FSX USS Saratoga CV-3 Scenery

USS Saratoga CV-3. This is a true FSX scenery object compiled with Xtomdl. It features an exact shape hard deck for carrier ops with airplanes equipped with rcbco-30 (not included). It also has a smoke effect, ship wake and a rotating beacon. A night texture is included for night carrier ops. It is located just outside Pearl Harbor. The files necessary to move it to other locations with the FSX SDK Bglcomp program are included. By Paul Clawson.

The USS Saratoga was commisioned in 1927 and served with honors through 1946. This is a FSDSv3.51 project compiled with Xtomdl into FSX. It will not work in other sims. The carrier has a hard deck for use with airplanes equipped with the catapult and arrestor gear gauges from the carrier ops file rcbco-30. This file is available as rcbco-30.zip at the major flight sim sites. It also has a smoke effect, a ship wake effect, a rotating beacon and a night texture that lights up the ship for night carrier ops. I have not included nav aids or a starting position since these would have to be changed if you relocate the ship. My personal tastes run to early WW2 or earlier aircraft which did not have nav aids. Also, it does not seem necessary to define a starting position in FSX because once you have created and saved a flight situation with the aircraft in the catapult position you can return to it every time. In FS9 if you did not have a starting position when you opened the flight the aircraft would often be under the deck at sea level. This doesn't seem to happen with FSX.

If you desire to add nav aids or a starting location you may do so with a 3rd party scenery program. Afcad does not work all the time with FSX so I recommend Airport Facilitator X (AFX) available at Flight1. This program can be locked with FSX so you can find locations with just a mouse click.
The ship is currently located just outside Pearl Harbor. I have included the .mdl file and xml file necessary to move the ship to a location of your choice.

INSTALLATION: Unzip SaraVX.zip into a temporary folder. Copy the Sara.bgl file from the scenery folder into the FSX Addon Scenery > Scenery folder. Open the Texture folder and copy the two files into the FSX Addon Scenery > Texture folder. Copy the contents of the Effects folder into the FSX Effects folder. That's it. I have included a flight situation for a carrier take-off with the default Cessna. Open the Flight folder and copy the 3 files into the Flight Simulator X Files folder located in your My Documents folder. You may now select this flight as a starting point and change the aircraft to one of your choice.

RELOCATION INSTRUCTIONS: It is assumed you have Bglcomp from the FSX SDK installed and that you have some idea how it works. Please note you must use the Bglcomp file from the FSX SDK as previous versions do not work. Open the Relocation Files folder and copy the xml and .mdl file into your Bglcomp folder. Determine the new location you desire by flying and/or slewing to that location. Copy the coordinates and heading. Now open the file Sara.xml with Notepad (Notepad, only, please) and change the coordinates and heading for your new location. You must do this at two places; one for the ship and one for the wake effect. Close the .xml file. Drag and drop the Sara.xml file on top of Bglcomp.exe and a new folder called Sara.bgl should appear. If it is about 194 kb everything is OK. If it is 1kb or less, there is an error in your new .xml file. Copy the new Sara.bgl into the FSX Scenery Addon > Scenery folder overwriting as necessary and the Carrier should show at the new location.
Please do not ask me to relocate the carrier for you, as I just don't have the time.

LEGAL: This project is released as freeware. You may repaint it, and upload to this or another website as long you give me credit for the original design. Other modification such as the addition of Navigation Aids are welcomed.
This Carrier should not hurt your computer but I am not responsible if you think it causes problems.

Enjoy! Paul Clawson