LatinVFR San Diego - Military or Civilian airport?

[Ray Proudfoot 8,932]

Having bought LatinVFR's San Diego airport I am confused about the gate assignments. I thought this was a civilian airport but virtually every gate is described as ramp mil cargo. It makes a mockery of trying to decide which gate to park at for a 737.

 

But if you check this website for flight movements it suggests most are civilian, not military. http://www.san.org/Flights/Flight-Status

 

Knowing many of you will have this airport I'm hoping you can explain why the gates have been named this way. It seems bizarre. :unsure:

 

I have searched for an alternative AFCAD but it proved fruitless.

[tipitout 5]

I seem to recall some developers doing this in order to stop default ground services vehicles appearing at the gates. I could be wrong, though.

[Dave_YVR 968]

 It's common with some of the devs to code gates as either Ramp_GA_XX or Military_xx as it removes the stock ground vehicles that show up when created as a GATE. The idea is that it reduces clutter and also makes room for GSX or AES vehicles. The actual type of spot is fairly meaningless from a user pov as GATE SMALL MEDIUM or HEAVY doesn't really specify anything. It's more a combination of the radius that defines whats able to park where along with the parking code from the Aircraft.cfg and the airport file (ADE/AFCAD). Every parking spot should still be numbered and lettered where needed so you know what spot is what of course and knowing before hand roughly where you will be parking when you arrive is part of a good plan.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,932]

Philip / Dave,

 

Thanks for your comments. If the intention is to prevent GSX/AES vehicles from being activated shouldn't this be mentioned in the readme? And shouldn't there be an alternative AFCAD for those of us who use AES / GSX and want to see service vehicles?

 

Small, Medium and Heavy are pretty important to me since they tell me gates that are suitable for my aircraft. It might be a 737-800 or maybe even Concorde which is rated as Heavy. Having bought the airport I would want to use gates relevant to my aircraft size. Ramp Mil Cargo is useless for me.

 

I'll examine the AFCAD and note the radius of each gate and then use the info in the link I supplied to change the gate appropriately. I don't mind if developers want to fudge things for various reasons but I want a choice as to whether I go with that decision or not.

[Dave_YVR 968]

The intent is to remove the stock vehicles that will appear with GATES,  so to have no interference with GSX and AES vehicles.

 

SMALL MEDIUM and HEAVY gate only tells you a portion of what gates are applicable though, what's more important is the radius assigned to each spot which GSX will tell you if your aircraft will fit in the gate selection option. The Concorde is rated as a heavy for ATC and separation but for parking does not require a heavy gate as it's wingspan and length doesn't require it.

 

 You always have the choice to edit the airport file's to your own preferences.

[David Vega 348]

Ray,

 

As a GSX user, best way to see the gate information (small, medium, heavy) is to have FSX position your airplane on the default active runway, and then activate GSX, and select a gate from its menu.  As others posted, developers use the Ramp_GA_XX or Military_xx to prevent default FSX ground vehicles from showing up at the gates.  

[Ray Proudfoot 8,932]

Dave / SAX702,

 

I'm familiar with the format of AFCADs and use AFX to modify gate sizes when necessary. You might remember my thread on Orlando when several gates were sized as Medium when they were wide enough to be Heavy. I later found out there was a new AFCAD for Orlando with several classed as heavy.

 

I'll change a couple of gates and see what effect it has on default ground traffic. But other scenery designers don't do this. Flightbeam, DreamTeam, UK2000 etc. Are they cleverer than LatinVFR? Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained. The problem currently is that the gates aren't clearly identified so it makes it very difficult to know where they are.

 

Yes, Concorde is slim enough to be classified as Medium for parking.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

Ray,

 

You can have the gates flagged as military cargo or what not, but still have parking codes and whatever sizes you want. As mentioned twice, they need to be marked as military so that the default ground vehicles don't show up and overlap parts of the scenery or GSX or AES vehicles.

 

It was really a genius idea to mark them as such to surpress default vehicles from being spawned inside of terminals or other static object that the scenery designers placed, plus it would look stupid to have the default tug showing up in conjunction with an AES or GSX tug. You can still make the gates any size you need and parking codes work with the military cargo flag enabled.

 

Also, in your user aircrafts cfg, you can flag it for each livery to be assigned to the correct parking codes so that when you land the default ATC will direct you to the parking spot of that airline, provided there are parking spots available for the said airline.

 

It's also helpful to flag your user aircraft cfg with the correct parking codes so that when you use GSX, it will provide you with the correct gates available for your airline.

 

If you want to flag your user aircraft cfg, you will need to insert the code in the following format "atc_parking_codes=", emphasising the (s) on codes. If you just put atc_parking_code=, it won't work without putting the "s" at the end of code. AI uses just atc_parking_code= but user aircraft uses atc_parking_codes=. Same goes for the gate specification.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,932]

cmpbellsjc,

 

Thank you for the guidance on airline parking codes. I am aware of those and have noticed the mil_cargo gates at KSAN do have them assigned.

 

What I don't understand is why other developers don't use the same gate naming process. Are you saying that LatinVFR have unique ground vehicles that would clash with the default ones?

 

I've also noticed that Ctrl+J does not activate the jetway so I'm going to have to buy AES credits. Can you confirm that is the same for you?

 

BTW, as a Radar Contact team member using the default ATC is unlikely. I use Project Magenta and WideFS and part of that employs a special file where I can store preferred gate numbers at all my airports although I'm not sure BA will have many at KSAN. :wink:

[Ray Proudfoot 8,932]

Having done some more digging on this I have found that both FSDreamTeam and FlyTampa also use this method. I shall leave well alone.

 

Thanks for all the helpful advice chaps. :smile: