I received my copy of Radar Contact 4 on Thursday last (12 Jan), ordered on 2 Jan, so pretty speedy service from Georgia to the UK, especially after the holiday season. Thank you.The registration key arrived at 13:45 UK time same day, thanks for such excellent support.Only done the one tutorial flight so far, and thoroughly enjoying the experience, but with a lot to learn.I have, so far, hit only one problem, and I thought I would share my experiences, and my method of solution, in case it might be of help to other users.I hit a major problem with the "Rebuild Scenery DB" utility.On running this I got only 28 Airports and 103 runways, obviously a little low for the FS world!!I searched this forum and found one post that seemed relevant, http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...14646&mode=full and then did some further investigating.After carrying out the method described below, I now have 23,761 Airports and 56,706 Runways listed.The method listed below assumes you are familiar with basic windows operations like copying, renaming and editing files.In particular, it involves backing up, editing and saving your FS scenery.cfg file, then restoring your original backup.FS WILL REFUSE TO RUN WITHOUT A VALID SCENERY.CFG FILE.IF YOU MESS UP THIS PROCEDURE YOU WILL, AT THE VERY LEAST, HAVE TO RE-INSTALL FS.DO NOT TRY THIS METHOD UNLESS YOU ARE CONFIDENT THAT YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE DOING, AND WHY YOU ARE DOING IT.The Rebuild Scenery DB function makes use of Pete Dowson's "makerwys" program, which scans the FS installed scenery files and extracts airport and runway information, RCV4 places a copy of makerwys in your FS base directory.When it runs the makerwys program displays:-Area.### "AreaName" (Layer = ###)Scenery.File.NameTotal Airports = ###, runways = ###I noticed that after a certain layer number (in my case Layer 5) the program had stopped incrementing the Total Airports count. I figured this may have been due to a problem with a .bgl file as discussed in the post linked above.But how to find the .bgl causing the problem amongst the myriad such files distributed throughout the FS files structure? My Fs setup has over 17,500 bgl files.My approach was to use the scenery.cfg file to eliminate whole scenery areas one by one to isolate the area(s) causing the problem. I made a backup of the scenery.cfg file in my FS root directory ( I copied the file to a file named scenerybak.cfg).This file contains data blocks describing each scenery area in your installation.These blocks look like (but are not necessarily identical to):-[Area.001]Title=Default TerrainTexture_ID=1Layer=1Active=TRUERequired=TRUELocal=SceneryWorldRemote=I then edited the scenery.cfg file to remove the blocks relating to the layers which were causing problems for makerwys.In my case layers up to Layer 4, though I did not remove Layer 1, the Default Terrain, 'cos I figured this was unlikely to be the cause of any problem.So I deleted the blocks relating to Layers 2,3 and 4 and then saved the file as scenery.cfg.Running makerwys showed that it now carried on reading in airports beyond Layer 5, so I stopped it, copied the scenerybak.cfg to scenery.cfg and re-edited it to remove only Layers 3 and 4, re-saved and tried again.By a process of elimination I was able to find the layer that was causing the problem (in my case it was Layer 4).Of course, there may be more than one Layer causing a problem, but these procedures do allow a logical process based on clues in the makerwys display and help to pinpoint a problem scenery area without wading through large numbers of .bgl files.Restore your backup of the original scenery.cfg (rename scenerybak.cfg to scenery.cfg) so that FS will run properly.If desired the bgl files in the relevant Local subdirectory can then be disabled (re-named to .bgx) in turn to find the particular file (or files) causing the problem.I hope this helps if anyone else finds similar problems.Best,Ray BarnardHampshireUK

Hi Ray,In the thread you mentioned the problem was different. It was that one airport was missing after rebuilding the scenery db.In your case I suspect the problem is that you have some FS2002 format scenery files in a very low layer in your scenery.cfg file (assuming you are running FS2004).If the first file found by makerwys containing airport and runway data is in FS2002 format, makerwys assumes it is an FS2002 installation and from then on doesn't process files which are in FS2004 format.When you run it makerwys will produce a file called runways.txt in the main FS folder which will show you what has happened. It will tell you which .bgl files it found with airport data in.If you want assistance in tracking down what are probably files which you don't need run makerwys as you did originally (when it only found 28 airports) and zip up the resulting runways.txt file along with your scenery.cfg file. E-mail it to jd with a note to forward it to me (John Burgess).All the best,John

John,Thanks for the rapid response. I am using FS2004.I am sending an email to jd with attachments for forwarding to you.I had identified the errant scenery as some local airport scenery which may well have been FS2002 based.Would it be an option to run makerwys twice, once with the FS2002 layer in place, then again without it, then cut and paste the two runways.txt files together to get the best of both worlds?Again, thanks for the input, and I'm still learning, and enjoying, RC4.Best,Ray BarnardHampshireUK

i suppose, if there was no overlap.no guarantees thoughjd

Hi Ray,If the runways in the addon scenery are in the same place as the default there is no need to do this. RC will use the positions in the default and all should work okay.All the best,John

"After carrying out the method described below, I now have 23,761 Airports and 56,706 Runways listed."Ray, I found your comment above interesting in that after running the Rebuild Scenery DB utility, I had 26348 airports (a little over 2500 'more' airports than you listed) and 49750 runways (almost 7000 'less' than you had listed!). Strange.Thanks for the other info too.Jim Young