AFCAD For HECA

Cairo International, Egypt - update. This is part of the eleventh round of airports issued by Alpha India Group. AIG Ground creates high quality AFCADs for default and add on scenery airports. Airports are created drawing on the best available resources and aim to simulate the real world airport as closely as possible but also to ensure good levels of traffic with realistic parking and good flow of traffic around the airport. By Matthew Brooks and Alpha India Group.

Cairo International Airport is Egypt's largest international airport and is one of the major airports in the Middle East, with major expansion work well in hand - including the newly opened Terminal 3 for Egyptair and Star Alliance and a fourth runway opening this year.

Egyptair, a Star Alliance member, is based at Cairo and the airport sees scheduled and charters traffic from many major Middle Eastern, European, North African and Asian airlines. Second largest user of the airport is Saudi Arabian Airlines.

The airport has substantial cargo traffic from Egyptair, other Egypt based cargo airlines and a range of Middle Eastern, Russian, Ukrainian and U.S. based carriers. A significant portion of the airport is still in military use by the Egyptian Air Force Hercules transports. The airport is also the base of Petroleum Air Services, which has a parking area set aside and serves oilfields in Egypt and elsewhere in the middle East.

The HECA file developed by Ray Smith and myself and released in June 2010 was a major revamp of the default airport and added the new terminal 3, new apron areas, the new runway 05R/23L and associated taxiways, changed the designator of the older 05R/23L to 05C/23C and added numerous scenery elements to add realism to the airport. Since then, a number of changes have been made at the airport in real life and this file brings that file up to date:

Main Changes:

• Removed the crosswind runway pattern and closed R16/34 as a runway.
• Changed R16/34 to taxiway G, removing all appropriate markings and updated all associated taxiway signs.
• Changed taxiway designators on approximately 70% of taxiway length at the airport - as in real life - and updated all associated taxiway signs.
• Added 'No Entry' signs from the taxiway entrance to all runway fast exit routes.
• Changed the ILS localiser names to their real world names on the new runway R05R/23L and the ILS frequency on R23L to the correct frequency.

N.B. The ILS Localiser frequency of R05R in real life is 108.9. I have used 108.3 because, in FSX, 108.9 is used by the ILS at HECW Cairo West and using the same frequency causes loss of the glideslope on approach to HECA. This can only be corrected by changing the ILS frequency at HECW in your FSX and then changing the frequency at HECA R05R to 108.9.

Personal thanks: The original file was developed jointly with Ray Smith, who committed many hours over two months to developing several elements of it and to suggesting aspects which could be improved. Without Ray's experience and participation, the airport would not have been comprehensively covered as it has been. Ray did not wish to be mentioned as joint author because he is not a member of the AIG Ground team and is mentioned in this way only by his own wish.

Credits:

Jon Masterson and the ADE (Airport Design Editor) development team for this by invaluable freeware utility for developing Airports. The latest version - 1.47.07 - is designed for both FSX and FS9 use - using Jim Vile's graphical approach editor to FS9 use as well. My thanks to both Jim and Jon for all their help and support on this and all AIG projects.

Jim Dhaenens for kind permission to use his lights, radars and hangars in any AIG projects and which are used widely here.

Amr Al-Gohary who originally alerted me to the changes at the real airport in the last year and who provided up to date Jeppesen charts, several photographs and other information to support this update.

Installation:

1. Ensure that you do not have any other bgl file for Cairo International Airport - HECA (including our previous file) - in FSX. If you have, remove the file from FSX or delete it.
2. Place the files AIG_HECA_2011_ADEX_MB_Default.bgl and AIG_HECA_2011_ADEX_MB_Default_CVX.bgl in your Addon Scenery/scenery folder.
3. Place lightobj.bgl and radars.bgl in your Scenery/Global/scenery folder.
4. Place lights1.dds, almwht.dds, asr9.dds, asr9_N.dds and gray.dds in your Scenery/Global/Texture folder.
5. There are static jetway extensions, and to see these you need to add the textures for them, please follow the next steps.

1. Browse to the FSX\Scenery\NAME\Texture folder. Go down the list until you see jfk_jetway.dds (day texture) and jfk_jetway_LM.dds (night texture).
2. "COPY" them from that folder and then "PASTE" them into the Scenery\Global\Texture folder.

• Note: If you have taken steps 3, 4 and 5 before with other airports and have these textures installed, you do not need to repeat them.

Uninstall:

1. Remove or delete the file AIG_HECA_2011_ADEX_MB_Default.BGL and AIG_HECA_2011_ADEX_MB_Default_CVX.bgl from your Addon Scenery/scenery folder and re-start FSX.

Comments and feedback appreciated. Look out for further Alpha India Group AFCADs coming soon!

Matthew