FSX USS Ranger CV-4 Scenery

USS Ranger CV-4. A static scenery model of the USS Ranger, CV-4. The Ranger was the first US ship designed as an aircraft carrier from the start. The model is a true FSX project; it was compiled with Xtomdl into FSX SP2. It has an exact shape hard deck, rotating radar dish, rotating beacon, dual smoke effects and a ship wake effect. It has a night texture for night carrier ops. It is located just south of Long Beach, California (CA) harbor. The necessary files needed to relocate it to other places are included. These files work with Bglcomp which is not included. By Paul Clawson.

The CV-4 was the first US ship designed for use as an Aircraft Carrier from the start. All earlier carriers were conversions. It was somewhat smaller than the CV-2 Lexington and CV-3 Saratoga which were converted from Cruiser hulls. The Ranger served from 1934 to 1946. This is a FSDSv3.51 project which has been compiled into FSX SP-2 with Xtomdl as a scenery object. It is a true FSX SP-2 model. It has an exact size hard deck, rotating radar dish, rotating beacon, twin smoke effects and a carrier wake effect. The textures are in .dds format. It has a night texture for night time carrier ops. It is intended to use this model with airplanes that are equipped with the rcbco-30 carrier ops gauges. I have not included carrier catapult zones or landing trap zones because most will want to relocate the ship and they would have to be redone any way. The same goes for Nav Aids. Just set the rcbco-30 zones to "The World" settings as described in it's readme file. I have included the necessary files so the ship can be relocated to a spot of your choice with Bglcomp. The USS Ranger is currently located just south of Long Beach, Ca. It's exact location is: N33*42.45' W118* 9.02' .

INSTALLATION: Unzip CV_4.zip into a temporary folder.Open the scenery folder and copy the .bgl file into the FSX Addon Scenery>Scenery folder. Open the texture folder and copy the two texture files into the FSX Addon Scenery>Texture folder. Copy the contents of the effects folder into the FSX Effects folder.

RELOCATION INSTRUCTIONS: It is assumed you already have Bglcomp installed and have some idea how to use it. NOTE! You MUST use the Bglcomp program that comes with the FSX SDK's or it won'r work. The FS9 Bglcomp program does not handle the FSX style XML files. Fly or slew an airplane to your new desired location. Jot down the coordinates and the heading. Open the folder called Moving Files and copy the two entries right into the Bglcomp folder. Open the file called Ranger.xml with Notepad and change out the coordinates and heading for your new values. Note this must be done in two places, once for the model and once for the wake effect. Close the modified xml file. Drag and drop the xml file onto the Bglcomp.exe file. You should see a small black screen flash by and a new file called Ranger.bgl should appear. If it is about 163 kbytes in size, everything worked. If the .bgl file shows up with 0 bytes content it means there was a mistake in the syntax of the new coordinate or heading entries. Copy the new Ranger.bgl file into the FSX Addon Scenery>Scenery folder, overwriting the old one and you should be good to go at the new location.

LEGAL: This project is released as freeware. Modifications are welcome, especially the addition of Nav Aids and can be uploaded to this or another website as long you give me credit for the original design. You need my written permission to use any of these files for commercial purposes. If you find it and download from another site, I am not responsible for the integrity of the files. This airplane should not hurt your computer but I am not responsible if you think it causes problems.

Enjoy! Paul Clawson

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