UncleTgt Solomons early 43

[Hiede]

First of all UT I have a lot of respect for all you've done over the years,scenery wise,plane textures and their improvement.

My son has several of your scenaries installed,but the Solomons has been a problem.The SI_Henderson'43 - B1 Rwy 6R when taking off he gets a prop strike even after he is in the air.It has been re-installed several times and it always happens.Does anyone else have this problem?

Thanks for any help.

Hiede

 

[Deathwind]

Does it happen with all planes or just a particular plane. I don’t currently have that scenery installed but haven’t seen anything posted by anybody that I can remember stating a similar issue. If you haven’t tried different planes I would recommend trying another plane but if your getting that from different planes I’d say you discovered a problem with that runway and it would be up to UT to fix it.

 

[Hiede]

It has happened with all planes he has tried.It even happens when the planes have already taken off.They have no problem taking off from any of the other runways.

I've been around CFS2 for over 20 years and know how to do a lot of things.I don't fly it much anymore but still know how it works and how put add on's into it.I had 2 good teachers to show how things were done,most know 1 of them as he contributed a lot to CFS2 and taught a few about mission building and shared his knowledge in the forums many years.

Hiede

 

[Deathwind]

It has happened with all planes he has tried.It even happens when the planes have already taken off.They have no problem taking off from any of the other runways.

I've been around CFS2 for over 20 years and know how to do a lot of things.I don't fly it much anymore but still know how it works and how put add on's into it.I had 2 good teachers to show how things were done,most know 1 of them as he contributed a lot to CFS2 and taught a few about mission building and shared his knowledge in the forums many years.

Hiede

Well that most certainly sounds like a bug with the scenery and not the plane and without a lot of mods made yet using it even more could pop up. I'm sure UT will pop in soon to give his assessment of the situation and hopefully be able to take care of it in short order. Me I'm still trying to learn how to spell my name so I probably shouldn't mess with it.

 

[UncleTgt]

Firstly, it's an indication of how little use these projects get that such an issue hasn't come up until now - which is sad.

I suspect it's because I was not clear about which runways are active in each period.

When I released my Solomons scenery I didn't want users having to constantly go in to update the airbases.dat, so I put all the runways in a single text file. But some runways aren't active in every period. I thought the SWPTO airbases timeline pdf was adequate. but it's not detailed enough for the Guadacanal airfields.

For the early '43 period, only Rwy 6L is active for Henderson (Bomber 1). The photos I looked at suggested Rwy 6R was under construction until the middle of the year & show the west end of Rwy 6R in use as a taxiway area during early '43. My airfield background is meant to match this transitory appearance.

Now, the gsl for this period puts an AF sandbagged emplacement at the midpoint of the runway. It's possible to avoid it, but not easy. I suspect it's the damage boxes for this object that are causing the prop strikes.

Similarly, at Kukum (Fighter 2), only Rwy 7R is active, the seaward side Rwy 7L only completing during the summer of 43.

The pics show my flights from both 6L & 6R. I didn't get a prop strike, but I had to swerve to avoid running down the sandbagged emplacement for Rwy 6R. I've attached a text file listing the active runways in the Guadacanal area for each of the scenery periods. Hope this makes things clearer.

Hopefully this fixes things. It would be nice to hear from other users though...

 

[skylane]

I just wanted to post the same discovery, that the runway in question isn't active in the early 43 version, and the airbases entry instead puts you onto a parallel taxiway with an obstacle at the end of it.

I didn't try to take off from the taxiway, but a takeoff from the active runway went without any problems.

Update: I changed to the late 43 scenery, where the runway is present and flew a circuit in a KM P-40F. No problems encountered.

 

[Deathwind]

Wow I can see the problem and why it happened. Are there any other scenery packages that have these inactive runways that wasn’t meant to be used? I would assume that any runway that wasn’t attended to be used wouldn’t be in the active runway list meaning you would need to either hand edit a mission take off point or taxi from the attended runway to the inactive one before trying to take off. Nothing wrong with history and that’s a subject outside being the class clown I was good in but I’d probably would have either done one of two things. I’d would have made it where you could take off from it or I wouldn’t have a visible way to go in that direction just to avoid complications but that’s a choice thing and we all aren’t supposed to think alike or we would all stayed in the principals office just like I did.

 

[kdriver]

John, I've only been using the main field and had no problems. However, there appears to be a problem with the newer field to the east. The dirt runway is floating above the terrain. The flatten file only takes in the Marston matting runway. I got a prop strike as well.

Just confirming the BGLs which should be active for early 1943 are: Henderson1942, Henderson1942_A16N, HendersonFighter_1, HendersonFighter_1_A16N plus their respective AFD and exclude files.

I was wondering if there should be a Solomons42 scenery layer containing only the Henderson1942.gsl objects.

Cheers,
Kev

 

[UncleTgt]

Kev,

That might be the issue that Hiede's son is having.

