Hardcore Gamer Resource Kit/Hardcore Gamer Resource Kit - Disc 1.iso/flight/fs5/scenery/azorian/AZORES3.TXT

Text File | 1994-12-30 | 11KB | 266 lines

AZORES.BGL - The Azorean archipelago for FS5.
-----------

Version 3 of BGL with synthetic scenery and navaids, done with BGLGEN,
by Carlos Coimbra.

I am making this BGL freely available for the use of the Flight Sim community,
but I do retain the rights of authorship; if you reverse engineer this BGL,
you should not start modifying and reposting it, or worse, misrepresent the
results as all your own work.

First, a few words about two items without which the present BGL could not
have been made.

Synthetic scenery is what one finds in the TEXTURE subdirectory. In my under-
standing, most of the items there are compressed to save disk space (but to
cost time in disk accesses when needed). They appear to be called at 'run ti-
me', sort of like Windows DLLs.
If you use AZORES, I also recommend that you obtain FS5AR8V1.zip (from
ftp.iup.edu, [anonymous.flight-sim.fs5.scenery], for instance), which is a
collection of modified texture files (.R8s) as a replacement for the default
FS5.0a; they are not strictly necessary, but since those are the textures
which I am now using, the scenery may tend to look more homogeneous.

BGLGEN is a synthetic scenery compiler, not a true designer like ASD for FS4.
Its author is Enno Borgsteede, CIS 72763,311, Amsterdam, and I hereby present
my Dank U Wel to him and welcome his comments. Its ouput is obviously restric-
ted to the collection of scenery building blocks which come with FS5. One prod-
uces scenery by writing a series of 'source' commands that the compiler then
crunches into a BGL, which is probably like an index of items to be 'drawn' at
the appropriate locations.
What does BGL stand for anyway, you ask? I too would like to know! Maybe it
means Bill Gates' Lollipop, but more likely something like Build Ground Links.

Presumably because of FS5's built-in restrictions, BGLGEN does not allow you
to put up hills of particular heights, only generic low and high hills; this
is frustrating, in that I found myself feeling like a figure skating judge,
holding back on the higher hills until a really high hill was needed...

AZORES was constructed using version 0.3c of BGLGEN, which came into my hands
on 94/6/13. Certain discrepancies were found between its documentation and its
functioning, such as the range of ATIS messages, but this is not a discussion
of the compiler, which functions quite well, in spite of not being very user-
friendly.

AZORES comprises all islands in the Azorean archipelago. It was begun and
completed in between watching World Cup games, and so do not expect too much.
I originally gave it the serial number 1 just in case corrections or updates
might be required or a version were to be produced using the hypothetical FS5
ASD.

The pertinent data were taken from Tactical Pilotage Chart TPC G-24B and from
the applicable Flight Information Supplement and from the available IAPs
(Instrument Approach Procedures). The updates for AZORES3 came as a result
of materials graciously forwarded to me by José Carlos Monteiro, of Lisbon
(the 'J' in Portuguese is pronounced just as in French).

Revisions:
AZORES2 received minor corrections to navaid coordinates, the addition of the
Flores VOR and of the recently-inaugurated Corvo airfield (necessitating a
slight revision of ground representation).

AZORES3 received the addition of four local NDBs, an MM at PDL and revised
ranges for VORs, NDBs and Comms (based on published materials).
Some runways have been lengthened (to reflect construction work) and markings
and lighting have also been revised (both added and removed) as per current
data. Ponta Delgada now has also a DME facility.

                        ----------  XXX  -----------

Azores is an 'Autonomous Region' of Portugal. The archipelago is called Açores
in Portuguese, the name of the large birds which were found in the islands at
the time of their discovery, and which are depicted on the Azorean flag.

The islands are geographically distributed in three groups: western (Corvo and
Flores), eastern (Säo Miguel and Santa Maria) and central. The airport at
Santa Maria is home to one of the four North Atlantic ATC centers.

I have only been in the Azores once (being a native of Lisbon), and that was
a mere stopover by Canadian Pacific Airlines at Santa Maria airport in my
youth. I have often seen newsfilm taken in the Azores, though, and did try
really hard to interpret the TPC.

Now for the technical description:

Authors of BGL files usually list facilities quite wisely by type (VORs, NDBs,
etc...). The particular contents and layout of AZORES.BGL have led me instead
to provide such a list organized by island, in alphabetical order. I have also
translated to English non-obvious island names.

All latitudes are N and longitudes are W, naturally.

Base altitudes for each individual island were set at the respective air-
field's elevation.
The altitude of navaid stations was also coded in, where known; otherwise,
stations at an airfield were given the altitude of the airfield.

In the case of airfields with multiple runways, they are listed in descending
order of length.
Runways are asphalt, except for one which is concrete, and so has been coded
with a somewhat lighter color.
Where known, runways were correctly oriented magnetically, down to the first
decimal position; otherwise, as an example, runway 11 was given a 110° orienta-
tion.
Due to the inflexibility of the synthetic scenery mechanism (Enno will know
what I mean), four runways (Graciosa, Horta, Ponta Delgada and Säo Jorge)
were moved ever so slightly, as an alternative to moving the whole island.

ILSs have a 25 nm range. VOR and NDB ranges were set at their published values;
only that of the FLORES VOR is now unknown, and it was set at approximately
200 nautical miles; if you find it unrealistic to be able to pick up an NDB or
VOR from that distance, while sitting on the ground, simply do not use it.
What I do find unrealistic is FS5's reduced ability in this respect (just
like FS4's before it), being only 'able' at 70 or 80 nm.
In this manner, the scenery is ready for a real world FS...

