Proper installation of HMS Ark Royal Scenery from SkySim?

[John Keane]

Thanks Brian!

I was wondering what happened with any documentation and couldn't find any. I was scratching my head wondering what I had to do. Still my thanks to this fine and great forum everyone came to help and that's what makes it a great place to be!

Thanks to you and everyone here. It's really nice seeing the ole Mighty Ark in Flightsim. She was an incredible ship. Looking forward to the new RN "Queen Elizabeth" class carriers in the years ahead.

Regards
John

John,

Thought I'd better answer here. As Ian and the nice guys who produced the Ark were good enough to allow us to offer the Ark as a freeware add-on I didn't think it wise or polite to interfere with it too much. What we have done is to install all the folders in the correct place and package it in an exe file. All you would have to do now is add the secenery to FS as usual, my apologies I thought the readme stuff was in there.

But you are correct, flying to and from the carriers is SO addictive. Have fun mate!

Brian

[Nigel H-J]

Many thanks John that's a great help.

Unfortunately am working very early tomorrow but will get it when back home.

Many thanks again.

Nigel.

[speedbird591]

Nigel, I hope you have better luck than I did with Ark Royal. I spent the morning downloading from the otter's pond and getting the ark2 update from Avsim and installing as per the instructions. Unfortunately I could only get one of the four arks to show in the airport selection screen. They were all in the right place in the scenery list, below the OF scenery I even uninstalled and re-installed using the skysim installer but the end result is the same. Maybe it's my flying but I couldn't get 3wire to stay connected either, so even when I did hit the spot, the hook didn't stop me :-( I'm a bit fed up with it now after spending so much time setting up.

Fortunately, the Americans let me borrow one of their carriers to practise on and 3wire seemed to worked fine with that. Not as pretty as the Ark but at least I got to do some carrier ops in the end. I don't know where I went wrong with the Ark installation or maybe it's something to do with Vista.

Anyway here's the proof that I can be a virtual naviator:



Ian

[Nigel H-J]

Ian, you are not alone!! Same applies here though I have only flown from the Ark in the Channel, will have a look and see if I can get the others to load.

Again, I suffer the same fate as you, catapult works fine but when it comes to landing on the deck the tail-hook does not catch the wire and I end up going straight off the end of the bow. :brick: I have XP so it is not Vista.

Where did you get that American Carrier from as will have to try that and see if there is any difference.

Nigel.

[DaveB]

Hi Nigel..

Dare I ask the obvious..

A) Do you have the wire positions correctly placed in 3wire.
B) Are you sure you're hitting the mark.. it's not that big an area.

I don't use 3wire as I have ArrCab which came with FlightDeck3 and I don't suffer missing the wires on Ark Royal. TBH.. neither 3wire or ArrCab are anything to do with the model as such (either model that is.. Ark or the Vixen) so it matters not if you're in the Channel or off Gib ;-)

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Seaking]

Apologies that people have had issues with installing the Ark, I know the install was complicated by today's standards
I had to do it that way as it was the one way I could get it all to work on my system and it was my first major
undertaking, so all rather new to me at the time.
One tip though, once the OF files are installed, always ensure they remain at the top of your addon list even after
installing other scenery packs.
Thanks to Brian for making an exe for it though as I did not have that expertise, my way I know is very long winded
and for any future models our team does I will make sure it's easier to understand.
As for landing on the Ark, yes it's difficult, it always amazed me how the pilots did it in real life, it must have looked
like a postage stamp compared to one of the big US carriers. I spent many hours on the "goofing" deck watching them trap.
Once 3 wire is installed and you have the trapping area set up, if you don't make that small area, no, you will "bolt"
but with practise your'll get it in the end.
We do have some other projects in mind going forward though as real life allows. My thanks to Brian for doing what I'm
sure is one of the best FS9 addon aircraft of 2007.

May I take this chance to wish all of you and your families a very happy "Chrimbo" and a Joyful NY.

[Nigel H-J]

Hi Dave

Tried setting it up manually (3wire) but kept getting it wrapped round my neck as I thought I had done everything as per instructions!! My first attempt was with the default settings (Pressing Shift-11 for the wire) then tried making the catch zones myself but neither appear to be succesful. Afraid if it means having to change values in a config file then I am hopeless at it.

Is there any other programme I can use that will make it easier?

I had replayed my landings but the tailhook just went over the wires so I know I was not missing them on landing.

[DaveB]

Hello mate..

I have absolutely no experience of 3wire.. even though I have it on my HD. The easy solution is to find if someone has 3wire AND Ark IV (and if not.. why not) and get em to pass their AR IV settings to you.. perhaps even print them in a post here

Bottom line is whichever prog you use be it 3wire or ArrCab, there is an element (a small one) of adding changes to cfg files so if that's a definate no-no.. you're snookered. Maybe have another look at those settings you've made and double/triple check you have em in exactly the right place. The alternative is to go payware and download FD3 (or 4.. I prefer 3 and have both) from http://www.abacuspub.com and see how you get on with that. You can then either download pre-defined Arrcab wire info off Allnodes or better still.. I can give you mine on here I don't know how true this is but make sure you're not hitting the deck too hard and pushing the tailhook back. I'm not sure if this can physically happen (you'd think not but I have my doubts)

Believe it or not.. I can hit the wires on AR IV probably 19 times out of 20. When I go for the Alpha Enterprise.. I usually miss

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Nigel H-J]

Thanks Dave, I put in ther values as per instructions then went to save them into zonedef but could not edit in the entries.

Will keep giving it a go for the time being but unfortunately......starting work at 17.00 and not finishing until around 4-5.00hrs Christmas Day so for the next couple of days I'm snookered through work!! :@

Will let you know at the week-end (hopefully).

Until then hope you have a good Christmas. xwink

Nigel.

[DaveB]

Hi Nigel..

Rgr that mate ;-) I missed Seaking's post above and what he says is absolutely true. By comparison to something like the Alpha Enterprise (or any US Carrier for that matter) the 'zone' is a very small one which is why it's odd I can hit it time and time again but miss the Enterprise. I have given this some thought in the past and the only thing I can put it down to is that I physically concentrate that much harder (even though it doesn't seem to me like I am) Landing on Enterprise is like landing on a short LHR 27R (even with the statics on the LH side)

Is the file you've tried to enter a .dat file?? I know this is what ArrCab use and the first time I went to open it, windows came up with some tosh about ' Do I want to select a program online or from a list ' which threw me a bit. However.. bite the bullet and force it to open with notepad. Incidentally, ArrCab comes with an Excel form towit you add the positional info you took when slewing around the area to be 'wired' then hit the enter button and it produces, in the correct format, the data required for flightsim. All you do is copy and paste it into the dat file. I'm sure 3wire works in a similar fashion ;-)

Seaking..
Looking forward very much to your future projects. Have a merry christmas one and all

ATB

DaveB :tab: