Proper installation of HMS Ark Royal Scenery from SkySim?

[John Keane]

Guys

I've been having trouble catching the trap as well, all my Navy jets seem to be having trouble catching it just right. The only time it worked is when I downloaded a C-2 from USS Lexington available over at Flightsim.Com. Then slamming her down rather hard...she caught it on the CV-67 USS John F. Kennedy from the pack I downloaded a few years ago. {Flightsim.Com?} I tried manually to setup the catch on the Ark off of Mayport FL and had zero luck with it.

Now narrow do these trap zones should be? And how wide? I set them up using that Wizard that comes with 3wire..but none of it seemed to work. The Catapult function works beautifully..but catching is elusive.

Does anyone have the edits for the Ark Royal's position like Brian did below? I'd love to grab the coordinates for the ones people use on the Ark off of Mayport, Gibraltar and Norway..

Regards
John

If you have installed 3wire, then in your Program files\3wire\config folder you will have a zonedef.xml file.

If the Chanel Ark Royal is not already installed add this section to the end of it

<Zone>
<Name value="Ark Royal - Channel"/>
<FrontRightLat value="49.9331123883917"/>
<FrontRightLon value="-3.38443781212234"/>
<FrontLeftLat value="49.9333095668524"/>
<FrontLeftLon value="-3.38453657963939"/>
<BackLeftLat value="49.9333994370047"/>
<BackLeftLon value="-3.38410501408873"/>
<BackRightLat value="49.9331810542469"/>
<BackRightLon value="-3.38399562511725"/>
<RwyHdg value="078"/>
</Zone>

Make sure that the final </ZoneDef> comes after this too

Brian

[Nigel H-J]

Glad you cracked trapping Nigel.........fun isn't it......now try it with a Phantom, Bucc or a Gannet, lots more fun.

Oh heck Seaking, let's not get too carried away, I'm still learning you know!!

Nigel.

[Brian Franklin]

Nigel, Ian,

Here's the others

<Zone>
<Name value="Ark Royal - Norway"/>
<FrontRightLat value="67.233535831913"/>
<FrontRightLon value="10.6684298028696"/>
<FrontLeftLat value="67.2333498403832"/>
<FrontLeftLon value="10.6685796303481"/>
<BackLeftLat value="67.2332737503054"/>
<BackLeftLon value="10.6679510213023"/>
<BackRightLat value="67.2334574069624"/>
<BackRightLon value="10.6678030752398"/>
<RwyHdg value="254"/>
</Zone>

<Zone>
<Name value="Ark Royal - Gibraltar"/>
<FrontRightLat value="36.1165254615293"/>
<FrontRightLon value="-4.38420321251428"/>
<FrontLeftLat value="36.1167147623861"/>
<FrontLeftLon value="-4.38425979883263"/>
<BackLeftLat value="36.1167787201876"/>
<BackLeftLon value="-4.38393303637426"/>
<BackRightLat value="36.1165827659389"/>
<BackRightLon value="-4.38387446115343"/>
<RwyHdg value="081"/>
</Zone>

<Zone>
<Name value="Ark Royal - Mayport Florida"/>
<FrontRightLat value="30.3334064232546"/>
<FrontRightLon value="-80.9991878197664"/>
<FrontLeftLat value="30.33321878324"/>
<FrontLeftLon value="-80.9991564149063"/>
<BackLeftLat value="30.3331810286014"/>
<BackLeftLon value="-80.9994582005325"/>
<BackRightLat value="30.3333826505288"/>
<BackRightLon value="-80.9994919454715"/>
<RwyHdg value="266"/>
</Zone>

Brian

[Nigel H-J]

Brian, very many thanks, that has helped tremendously.

Regards Nigel.

[speedbird591]

Well! I've been away from any internet access since I posted my tale of installation frustration But I did find some time to work on it and I worked it out for myself, eventually :roll:

Thanks, Seaking for your helpful input (and, of course, for the Ark Royal herself!).

