AZORES1.BGL - The Azorean archipelago for FS5. ----------- Version 1 of BGL with synthetic scenery and navaids, done with BGLGEN, by Carlos Coimbra. I am making this BGL freely available for the use of the Flight Sim community, but I do retain the rights of authorship; no reverse engineering and modifica- tion of AZORES1.BGL is permitted without my express authorization. First, a few words about two items without which the present BGL could not have been made. Synthetic scenery is what one finds in the TEXTURE subdirectory. In my under- standing, most of the items there are compressed to save disk space (but to cost time in disk accesses when needed). They appear to be called at 'run ti- me', sort of like Windows DLLs. BGLGEN is a synthetic scenery compiler, not a true designer like ASD for FS4. Its author is Enno Borgsteede, CIS 72763,311, Amsterdam, and I hereby present my Dank U Wel to him and welcome his comments. Its ouput is obviously restric- ted to the collection of scenery building blocks which come with FS5. One prod- uces scenery by writing a series of 'source' commands that the compiler then crunches into a BGL, which is probably like an index of items to be 'drawn' at the appropriate locations. What does BGL stand for anyway, you ask? I too would like to know, maybe it means Bill Gates' Lollipop, but more likely something like Build Ground Links. Presumably because of FS5's built-in restrictions, BGLGEN does not allow you to put up hills of particular heights, only generic low and high hills; this is frustrating, in that I found myself feeling like a figure skating judge, holding back on the higher hills until a really high hill was needed... AZORES1 was constructed using version 0.3c of BGLGEN, which came into my hands on 94/6/13. Certain discrepancies were found between its documentation and its functioning, such as the range of ATIS messages, but this is not a discussion of the compiler, which functions quite well, in spite of not being very user- friendly. AZORES1 comprises all islands in the Azorean archipelago. It was begun and completed in between watching World Cup games, and so do not expect too much. I gave it the serial number 1 just in case corrections might be required or a version were to be produced using the hypothetical FS5 ASD. The pertinent data were taken from Tactical Pilotage Chart TPC G-24B and from the applicable Flight Information Supplement and from the available IAPs (Instrument Approach Procedures). ---------- XXX ----------- Azores is an 'Autonomous Region' of Portugal. The archipelago is called A‡ores in portuguese, the name of the large birds which were found in the islands at the time of their discovery, and which are depicted on the Azorean flag. The islands are geographically distributed in three groups: western (Corvo and Flores), eastern (S„o Miguel and Santa Maria) and central. The airport at Santa Maria is home to one of the four North Atlantic ATC centers. I have only been in the Azores once (being a native of Lisbon), in my youth, and that was a mere stopover by Canadian Pacific Airlines at Santa Maria air- port. I have often seen newsfilm taken in the Azores, though, and did try really hard to interpret the TPC. Now for the technical description: Authors of BGL files usually list facilities quite wisely by type (VORs, NDBs, etc...). The particular contents and layout of AZORES1.BGL have led me instead to provide such a list organized by island, in alphabetical order. I have also translated to english non-obvious island names. All latitudes are N and longitudes are W, naturally. Base altitudes for each individual island were set at the respective air- field's elevation. The altitude of navaid stations was also coded in, where known; otherwise, stations at an airfield were given the altitude of the airfield. In the case of airfields with multiple runways, they are listed in descending order of length. Runways are asphalt, except for one which is concrete, and so has been coded with a somewhat lighter color. Where known, runways were correctly oriented magnetically, down to the first decimal position; otherwise, as an example, runway 11 was given a 110ø orienta- tion. Due to the inflexibility