How do I change the Airport Location Properties?

If you want to change a stock airport location details such as state, city or name then it requires a little work.  Like the stock airport location any changes must be loaded before the stock airport.  Any changes in the modified bgl file created by ADE will not have any effect.  While there is no direct way to do this in ADE at the moment it can be done with a little trick

The stock airport details

The stock airport details
  1. I have chosen my local airport - Welshpool.
  2. The airport details are listed here but
  3. There is no state/province and I would like to add Wales!

Load the Airport

Load the Airport

Properties in ADE

Properties in ADE

The State/Province is empty

Add the state or province

Add the state or province
  1. Add Wales
  2. Save the changes

Make sure the simulator is not running and compile the airport.

Check the entry in the simulator

Check the entry in the simulator

Ooops - no change here yet.  So just changing the properties is not going to work.  We need to apply a small trick and use the Change Airport Altitude Function

Change the airport altitude

Change the airport altitude

The airport altitude is 71.02 meters.  I am going to change it a bit - it does not matter how much since we will reverse the change.  

  1. Make a note of the current altitude
  2. Change it a bit

 

and click Change to save the change

  • Now compile the airport.  
  • Don't check it in FS but go back to Change Airport Altitude and change it back to the original value.
  • Compile the airport again

Check the simulator again

Check the simulator again

Now Welshpool is definitely in Wales

Conclusion

We have used a trick to get ADE to create a pre-load Bgl file. These are normally made to change an airport altitude but in this case we have used it to change the location details.  Note that this adds a bgl file to Scenery\World\scenery in the simulator and it you want to distribute your work then you will need to distribute that file as well.  You can find out about the files that ADE can create here.

2 Comments

Pramod

After changing the elevation when I compile the airport where should I save that file? Should it be under ....\scenery\world ? OR can I save it under AddIn folder

Jon Masterson

Thanks for the comment. ADE will automatically save the bgl file for location properties to Scenery\World\scenery. It can’t really go anywhere else since it must load before the stock files load. If you put it into Addon Scenery\scenery it will not work

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