If you're flying in a early '43 period, the 87 Days airbases scenery layer needs to be deactivated. Those bgls you mention are in the 87 days airbases/scenery folder.

The early '43 scenery bgls are in the Solomons_Airbases_43erly/scenery folder.

The flatten is called SI_Henderson43v2_UT_A16N, etc.

See the file scenery_cfg_notes in the zip.

It says " You can move between date ranges simply by deactivating/activating the relevant date ranges in the usual manner through the Scenery Library. You only need to exit the sim to change the GSL."

 

[kdriver]

I was just going through the folders making sure there were no old MR files or duplicates and I noticed I have both a Henderson_Fighter_1_exc1 and a Fighter_1_exc1 BGl. Does the second one refer to Henderson?

 

[UncleTgt]

I wouldn't think the excludes would give trouble, but my 87 days excludes folder has:

Fighter_1_excl.bgl
Henderson_Field_excl.bgl
Henderson1942excl.bgl

I didn't need to create any 1943 exclude for Henderson, as Captain Kurt's was already in play...

 

[kdriver]

Kev,

That might be the issue that Hiede's son is having.

If you're flying in a early '43 period, the 87 Days airbases scenery layer needs to be deactivated. Those bgls you mention are in the 87 days airbases/scenery folder.

The early '43 scenery bgls are in the Solomons_Airbases_43erly/scenery folder.

The flatten is called SI_Henderson43v2_UT_A16N, etc.

See the file scenery_cfg_notes in the zip.

It says " You can move between date ranges simply by deactivating/activating the relevant date ranges in the usual manner through the Scenery Library. You only need to exit the sim to change the GSL."

Thanks John, yes I had the wrong layer activated.

 

[Hiede]

UT

I got a chance to look at the install did,he just put in the wrong airbase in the airbase file.I have corrected it and all works fine.Now I have to install everything for the GSL.The 87 days was already deactivated.

There different installs for the Cactus and early 43 scenery.There also be another install for the late 43 install.

Thanks for the help.

Hiede

 

[UncleTgt]

Glad it's sorted.

Yes, separate installs for each period is easier & smarter -

But if you're stuck for diskspace, it can be done with a single Solomons install - & I wanted to illustrate how that could be managed.

I can think of lots of locations where it would be handy to have different period- specific airbase/gsl layouts...

 

[Hiede]

Glad it's sorted.

Yes, separate installs for each period is easier & smarter -

But if you're stuck for diskspace, it can be done with a single Solomons install - & I wanted to illustrate how that could be managed.

I can think of lots of locations where it would be handy to have different period- specific airbase/gsl layouts...

The only problem was with the LDW Trees.I had them already on the computer from years ago when Al downloaded them,but kept getting couldn't find them in the library and re-downloaded them and everything is fine now.

My son has started to fly the P-40 campaign with the new Solomons 43 scenery.It will take him some time because he is still in school,has to do homework and also has little league.

Hiede

 

[kdriver]

Hi John,

I had another look at Henderson and made sure only the 87 Days airfield scenery layer was active this time, as well as checking there were no vestiges of MaskRider's scenery present.

I still have the same problem with the southern end of the Fighter 1 strip - it's floating above a depression in the terrain which is at the same elevation as the bomber runway. Are those two strips meant to be at the same elevation?

 

[Hiede]

Kevin

We just made a clean install of CSF2 and used the 87 Days self install.So without the MR scenery didn't worry about it.

Only problem now is with the Solomons early 43 scenery is at SI_Kukum'43 - Fighter 2.

Here's some pics.

Hiede

 

[UncleTgt]

Kev,

I don't have the source files for the 87 Days airstrips, Capt Kurt created them. As they share the same background bitmap, I would assume they are meant to be at the same altitude.

In real life, they weren't, Fighter 1 was lower than Henderson. This is why I separated them & shifted them slightly for the later periods.

Hiede,

Viewing these on a phone, it's difficult to know what the issues are.

If it's the take-off location, I recall having lots of mesh- related trouble with Kukum. There might be a Kukum takeoff mission I can review to cross-check the airbases.dat entry with - it may be a typo crept in when I created that document. I'll check & get back to you.

 

[Hiede]

Hiede,

Viewing these on a phone, it's difficult to know what the issues are.

If it's the take-off location, I recall having lots of mesh- related trouble with Kukum. There might be a Kukum takeoff mission I can review to cross-check the airbases.dat entry with - it may be a typo crept in when I created that document. I'll check & get back to you.

It's one of the missions from the 44th at Guadalcanal and the plane just took off and a few seconds that's what appears.It happens in free flight also.

Hiede

 

[kdriver]

John,

I think if the boundaries of Kurt's flatten areas are adjusted, it would be possible to have the main field and the satellite field at different elevations.

Hiede,

I checked Kukum for both early and late 1943. Everything displayed correctly for me. It looks like some sort of GSL object conflict.

Kevin