When do changes to taxiways or gates or runways become active?

Immediately after you have saved them and closed the Taxiway Maintenance Window? Or is a restart of P2A necessary?

The reason I ask this:

At the end of my last flight, after landing and leaving the runway, I asked for taxi instructions to the GA ramp. The response of the controller and the drawing of the taxipath were completely wrong. The depiction of the taxipath showed a short straight line on a patch of grass. The controller said ".... taxi to general aviaton ramp (or parking) via taxiway 2 ...". In reality, however, the taxiways there are designated with letters. So I decided to update the layout of the airport. To do this, I first imported the taxiways and gates from X-Plane, as these are usually closer to the original. After testing my modifications with the "Route to Gate" function, I clicked on "save changes" and closed the TaxiMnt window. Now I asked the controller again. The answer was exactly the same as before. Then I clicked on "validate" (unfortunately I'm not sure if I also clicked on "file"). In any case, the last section of the Taxipath has now been drawn at the correct position and spoken with the correct name "E". Only the last section! Then I ended P2A and started it again and resumed the "flight on the ground" with "validate + file". After I asked the controller again for taxi instructions to the GA ramp, I finally got the correct answer and the taxipath was also drawn correctly.

I hope there is another way than restarting to apply the changes to the current flight.

In Germany and neighboring countries, many, if not all, of the airports have more or less severe errors. Unfortunately, I mostly forget to look at the destination airport before planning a flight in order to revise it if necessary. So it would be nice if you could still do this after you have filed a flight plan. Maybe in the air too. With the simulator paused. Or just after landing.

 

By the way: In the map of the Airport Information Window (info button on the right-hand side), changed gates are not displayed even after the restart.

In order for the changes to take effect, you do have to restart P2A in order to load the new/revised data.

Dave

Hmmm ... that's a shame. But thank you for the quick answer.

And why are modified gates not displayed in the Airport Information Window? Not even after a restart?

Axel

I guess it depends on what you modified in Gates and what filters you have turned on as to whether or not the changes would "show" in the Apt Info window.  The data does change.

Try removing all filters and see if your changes show.  The data is reloaded from the source that is updated in TaxiMnt.  So if the change doesn't show, it may not have been saved.  Go to TaxiMnt and see if the change is still there.

Dave

My goodness ... Shame on me, I completely overlooked the filter. Please excuse me for stealing your time.

Axel

Some questions about the taxi points:

There are taxi points of the type "hold short" and of the type "ILS hold short". What is the point of this distinction?

Where should one type be used and where the other?

I have found several examples where the holding points always consist of a pair of "hold short" and "ILS hold short". Is this in accordance with the Taxiway Editing Rules?

Then there is the "Parking" type. What is it for? Does it make a functional difference in the operation of P2A whether I have a taxi point of the "normal" type or of the "parking" type?
 

Axel

ILS Hold Short points are usually a little further back from the runway and are there so waiting aircraft don't block the ILS signal.  In most cases, there would also be a normal Hold Short point closer to the runway.  P2A uses the normal Hold Short Points since they should be at every point before crossing/entering a runway.

Parking points are just what the name implies.  They are for gates and ramp parking spots and should not be used elsewhere.

Dave

Another thought on maintenance.  The TaxiMnt tool only modifies the P2A version of the airport and is only used by P2A for  taxi instructions.

If you want to do some serious maintenance, you should use the SIM tool for this purpose and then import the airport after your modifications are complete. 

I would recommend doing animport from the SIM before any TaxiMnt work since often the problem has already been fixed in the SIM version of the airport.

Dave

Dave,

Is this SIM tool something a non-programmer could use, and does this tool ship with P3D?

Bill Clark

Bill,

For P3D, I believe the tool is ADE at this link:

Taxiways and Parking | Airport Design Editor Help | Help Site (screenstepslive.com)

I have never used it, so I can't speak to its ease of use, but the screenshots make it seem relatively simple.

Dave

19 hours ago, Dave-Pilot2ATC said:

ILS Hold Short points are usually a little further back from the runway and are there so waiting aircraft don't block the ILS signal.  In most cases, there would also be a normal Hold Short point closer to the runway.  P2A uses the normal Hold Short Points since they should be at every point before crossing/entering a runway.

Okay, interesting. But for what reason are there the ILS hold short points in P2A?

 

19 hours ago, Dave-Pilot2ATC said:

Parking points are just what the name implies.  They are for gates and ramp parking spots and should not be used elsewhere.

Does it have any influence on the taxi instructions whether a parking point or a normal taxi point was set at a gate or ramp?

 

Could it be that there are some types of taxi paths and taxi points that actually have no influence on the taxi instructions?

I understand the meaning of taxi point::normal and taxi point::hold short as well as the need to distinguish between taxi path::taxi and taxi path::runway. But why all the other types?

Axel

1 hour ago, tante-ju said:

Okay, interesting. But for what reason are there the ILS hold short points in P2A?

They are there because they are in the SIM when the data was imported.  They are not used by P2A.

2 hours ago, tante-ju said:

Does it have any influence on the taxi instructions whether a parking point or a normal taxi point was set at a gate or ramp?

No.  Only points from Named Taxi Paths of type Taxi and Runway are used in calculating the taxi route.  However, normal taxi points should be used for all taxi paths, except where a HoldShort point is required.

2 hours ago, tante-ju said:

Could it be that there are some types of taxi paths and taxi points that actually have no influence on the taxi instructions?

Yes. Un-named taxi paths are not used.  Points that are not part of a named path are not used.

2 hours ago, tante-ju said:

I understand the meaning of taxi point::normal and taxi point::hold short as well as the need to distinguish between taxi path::taxi and taxi path::runway. But why all the other types?

Because FSX, P3D or some other SIM put them there.  P2A only cares about normal and hold-short points and only about taxi and runway paths.

Thanks Dave

Bill Clark

Eureka! ... now the whole thing is clear!

Perhaps, however, a few words in the manual would be appropriate to clarify these relationships.

 

I still have one more thought. Just a suggestion.

Since only one airfield is loaded at a time to process it, it shouldn't be a big deal to simplify the data from the SIM a bit. So that the user actually only gets to see the things that are necessary for the taxi instructions in P2A. When loading the data from the SIM, you could convert all taxi points that are not normal or hold short points into normal taxi points. All taxi paths that are not runways and cannot be used by the controller for valid taxi instructions (closed paths, vehicle paths, etc. and maybe even unnamed paths) could simply be omitted.

As I said, just a suggestion ...

Thank you for your patience regarding my pedantic questions over the past few days.

Axel

Just my experience: ADE modifications can be very difficult, as it does not only modify gates or taxiways, but the whole environment.
Especially for bigger payware airports, editing with ADE is much more complicated as P2ATC taxi maintenance.
And thanks for the answers above, I had the same questions...