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Entering Coordinates (Newb Question)

D

DeltaNui

Messages
2
Hi everyone,

I've been an avid flight simmer and real world pilot for many years. I've recently become interested in scenery design for FSX. I'm playing around with FSX Planner by creating the Picton Aerodrome (NZPN) in New Zealand (the airport is not in FS by default).

My newbie question involves entering lats/longs in FSX Planner. What would be the correct format to enter the coordinates S 41 20 54 E 173 57 19 for the airport in the program.

Thanks for your help in advance,

Eric
 
DeltaNui said:
Hi everyone,

I've been an avid flight simmer and real world pilot for many years. I've recently become interested in scenery design for FSX. I'm playing around with FSX Planner by creating the Picton Aerodrome (NZPN) in New Zealand (the airport is not in FS by default).

My newbie question involves entering lats/longs in FSX Planner. What would be the correct format to enter the coordinates S 41 20 54 E 173 57 19 for the airport in the program.

Thanks for your help in advance,

Eric
Click to expand...


At the moment the only format that FSX Planner recognizes is decimal (ie 41.234234). So you would have to translate your coordinates above into decimal in order to enter them. We will be adding the ability to enter coordinates in various different styles in future releases.

To convert the above coordinates into decimal, you'll want to have a calculator handy. 41 degrees 20 minutes and 54 seconds converts to -41.348333. South is negative, north is positive. There are 60 minutes in a degree, so 20/60 = .33333. There are 60 seconds in a minute, or 3600 seconds in a degree, so 54/3600 = .015. Add 41 + .3333 + .015 = 41.348333. Then it's negative because its south.

Do the same for the E 173 57 19, with west being negative and east being positive. 173 + (57/60) + (19/3600) = 173.9552778.

It'll be easier once we have the varioous different style recognized, but that works for now.

If you have any other questions just ask.

-Russell
 
Russell, thanks so much for your help. A little Googling found a few pages that do the conversion automatically, which is handy. I hope you don't mind if I ask you a few more questions as I go along.

1) What's the best data to input for airport elevation? Should I go off official airport charts or should I slew to the coordinates in FSX and read the altitude from the simulator, keeping in mind there is currently no airfield by default.

2) What is Airport Test Radius and Traffic Scalar?

3) Does anyone know the best place to go to get data including about my specific airport? I Googled the ICAO identifier but wasn't able to find much of anything in terms of runway dimensions and coordinates. Is there another way to find this stuff?
 
DeltaNui said:
Russell, thanks so much for your help. A little Googling found a few pages that do the conversion automatically, which is handy. I hope you don't mind if I ask you a few more questions as I go along.

1) What's the best data to input for airport elevation? Should I go off official airport charts or should I slew to the coordinates in FSX and read the altitude from the simulator, keeping in mind there is currently no airfield by default.
Click to expand...

Well ideally you'd want to go off the official airport elevation. But that could require more work, such as elevation changes within FSX. So it will be a bit easier to use whatever the elevation within FSX is at the point of your new airport. You may still have to flatten the terrain there to get your airport to work though.

2) What is Airport Test Radius and Traffic Scalar?
Click to expand...

The airport test radius is a distance that the compiler uses to test whether or not airport objects are within that distance. So if you set it to 5,000 meters any object that is more than 5,000 meters from the center of the airport will cause a warning to be displayed from the compiler. It won't affect your airport, it's just an error check.

The traffic scalar determines how busy the airport is with AI traffic. Higher number mean it's a busier airport.

3) Does anyone know the best place to go to get data including about my specific airport? I Googled the ICAO identifier but wasn't able to find much of anything in terms of runway dimensions and coordinates. Is there another way to find this stuff?
Click to expand...

This is a good site: http://flightaware.com

It has a lot of info on the airport, just enter the ICAO code in at the bottom left.

-Russell
 
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