Hi GuysJust recently run into a problem with continual crashes of a/c when landing at LEPA. Not sure if LEPA is signicant or not, Probably not :( The only reason I say this is because when I reversed my route to my original departure airport, I didn't have any problem landing at all. I have to be honest and say that I have'nt tried any other airports, as this problem sort of got to me a bit and i wanted to try an resolve the problem. Btw, I was using the pmdg 747 400 pax a/c when this happened. Used other a/c and never had a problem, but not at this airport.Being a novice with pmdg 747 (I can sort of find my way around the plane to get from one point to another) I kept thinking that perhaps I had found a problem with my understanding of the a/c and somehow stumbled across the fact that perhaps I did'nt know how to configure the a/c for landing.So the question is, Is it at all possible that a afcad could cause the a/c to crash as it touches down or shortly after ? IF, the afcad is not compiled right (if thats the right way to put it) I have installed a few revised afcads into fs9 and LEPA is one of them.Many thanksTerry.S

Would you please explain just what you mean by "crashes". Are you saying the gear collapses on the aircraft or the sim itself crashes to the desktop or something else entirely?A screenshot or two would be helpful also. :(Edit added: To expand on my reply just a bit - I don't believe I have ever run across an "incorrectly compiled" afcad - not to say that it could not happen as it seems almost anything is possible with computers.That being said, if the problem is related to only one airport, I would check first for duplicate afcads for that airport.You can use the Scanafd program (free) by Eliot Rogers - ask it to search for duplicates and look for any that have runway info in them. There may duplicate afcads but some only contain navaide data and they are not really duplicates.The free AFCAD program by Lee Swordy is also a good tool to use. Ask it to search for the ICAO code in question and it should find all instances of the airport. The default afcad will be greyed out (it is the "stock" airport) and there should only be one which is marked "mod" (modified). If you see more than one mod airport afcad then you indeed have a duplicate. Only one should be active.If you find no duplicates then one has to examine the landing procedures you are using.Hope this helps.

You can use the Scanafd program (free) by Eliot Rogers - ask it to search for duplicates and look for any that have runway info in them. There may duplicate afcads but some only contain navaide data and they are not really duplicates.The free AFCAD program by Lee Swordy is also a good tool to use. Ask it to search for the ICAO code in question and it should find all instances of the airport. The default afcad will be greyed out (it is the "stock" airport) and there should only be one which is marked "mod" (modified). If you see more than one mod airport afcad then you indeed have a duplicate. Only one should be active.

Just to be clear, duplicate AFCAD as such files do not cause crashes, you can have many (although there is no real reason to) and Flight Simulator 9/2004 will only use the highest one in the scenery layers. I used to keep modifications of default airports in case of the need to remove add-on scenery which had its own file and this never gave problems.However, duplicate AFCAD files with different airport co-ordinates will indeed cause system crashes, but these will usually occur when the user's aircraft is many miles from the airport concerned, when Flight Simulator's AI system attempts to populate the airport with parked aircraft and it gets confused with what seem to be two airports with the same identity, not quite in the same place.I don't think this is the issue with Terry's incident, as his occurs just after touchdown. My money is on an AI aircraft with faulty textures trying to load as they come into view. I fixed this occasional problem on my system by eliminating all 32-bit textures issued by developers by reducing them to DXT3 format with mipmaps, which is how Microsoft intended them to be. It is a lot of work, but in my case it was worth it. I would suggest to Terry to try landing with AI turned off as an experiment (if indeed he has AI traffic operating).It is difficult to judge without more information about what caused the system crash - usually you get a window come up inviting you to send details to Microsoft. This probably isn't worth doing for FS9 now for obvious reasons, but in that message (and I forget exactly where, because I rarely get system crashes these days) there is an option to click for more information. Unfortunately both the AFCAD and the faulty AI textures will cause the same module to listed as failing - ntdll.dll - but if the module causing Terry's problem can be identified we would at least know we are on the right track. If it shows something else, it will give us clues to explore elsewhere. If Flight Simulator just vanishes without warning or message, then it is likely to be something external, such as a screen driver issue.The module ntdll.dll is not, interestingly, a Flight Simulator file but is a core windows file known as the NT Layer Library. I do not really understand what it does and it is the only non-FS file that seems to come up in system crash reports.John

HiMy apologise for a late reply. Holidays and other things have taken place of my usual activities of late.David, It was not a CTD, the message I got at the top of the screen when the plane crashed as it touched down was ( A green line right across the top of the screen with the words "AIRCRAFT CRASHED"The original problem i.e. aircraft crashing as it touched down seems to have gone. Unfortunately I can not say why. I do know, that the problem was resolved by removing the alternative afcad and I used the original that was installed with fs9. I then downloaded another afcad from Flightsim which too seemed fine. Just to confuse things, over a period of a few days and further tests on landing at LEPA, I installed further AI from WOAI. I also reinstalled the (perhaps) trouble some one and found that the problem had also gone. I'm not particully up with all the techinical side of programming or the like so I was perhaps wondering if this came down to what John had said about drawing AI.Anyway, Thank you David and John for your help with this issue and aplogises once again for a late replyMany thanksTerry.S

Anyway, Thank you David and John for your help with this issue and aplogises once again for a late reply

I don't think I was much help actually, Terry, because I thought you meant that the Flight Simulator software was crashing. Now I'm on the right wavelength I'll just pass a few thoughts.It seems to me to be likely that if there is a problem it will be specific to LEPA and it may be that if you have add-on scenery it isn't all flattened to the same level, giving you some unexpected bumps. A badly designed AFCAD can give you bumps sometimes, although the runway itself is usually a consistent height so I wouldn't have thought that relevant in this case. Nevertheless, you could check the AFCAD shows the same altitude for the runways and start locations as it does for the airport itself.Your getting that "AIRCRAFT CRASHED" message could be just the result of a heavy landing (apologies if I insult you) and it should be possible to turn this message/feature off. I'm sure mine is off - some of my landings would be, er, slightly underdescribed if I saw those words. :o)As for AI traffic, I doubt that is the same problem - they are usually quite happy to ignore little discrepancies that you or I find troublesome. There can be other reasons for them to appear to crash - firstly quite a few do not have perfect Flight Dynamics and are prone to hit the runway quite hard. If perhaps they have already made a dare-devil approach and dropped height fast, it could be enough for the impact to kill them. Some AI aircraft can do such mad things on approach you really wonder if there is a human at the controls! The other thing that can kill off AI aircraft has nothing to do with impact - if there is no parking space of sufficient size available the aircraft will just vanish. Off the back of my head I can't remember if it does this on touchdown or after taxying off the runway, perhaps somebody else can clarify that to confirm whether this could be relevant to your question.Hope this helps,John

Hope this helps

I have to be honest on this and say that I have taken the easy way out and downloaded Mallorca X recently which has solved all problems. Absolutely brilliant scenery and no more problems at all.Thanks again John and David, much appreciated for your time on this post.Terry.S