The COM facilities come in three flavors: Tower, ATIS and Radio, but they all
function identically, of course; I have only wanted to adhere to the official
status quo.

AZORES should be flown with fairly thick clouds and relatively low ceilings,
otherwise it simply would not be typical azorean weather <g>...

You will need lots of expanded memory, probably 3 or more Megs; give it all
you can, because FS5 just gobbles it up, and does not appear to know when to
discard what it no longer needs. The memory usage figures (Options/Simulator
Info) give ever increasing numbers, until sometimes they all go to 0 (!?),
resulting in massive quantities of hard disk access, possibly meaning that it
looks like FS no longer knows that it has expanded memory, or that it does not
know how to behave when its limit (?) has been reached. This situation also
reveals another FS5 bug: while accessing disk, everything really stops, even
the weather (unlike when Pause is used), except the *clock* !!

Users' constructive comments are welcome, but do have in mind that scenery
produced in this manner simply cannot be made to follow reality very closely.
In some respects, it looks better than what was achievable with ASD, and can
be more accurate as far as IFR goes, but one simply is not able to delineate
contours as finely...

Oops, almost forgot... For those who do not know, simply copy AZORES.BGL to
the SCENERY subdirectory (of \FLTSIM5 or \FS5). No other files are needed.
On the World/Airports menu, you will see the Açores area listed. Airfields
are listed alphabetically, and both 4- and 3-letter ICAO identifiers are
provided where applicable.

By the way, in case you hadn't noticed, areas are listed in the order of their
appearance in the SCENERY subdirectory; if you have multiple BGLs, you can
specify their sequence by using a utility like Norton's Directory Sort to re-
order the directory.

[e-mail] or
[e-mail]
and ILINK, NANET or RIME simulator conferences.

Toronto 94/06/21 (Version 1)
        94/08/11 (Version 2)
        94/12/30 (Version 3)

                         ----------  XXX  -----------

Corvo (Raven)
-------------
ATIS 122.30             39:40.3 31:06.5

Rwy 12/30   -   157 ft (2625x66)


Faial (Beech Forest)
--------------------
Horta Tower 118.00      38:31:12 28:43:02

Rwy 10/28   -   115 ft  (4921x148)

VOR HORTA               112.7   VFL 38:31:11 28:37:28   Range 240 nm
NDB HORTA               380     FIL 38:31:20 28:41:15   Range 250 nm
NDB HORTA-L             360     HT  38:31:11 28:37:48   Range 25 nm


Flores (Flowers)
----------------
Tower 118.30            39:27.4 31:07.6

Rwy 18/36   -   112 ft  (3706x98)

VOR FLORES              113.3   FRS 39:27:08 31:12:22   Range 200 nm?
NDB FLORES              270     FLO 39:26:38 31:09:48   Range 250 nm
NDB FLORES-L            331     SC  39:26:52 31:07:31   Range 25 nm


Graciosa (Charming)
------------------
Radio 122.90            39:05:37 28:01:47

Rwy 09/27   -   86 ft   (4346x98)

NDB GRACIOSA            283     GRA 39:05:00 28:01:00   Range 100 nm
NDB GRACIOSA-L          428     GC  39:05:38 28:01:55   Range 25 nm


Pico (Peak)
-----------
Radio 122.70            38:33:14 28:26:39

Rwy 10/28   -   110 ft  (4789x98)

NDB PICO-L              420     PI  38:33:30 28:24:15   Range 25 nm


Santa Maria
-----------
Tower 118.10            36:58.0 25:10.0

Rwy 18/36  -   305 ft   (10,000x197)
    15/33               (6004x148)      Not in use, unmarked
    05/23               (4659x148)      Not in use, unmarked

ILS Rwy 18              110.3   (MM) 2.75%

VOR SANTA MARIA         113.7   VSM 36:57:43 25:10:01   Range 200 nm
NDB SANTA MARIA         323     SMA 36:59:45 25:10:34   Range 300 nm
NDB SANTA MARIA         240     STA 36:56:54 25:10:00   Range 200 nm


Säo Jorge
---------
Radio 122.30            38:39:46 28:10:12

Rwy 13/31   -   311 ft  (4297x98)

No navaids


Säo Miguel
----------
Ponta Delgada Tower 118.30  37:44:28 25:41:53

Rwy 12/30   -   259 ft  (7718x148)

ILS Rwy 30              109.5   (MM) (Localizer+DME)

NDB PONTA DELGADA       371     MGL 37:44:26 25:35:04   Range 200 nm
NDB PONTA DELGADA-L     351     PD  37:44:03 25:40:32   Range 25 nm


Terceira (Third)
----------------
Lajes ATIS 120.30       38:46.0 27:06.0

Rwy 15/33   -   180 ft  (10,865x300)
    10/28               (5743x148)      Not in use, unmarked
    02/20               (5743x197)      High-speed taxiway

ILS Rwy 15              109.9   3.0%

VOR LAJES               112.3   LM  38:47:03 27:06:20   Range 100 nm
VOR LAJES (TACAN)       110.8   LAJ 38:42:48 27:07:00   Range 250 nm
VOR TERMINAL (TACAN)    116.2   TRM 38:45:38 27:05:34   Range 100 nm
NDB LAJES               341     GP  38:46:59 27:06:51   Range 50 nm


Ilhéu Formigas (Ants islet)
---------------------------

No airfield, almost no ground, even...
Northeast of Santa Maria