of the synthetic scenery mechanism (Enno will know what I mean), three runways (Graciosa, Horta and S„o Jorge) were moved ever so slightly, as an alternative to moving the whole island. VOR and NDB range was set at approximately 200 nautical miles; if you find it unrealistic to be able to pick up an NDB or VOR from that range, while sitting on the ground, simply do not use it. What I do find unrealistic is FS5's redu- ced ability in this respect (just like FS4's before it), being only 'able' at 70 or 80 nm. In this manner, the scenery is ready for a real world FS... Some NDBs are listed in the Flight Supplement with particularly longer ranges, and they have been coded accordingly. The COM facilities come in three flavors: Tower, ATIS and Radio, but they all function identically, of course; I have only wanted to adhere to the official status quo. The coverage of ATIS and Radio has been set to a wider radius than that of a Tower. AZORES1 should be flown with fairly thick clouds and relatively low ceilings, otherwise it simply would not be typical azorean weather ... You will need lots of expanded memory, probably 3 or more Megs; give it all you can, because FS5 just gobbles it up, and does not appear to know when to discard what it no longer needs. The memory usage figures (Options/Simulator Info) give ever increasing numbers, until sometimes they all go to 0 (!?), resulting in massive quantities of hard disk access, possibly meaning that it looks like FS no longer knows that it has expanded memory, or that it does not know how to behave when its limit (?) has been reached. This situation also reveals another FS5 bug: while accessing disk, everything really stops, even the weather (unlike when Pause is used), except the *clock* !! Users' constructive comments are welcome, but do have in mind that scenery produced in this manner simply cannot be made to follow reality very closely. In some respects, it looks better than what was achievable with ASD, and can be more accurate as far as IFR goes, but one simply is not able to delineate contours as finely... Oops, almost forgot... For those who do not know, simply copy AZORES1.BGL to the SCENERY subdirectory (of \FLTSIM5 or \FS5). No other files are needed. On the World/Airports menu, you will see the A‡ores area listed. Airfields are listed alphabetically, and 4-letter ICAO identifiers are provided where applicable. By the way, in case you hadn't noticed, areas are listed in the order of their appearance in the SCENERY subdirectory; if you have multiple BGLs, you can specify their sequence by using a utility like Norton's Directory Sort to re- order the directory. Carlos.Coimbra@Westonia.Com and ILINK or RIME simulator conferences. Toronto 94/6/21 ---------- XXX ----------- Corvo (Raven) ------------- No airfield Faial (Beech Forest) -------------------- Horta Tower 118.00 38:31.2 28:43.0 Rwy 11/29 - 115 ft VOR HORTA 112.7 VFL 38:31.3 28:41.2 NDB HORTA 380 FIL 38:31:20 28:41:15 Range 250 nm NDB HORTA 360 HT 38:31.2 28:37.7 Flores (Flowers) ---------------- Tower 118.30 39:27.4 31:07.6 Rwy 18/36 - 112 ft NDB FLORES 270 FLO 39:26.6 31:09.7 Graciosa -------- Radio 122.90 39:05.6 28:01.7 Rwy 09/27 - 86 ft NDB GRACIOSA 283 GRA 39:05.0 28:00.9 Pico (Peak) ----------- Radio 122.70 38:33.2 28:26.6 Rwy 10/28 - 110 ft No navaids Santa Maria ----------- Tower 118.10 36:58.0 25:10.0 Rwy 01/19, 15/33, 05/23 - 305 ft ILS Rwy 19 110.3 3.0% VOR SANTA MARIA 113.7 VSM 36:57:43 25:10:00 NDB SANTA MARIA 323 SMA 36:59:45 25:10:34 Range 300 nm NDB SANTA MARIA 240 STA 36:56:54 25:10:00 S„o Jorge --------- Radio 122.30 38:39.9 28:10.4 Rwy 13/31 - 311 ft No navaids S„o Miguel ---------- Ponta Delgada Tower 118.30 37:44.4 25:40.0 Rwy 12/30 - 259 ft ILS Rwy 30 (Localizer) 109.5 NDB PONTA DELGADA 371 MGL 37:44:26 25:35:04 Terceira (Third) ---------------- Lajes ATIS 120.30 38:46.0 27:06.0 Rwy 15/33, 10/28 - 180 ft ILS Rwy 15 109.9 3.0% VOR LAJES 112.3 LM 38:47:02 27:06:21 VOR LAJES (TACAN) 110.8 LAJ 38:42:49 27:06:59 VOR TERMINAL (TACAN) 116.2 TRM 38:45:38 27:05:34 NDB LAJES 341 GP 38:47.0 27:06.8 Ilh‚u Formigas (Ants islet) --------------------------- No airfield, almost no ground, even... Northeast of Santa Maria