In case it is helpful to anybody else, the main problem was that I decided to download the version hosted on the CB files site rather than the self-install version from SkySim. My reason for doing that was to avoid the intrusive registration details required on the SkySim site. The CBFS version required manual installation but comes with full instructions. But it was actually the instructions that caused me the frustration :-(

I installed as per the instructions but could find only one Ark. The instructions say that entering Ark in the airport ID box will show all four but it didn't and I couldn't find them anywhere else. I figured I'd screwed up so uninstalled, completed my inside leg measurement for SkySim and downloaded the self-installer. This installed exactly the same as my manual installation and I still couldn't find the others in the scenery list. The Ark-Channel shows up in a Country called United Kingdon. After more searching I found the others in the United Kingdom under a city called Carriers. The installation instructions do not tell you this. So I had installed correctly in the first place. And very nice it is too

Now - 3wire! I got the hang of it quite quickly as I printed out the instructions manual and followed it to the letter. But I found that 3wire tends to lose it's connection for no obvious reason between a catapult launch and a landing. On several occasions when I felt that I'd hit the wires and didn't stop, I checked 3wire and it had disconnected. If I paused on approach and reconnected manually, it would stop me when I felt that it should have. It's a pain because I use full screen, so it means going to windows mode to access the 3wire window, connect it and then go back to full screen.

That's when I decided to try the American carriers. If you look at the zone definitions already coded into 3wire there about 20 carriers all setup around the world ready to be landed on. They can be downloaded from Avsim in one reasonably sized file - search for accvall3.zip. Dead easy to install and all set up for 3wire. They aren't as good as Ark, though! But I find that 3wire is reliable with these carriers which gives a less frustrating experience.

If nobody else is having problems with 3wire on Ark, I have to assume that my zone selection is at fault somehow :doho: So I'll replace the codes with the ones kindly supplied by Brian and see how I get on.

Many thanks for the input, everyone. I hope sharing my own installation experiences may help somebody else avoid frustration.

Ian

[DaveB]

Hi Ian,

Yes.. I too noticed I had 2 x United Kingdoms (or variations on a theme). An easy way for you to locate ANY of the Arks is this.. In the ICAO code box, select either ARK1, ARK2, ARK3 or ARK4. As soon as you've typed in 1, you'll see the location of the other 3 ;-)

I've never suffered the 'lost connection' prob with ArrCab so I guess this is something unique to 3wire. The only downside of ArrCab is that you have to buy FD3 to get at it.. pity as ArrCab is great and the rest of FD3 is extremely poor :roll:

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[speedbird591]

Thanks for your comments, Dave. I don't think I'll buy anything to improve my carrier landing experience. Actually, the best thing I found was to extend the arrestor zone over about half the deck It certainly improves the ratio of succesful landings but I'm getting the cold shoulder in the messroom :@

These racy little fighters make me giddy so I won't be mothballing the big jets for long

Ian

[DaveB]

Ah yes.. extending the catch zone to cover the entire deck area will certainly improve your catch ratio

There IS one advantage of 3wire (I think) over ArrCab in that it will launch taildraggers. ArrCab see's taildragger and refuses to launch. However, it WILL catch and as the only taildragger I use is the Stringbag.. I don't need an assisted launch.

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[petermcleland]

Speedbird...I'm having the identical problems to you with reference to the lost connections. I also get an error message about FSUIPC on the first attempt to connect, but then it connects anyway. I also sometimes have trouble with "Arming the catapult"! Anyway my trap/bolter ratio is crap and it took me a long time to discover that I was losing the connection on the approach. I found that it pays to hit P to pause when reconnecting and then the green strip message is trapped till you unpause and you get time to read it.

I am certainly not pleased with 3 wire and today I have put in the latest FSUIPC even though mine was within the version numbers quoted...Haven't tried it yet to see if the connection is better

[forthbridge]

Try Shift-F11 while in flight? I have not to my knowledge had any issues at all with lost connections, and while my trap rate is terrible, it works. This is strange considering if it is possible to foul up an add-on, I will manage it, yet the pros seem to be having more issues than 'moi'?