Hi all. In another recent post a poster sought help because his compass and DG had lost the ability to recognize magnetic North (and pointed to true north). In their replies, a couple of folks mentioned that the problem could be a defective AFCAD for an airport "half way around the world" and suggested solutions for narrowing down the offending AFCAD and deleting it. Sounded really frustrating.I've been thinking about this: How does this work? How can an unrelated AFCAD affect another? More importantly, I add AFCADs from time to time. Is there something I should look for in these files in Swordy's editor before I add them to prevent this? (the fault finder doesn't include mag var) The only setting I see related to this is a place to set the mag var for the airport.I've learned from other posts that it is important to make sure the added AFCAD has exactly the same name for the airport or there can be CTDs.Thanks

I've never seen an AFCAD cause the problem - but the issue is that something in the coding of one file tells FS to ignore magnetic deviation. It may be possible to create the problem with a AFCAD file with 0 magnetic deviation.Remember the fault finder does not check for FS errors - only potential errors in the AFCAD setup as determined by the designer of AFCAD. Also AFCAD was last updated BEFORE Microsoft released the Software Development Kit (SDK) for the BGL Comp process - so it does not handle several items correctly in FS. AFCAD does not even use the same XML Schema as Microsoft to create files - which is why decompiled AFCAD files cannot be correctly recompiled with BGLComp.Lee did an amazing job of updating AFCAD - especially when you realize he was working in the blind on the project.I've had the loss of magnetic deviaiton caused by a texture file, though the most common is a scenery .BGL where the scenery designer does not know the correct magnetic deviation and tells FS to ignore magnetic deviation.The designer is unaware that this is a GLOBAL level setting in FS, not a local setting when just that scenery is active.FS has to read some data from every file world wide - so that it can be ready to go where you go in the virtual world - thus scenery, textures and AFCAD's halfway around the world can cause you problems.The most important thing you can do to deal with issues like this is keep a Change Control LogA simple text document or a spreadsheet will do. Just every time you make changes, add new scenery, add new AFCAD files, add new textures - or remove anything - make a note with the date.99.999999% of the time - if you undo the last couple changes - the problem will be corrected.And if you are old and fogetful like me - having the most recent changes written down really helps.

The only potential problem that I know of with Afcads is if you have duplicates for the same airport. There is a great utility called scanafd in the library which will scan your fs2004 folder and identify any airports with more than one afcad.

>-snip- There is a great>utility called scanafd in the library which will scan your>fs2004 folder and identify any airports with more than one>afcad. Unfortunately, scanafd is hard coded to use the registry to find the FS9 installation and thus, is of no use to someone such as myself who has four seperate installs of FS9 tailored for specific geografic regions. Also, I have one common "addon scenery" directory that is shared by all four of my installations and is not contained within any of them. Scanafd doesn't have the capability written into it for the user to be able to specify the search paths to use.... Paul

Regie,I recently posted in another thread, how replacing a specific AFCAD with another version seemed to get rid of my magnetic 0 issue. In fact in that same thread, I wrote how to quickly check for this issue but now you've got me re-thinking this issue when you mentioned double-AFCADS. Obviously, ScanAFD is the tool of choice but when you find a duplicate AFCAD, do rename all but one of them or do you delete all but one of them. The reason I ask is, I keep all my PAI AFCADS in /addon Scnery/Scenery. I then keep any of my add-on airport AFCADS in the scenery directory under that specific airport. This method really helps me keep track of which AFCAD is which. What I had been doing with ScanAFD was renaming the duplicates found in /addon Scenery/Scenery, in case I wanted to revert back to a PAI default. But around the time I solved this magnetic 0 heading issue, I do remember going back and deleting all my renamed AFCADS which may have also contributed to my fix. So the question remains, is it possible that renaming AFCAD1.bgl to AFCAD1.zzz could still allow FS9 to pickup the bgl if it's left in the /addon Scenery/Scenery directory? I.e, does simply renaming a .bgl file really hide it from FS9?v/r,Al

Hi,Renaming the extension to anything but bgl has always inactivated the file for me.Hope this helps,--Tom GibsonCal Classic Propliner Page: http://www.calclassic.comFreeflight Design Shop: http://www.freeflightdesign.comDrop by! ___x_x_(")_x_x___

>RegI.e, does simply renaming a .bgl file really hide>it from FS9?Yes