Bernard Barthalay is one of the expert FSXPilot power users. He has adopted a fleet of ATR aircraft for FSX, has given us numerous tips over the years and has tested many, many hours.

We assume that you have or two third party aircraft or scenery installed and have updated your personal AIRAC database using the 'update airac' procedure after using Makerunways.  

So what can go wrong if you land on thid party airports in FSX or P3D and how can you solve bad landings ? 

Bernard writes: 

First case: rolling down the runway, the aircraft deviates from its initial heading and/or lands out of the runway, the 'real' lat, lon and/or hdg have not been included in the airport .bgl file, and Makerunways did read the 'wrong' FSX default data;
  • the latter have to be replaced by the scenery ones in your rwy.txt; beforehand, back up the active rwy.txt: make a copy, drag it in a 'workshop' subfolder, and rename it refrwy.txt;
  • enter the right coordinates (as read in FSXPilot EFIS and AP panel) in the active rwy.txt, which still includes all other correct airport data; test;
  • if necessary, adjust and test until success, then back up your corrected active rwy.txt again, as above, overwriting the previous refrwy.txt, and keep it as a reference.
Second situation: you install a new airport. Check if everything works. In case take-offs and landings are weird, implement the following 'safe' procedure:
  • check you have no other version of the airport active in the sim; it you have one, disable it in the library, then uninstall it; make sure your newly installed airport is enabled in the library;
  • if takeoffs and landings are still not satisfactory, go through the following steps:
  • then back up your active rwy.txt (if you are not sure the rwy.txt in your 'workshop' sub-folder is up-to-date);
  • use Makerunways (according to the usual FSXPilot procedure) to write a new rwy.txt; beware! it may include wrong (old FSX default) data for airports already corrected as above;
  • in rwy.txt, go to your new airports entries, copy and overwrite them in your refrwy.txt (where all other data are the right ones) in the 'workshop' subfolder; make a copy and rename it rwy.txt
  • drag this copy in your airac main folder and overwrite your previously active rwy.txt;
  • now, you new active rwy.txt includes the right data for all your installed airports.

Enjoy FSXPilot accuracy!

Thanks, Bernard, for the post. Happy landings.