like they sometimes do with who owns it. It is next to the self-serve fuel depot right on NC 87 known in Elizabethtown as Airport Road. The hanger door is purposely a different shade of gray. I matched the color of the door and the color of the siding exactly from a photo I took in Google Earth Street View and then created special textures in Sketchup. It makes it unique. Most of the time the hanger door(s) match the siding color. I also decided to close this door though the spotlight "illuminates" the apron in the front of the door and the inside of the hanger lights shine through the two windows on the street side at night.


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The Proper Beacon

I have been trying for three days after I created the correct size beacon for the airport in Sketchup/converted it to 3DS in MDCx/imported that in GMAX and started to try and create an animated-rotating beacon. I was successful after a really great tutorial by ianztranz of creating and animating a windmill for TRAINZ to produce a correctly rotating beacon in GMAX. One BIG problem. To export the completed beacon WITH ANIMATION and spotlights for FSX. I have followed four different tutorials provided in FSDevelopers where I asked for help but none has been successful. I am still patiently waiting now that I have tried numerous times since getting the four different advices with no success for someone there to help. The problem with all the tutorials online is that they are for animating aircraft parts NOT my beacon and just don't apply. If one of you are familiar how to successfully export my GMAX Flight Light 80 to work in FSX I surely would like to hear here from you and can provide the gmax file I created which is properly animated. :banghead:
 
Continuing Construction

Here is my latest addition known as "Hanger 6" in my scenery. It was fun creating all the way to the end as evidenced by the big red arrow I placed on the photo. WHAT A NIGHTMARE! in Sketchup to exactly create and align the downspouts from the gutter. I have a lot of previous hangers in past years that I didn't bother with trims or gutters/downspouts but now "I bother" because I want them as close to reality as possible to do. If I ever figure how to animate the hanger doors and I'm NOT trying to do this in GMAX after all the trouble with the beacon but I won't go there, hanger doors are either open or closed on my airports. These are closed. I have to confess that the hanger doors on the hangers at Brown Field are all assumptions because there are no views from the apron sides only from Airport Road Hwy 87.


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An Update

For the past week, I have been over at FSDevelopers working with Tom Gibson of Calclassics who has tirelessly worked on my custom beacon which was exported to GMAX from Sketchup via MDCx to add animation. After countless hours and my hours of testing it we just about got it. It works beautifully though it has to rotate/illuminate 24/7 because of the FSX limitation. So...I have tackled it with a SODE xml of a stationary beacon in the daytime and a custom beacon rotating/illuminating when it is dark. I have a post at FSDevelopers for help because the daytime works fine but no nightime beacon.

Here is the all-time day and night


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The Last Four

I completed the last four hangers today and added them to the airport. I have a request out for more info on the terminal which is really cool:


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Here Is The New Beacon

I was still having SODE trouble with the beacon so I posted at FSDevelopers as I so often do for help. Bushpilot again came to my rescue and created the complete beacon for me. I am thinking that it was easier than trying to fix my muddled up code. He sent it to me last night. This morning I deleted mine in SODE and added his to Simobjects and XML and the result was perfect except the model objects were too large after export. I easily scaled them to the proper size in Model Converter X V1.50 and resaved them. Tweaked the height in the xml code and here it is perfect. Bushpilot not only has it lit and rotating at Dawn/Night/Dusk but also in low vis and rain and snow as it is supposed to do in real life. WOW! its great and will be included with instructions in its finished version when I get the terminal finished and release it here in the Library. I noticed after I took these screenshots that the beacon model is still a foot too high and I fixed that in the xml code so it is exactly on the platform now.l

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Another Addition

Over the weekend I added the SODE Windsock here. It is wind velocity sensitive (there is no real wind today at Elizabethtown (or here on the Caroloina Coast either) so it is still. It is also illuminated at night as is the real one and as best as I can tell it is this color also. It will be included with the SODE beacon in the folder when the airport is released.

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Terminal

Still waiting on the plans if they will share them. I should have a final answer soon. First one was NO but I sent them references from my past airport managers and architects who have shared with me and hope that will convince them to a YES. Otherwise I will do the best I can from all the photos I WAS able to download from their grand opening facebook page.
 
The Terminal Is Complete

I waited for a week for the airport manager to change his mind about providing me drawings but I guess even though I gave him other airport managers to talk with I gave up on him and used what photos I could find online and created it myself. There is a little poetic license where I had to fill in gaps in the photos they took at their grand opening ribbon cutting ceremony but I am satisfied with it being as close as possible with what I had to work with. So now I will start adding autogen the photoreal textures all done. Here are a couple of screen shots:

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