FSX Ants Aussie Airports Vol 9 Scenery

Ants Aussie Airports Vol 9. Hamilton Is, QLD, Australia is a resort island in the Whitsunday Islands. The airport has a 5800' runway built on reclaimed land with regular A320 and B737 services from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Features photoreal ground textures for the whole island as well as nearby Dent Is plus custom 3D models. By Anthony Lynch.

INSTALLATION

1. Unzip the download to a temporary location.

2. Move the folder "Ants Aussie Airports" to your "FSX\Addon Scenery" folder. If you have installed any of my previous sceneries then you should get a message warning about overwriting existing files. Click OK to this message.

3. Move the files in the "Effects" folder into the "FSX\Effects" folder.

4. WARNING!!! Due to the way FSX handles islands and coastlines I have created two different files which rebuild the coastlines for nearby islands. These files are found in "FSX\Addon Scenery\Ants Aussie Airports\Scenery" and, by default, are named:

CVX_aaa9_HamiltonIsDefault.OFF
CVX_aaa9_HamiltonIsFTX.BGL

Only one of these files should be active at any one time. Which one depends on whether you have FTX Green (or one of the full FTX DVD versions) installed or not. I have setup the scenery so that if you do have FTX Green then you shouldn't need to change anything and you can go straight to step 5.

If you DON'T have FTX Green then you will need to change the filename extensions for these two files so they look like this:

CVX_aaa9_HamiltonIsDefault.BGL (this is now active for those without FTX Green)
CVX_aaa9_HamiltonIsFTX.OFF (the .OFF makes this no longer active)

You can make a scenery file active by changing the file name extension to .BGL . You can make it inactive by changing the filename extension to anything other than .BGL (I have used .OFF) or by removing the file from any active scenery folder.

5. Start FSX. If this is the first "Ants Aussie Airports" you have installed then add "Ants Aussie Airports" to the FSX Scenery Library. Ensure that "Ants Aussie Airports" is above any FTX entries you may have.

6. Start your flight. Select Hamilton Is (YBHM) from the airport list to start at the airport.

UNINSTALLING

Start FSX and remove "Ants Aussie Airports" from the "Scenery Library".
Delete "Ants Aussie Airports" from the "Addon Scenery" folder.
Delete any effects file (.fx) starting with "AntsAussieAirports_" from the "Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Effects" folder.

RECOMMENDED SETTINGS

Hamilton Island airport has some steep terrain nearby. To best represent this in FSX I recommend setting your Scenery Settings in FSX as follows:

Mesh complexity : 100
Mesh resolution : 5m (although 10m will do but will not be as accurate)
Texture resolution: 15cm
Scenery Complexity: Extremely Dense (to see all the buildings, boats etc)
Ground Scenery Shadows: OFF

KNOWN ISSUES

The default FSX Hamilton Island has a ferry terminal which is in the wrong location so occasionally you may see a ridiculously large ferry ploughing through the marina (these ferries will only show if your Ships and Ferries traffic is set to 10% or more). I have included an edited trafficBoats.bgl file (edited using AIBTC program to delete boats using routes 2784 and 2785) which deletes these ferries. Strangely however this file is 10% larger than the default trafficBoats.bgl which is weird (probably something to do with the decompile/recompile process). If you find the ferries at Hamilton Island annoying then make a backup of the default trafficBoats.bgl and move the one included in this download into FSX/Scenery/World/Scenery. I usually don't like editing default FSX files so it is up to you whether or not to use my trafficBoats.bgl file (just make sure you backup your original trafficBoats.bgl file).

As mentioned in the Installation instructions you may have problems with the coastlines of nearby islands if you do not have FTX Green or one of the FTX Australia DVD versions. This is due to the nature of the way FSX creates islands and coastlines. Refer to the installation instructions Step 4 for more info on how to activate the correct scenery file for your situation.

Ensure that "Ants Aussie Airports" is above any FTX entries you may have in the FSX Scenery Library (ie "Ants AUssie Airports" has a lower scenery priority number and appears above any FTX entries on screen). If you do not do this then the scenery will not display properly (ie there will be strange buildings as well as a very large default ATC tower if the scenery library is not correct).

ABOUT HAMILTON ISLAND

Hamilton Island is part of the Whitsunday Island group off the east coast of Queensland, Australia. The island is used almost exclusively for tourism with many resorts. The island is leased from the Commonwealth Goverment by the Oatley family who own and run the majority of businessed and accommodation on the island.

The airport is built on mostly reclaimed land and has a single runway 14/32 which is 1764m (5788') long. Ever wanted to know what it's like to land a big jet on an aircraft carrier? Well now you can find out. There is no overrun on either end of the runway. Overshoot and you will end up in the water. The wind is usually blowing from the south east so runway 14 gets the most use (as you can see by the tyre marks).

Jetstar and Virgin Blue operate A320's and B737's from Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. During school holidays B767's have been known to fly the route. Other traffic can include private jets as the rich fly in to enjoy their holiday houses or some of the more exclusive resorts. There are a number of helicopters based at Hamilton Island operating scenic flights as well. General aviation is less common. The last time I checked the tie down fees were about $120 a night!

NAVAIDS include:

VOR/DME 114.4
NDB 383
Tower 118.7

Dent Island is the island just west of Hamilton Island. You may notice that some work is being carried out on Dent Island. This is for the Hamilton Island Colf Club which is due to open in late 2009. There is a lighthouse on the western side of Dent Island.

This scenery contains the following features:

- Photoreal ground textures for Hamilton Island and nearby Dent Island.
- Photoreal runway and taxiway textures for Hamilton Island airport.
- Landable Helicopter trailers.
- Custom 3D objects for most scenery objects.
- 19m terrain mesh for the Whitsunday Islands (resampled from the SRTM 90m source).

Real world aviation charts are available for free download.

This scenery is designed to blend best with the FTX Green payware ground textures.

More Ants Aussie Airports

The following is a list of the Ants Aussie Airports packs available. Earlier volumes may be downloaded. You can either use the search function (try "Ants Aussie Airports") or visit my blog for direct links.

AAA VOL 1 : Snowy Mountains
Cooma, Tumut, Polo Flat, Khancoban, Geehi, Adaminaby

AAA VOL 2 : NSW
Gundaroo, Wedderburn, Wilton, Evans Head, Casino, Sth Grafton, Warnervale

AAA VOL 3 : Melbourne Helipads
A couple of helipads on the Yarra River in Melbourne

AAA VOL 4 : Darwin International
Darwin International, Darwin Hospital, Robertson Barracks (military helibase).

AAA VOL 5 : Katherine/RAAF Tindal
Katherine/RAAF Tindal.

AAA VOL 6 : Northern Territory
Emkaytee, Batchelor, Delissaville, Dum in Mirrie, Albany Park, Dundee Beach, Crab Claw Is, Coomalie Creek

AAA VOL 7 : Central QLD
Rockhampton, Longreach, Barcaldine

AAA VOL 8 : Coastal QLD
Bundaberg, Lady Elliot Island

AAA VOL 9 : Hamilton Island, QLD (this scenery)

THANK YOUS
Thank you to the Beta following beta testers for taking the time to check the scenery:

Jgruschow, aussiecop, frostlp, alan, Mitchell W, VH-WCE, IW11, Dwho, tommyg, groundwolf, Matt_Webb, Butch

Thanks to the people at Aussiex and FSDeveloper for answering my silly questions.
Special thanks to all those who provide free FS addons.
Thank you for taking the time to read this manual and I hope you enjoy the scenery.

Anthony Lynch

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