Departing Aircraft Problem at Sudbury

[Guest Stan V]

There is a perplexing problem with several AF2-CYSB.bgl (Sudbury, Ontario) files from various authors and before I give the wrong impression. I hasten to say I found nothing wrong with any of these files according to the AFCAD Fault Finder and my reading of AFCAD documentation - but they simply don't work for departing AI traffic and I haven't been able to determine why? Can anyone help and advise about a solution? I posted previously on this matter in the main AVSIM FS9 forum without much success but perhaps the specialized skills here might find an audience. The problem occurs when departing aircraft are forced to taxi part or most of their route on runways as opposed to taxiways. The Sudbury airport configuration is a perfect example of this but I suspect it is not unique to Sudbury. What happens at Sudbury is the following: Assume the Active Runway is Runway 22 which at Sudbury has no parallel taxiways along side of it except at the Runway 4 end. A departing aircraft must taxi down taxiway B to the intersection with Runway 12/30, up Runway 30 to its intersection with Runway 4, and then out Runway 4 to its end where the aircraft must do a 180 deg turn for take off. What happens in FS2004, however, is that all departing aircraft get stuck at the Hold Short position going from taxiway B onto Runway 30 and then they just sit there until their time limit expires and they vanish. According to AFCAD documentation, this happens when a Hold Short node is too far away from the edge of the associated runway but that is not the case with these files. The Hold Short nodes are well within the limit, and the AFCAD Fault Finder finds no fault with the files. According to the AFCAD documentation, FS2004 will route taxiing aircraft onto Runway links whenever there is no available Taxiway links to use but it doesn't seem to work that way in practice - at least not in these examples. Note that the actual takeoff start position to be used on the Active Runway is two Runway links away from where they get stuck. If anyone has any ideas about how to get it all to work and still be true to the real physical airport configuration, I sure would appreciate hearing about it.As a subscript, the latest AFCAD file for Sudbury posted on AVSIM ( Sudbury_AFCAD.zip) works just fine for departing aircraft but in order to do that, the author chose to create what I believe to be a ficticious taxiway parallel to Runway 4/22 such that departing aircraft stay on the taxiway instead of having to taxi on the runway.Stan V.

[Guest MikeS]

I just took a quick peek at CYSB. It appears that the flightplans themselves might be at fault here, but I'm not totally sure. I had the same problem (disappearing a/c) using the default AFCAD. What % are you running traffic at...try turning it down to 1% and see if that fixes it. You don't, by chance, have our Thunder Bay installed, do you? I ask because I think I used Sudbury in it,(I'll have to check the FP's) and that would eat up space(s) and maybe account for the problem.Mikehttp://www.flightontario.com/images/sig_mstanton.gif

[Guest Stan V]

Thanks, Mike. Yes, I do have your Thunder Bay installed. Also, my traffic % is most likely too high - I will turn it down and see if that helps. I could also temporarily disable TB and check that impact.Stan V.

[Guest Stan V]

Mike,Yes, my traffic percentage was much higher than 1% - it was up to 74%. However, when I turned it down to 1%, all the departing traffic went away completely so by definition it solved the problem, just not satisfactorily. It wasn't until I got to 40% that I had my first parked aircraft besides myself - a Continental Airlines jet - and when that departed it halted at the intersection just as I mentioned above and then vanished after a short wait. This is not a case of landing aircraft disappearing - which I understand can be caused by not enough parking spaces for the number of aircraft that need space - this involves aircraft already parked at the field and departing. How could traffic percentage affect that?Stan V.

[tgibson 11]

Hi,There are some cases that cause FS to get confused, and this is one of them. If the hold short node the airplanes are stopping at (at runway 30) is too close to runway 22 (but not close enough), the planes will act as if they have reached the runway 22 hold short node (but it's too far away). Thus they hold and then eventually disappear. What you probably need to do is to make another taxiway path avoiding that hold short node and extend the taxiway along runway 30 to the next taxiway it needs to take (again avoiding the hold short node at that exit). Make sure this taxiway has no nodes connecting it to runway 30. Then the planes should taxi all the way to runway 22.Hope this helps,--Tom GibsonCal Classic Propliner Page: http://www.calclassic.comFreeflight Design Shop: http://www.freeflightdesign.comDrop by! ___x_x_(")_x_x___

[Guest MikeS]

I just took another look at the afcad. I can

[Guest Stan V]

Mike and Tom,Thank you both profusely. I added some (invisible) taxiways as suggested (without adding another Hold Short node - except in the turnaround areas at the end of each runway). Everything seems to work as intended. We'll have to see if the functionality persists in different traffic situations but for now, at least, I am there.I do have a couple of nonrelated questions, however. I know I have duplicate flight plans but I am having a problem finding ways to eliminate them. I tried AITM but Windows XP objects to the ActiveX controls and the Analyze button is always greyed out without them. I also tried Traffic Tools Companion 2 but it fails with some sort of read error when trying to access my primary flightplan file. (The latest TTools compiles and decompiles it just fine). Any suggestions? Also, I have several Traffic bgl files and I'm sure some of my duplicates arise from those. Is there any tool that can be used to decompile a merged set of all of these Traffic files?Stan V.

[tgibson 11]

I think that AITM's Project feature is what you need. Combine all of the flight plans into a Project and then do a search for duplicates. If not found, use the Search tab to display all suspect flight planes (i.e. using a given plane, etc.) and then sort them by flight number (or whatever) by clicking the column heading. Then search them out.Then remove the duplicate flights from the individual flight plans.Hope this helps,--Tom GibsonCal Classic Propliner Page: http://www.calclassic.comFreeflight Design Shop: http://www.freeflightdesign.comDrop by! ___x_x_(")_x_x___

[Guest MikeS]

When I need to analyze traffic files, I either do it using note pad and Ctrl-F, or if it's a large FP, I use yRoute. http://www.spacejock.com/yRoute.htmlMikehttp://www.flightontario.com/images/sig_mstanton.gif