Amsteram ADE/Afcad Notes

[atco]

Hello everyone,

I hope that you are all enjoying this new masterpiece from Emilios and FlyTampa.

I just wanted to put out some notes on the ADE's included with this airport.

First, though I need to say that designing ADE's for addon scenery is a task that falls under the can't please all the people all the time category. Because our own sims are often very customised, with different styles of flying (online vs offline), dedicated AI setups, the willingness to extensively pre-flight vs Ctrl+E and go etc etc its almost impossible to create something that will satisfy everybody, but what I've tried to do here is simple.
My goal was to make an ADE set that can satisfy as many people as possible while replicating the procedures at Amsterdam as closely as the host simulator will allow. And believe me there are many limitations and restrictions in the host sim that can (and have) thwarted my attempts to get even more realism.

So, that said how to get the most from your EHAM experience ADE wise.................

Because of the operations at EHAM it is necessary to create 4 ADE's for varying wind situations. In order to replicate anything close to actual operations its unfortunately unavoidable.
Thanks to a handy app on the LVNL website I was able to track daily ops at EHAM over a 2 month period and came up with the best and most often used traffic flows.
North ADE:
This ADE should be used when the winds are between 290 and 069 degrees
Departing: 36L
Arriving: 36R 06 36C
This was a very frustrating ADE because this was one where FSX/P3D just would not co-operate. On Northerly ops, 36L is the most commonly used departure runway often with 09. The problem with 36L is that it is so far away from the parking stands that with *any* other runway open for takeoff nothing ever gets sent to 36L. The AI engine uses a points scoring system to assign the departure runway and distance from the gate is one of the variables. So the issue was for a Northerly configuration 36L had to either be the only runway open for take off or it would never be used, in this case I decided to have 36L open and send everything up there.
You will notice too that with 36C open for landings all departing traffic will taxi around either the North or South edge of 36C as per real life, no crossing of the active runway will occur.

South ADE:
This ADE should be used with winds between 120 and 229 degrees
Departing: 18L 24 22
Arriving: 18R 18C
In this case arrivals are split between the 2 18's and achieve a good balance. Departures also split fairly well, although slightly favouring 24. 22 should only be used by GA parked down at the GA aprons.

If you don't care too much about swapping out ADE's and using the other runways, these two ADE's will cover you for most of the Amsterdam operations. Note that on a visit to LVNL in 2012 I was advised that crosswind runway assignments have been agreed with operators into Amsterdam up to a component of 90 degrees at 25 knots (subject obviously to any airframe limitations).

If you desire further realism and options there are the following files also available:
East ADE:
This ADE should be used with winds between 070 and 119 degrees
Departing: 09 36C
Arriving: 06 36R
This one was another frustrating one because 09 gathers most of the departing traffic. I tried various ways to get 36C more traffic but nothing worked. So 09 is sadly heavily favoured. Arrivals are split really well about 50-50 between 06 and 36R but there will be long queues for 09

West ADE:
This ADE should be used with winds between 230 and 289 degrees
Departing: 24 18L
Arriving: 18R 27 22
Good arrival split with almost all traffic split between 18R and 27. 22 was an interesting case because even if its closed completely FS would still land traffic on it. I found by opening it for landings mostly E170s and E190s landed there with the occasional 737. There is not a large amount of landing traffic on 22, maybe 15% or so. FS simply ignored the close command in this case, so the runway may as well be open, and I know it is used in very strong Westerly winds for traffic other than GA.

I hope some of this explains some of the choices and limitations. I would suggest using caution when editing the ADE's to modify the runway assignments because there could be a lot of unintended consequences - like having runways open that the ground flow is not designed to accomodate. Everything in these ADE's was done with a purpose. For example in order for the ATC engine to accept a specific runway open or closed for takeoff/landing command *both* ends of the runway have to be set the same. Which is why on the East ADE 27 will show open for takeoff, and which is why if you use this ADE with the wrong winds you will be assigned 27 for departure and have to backtrack down the whole runway. You may ask why don't I just set 09 open for takeoff only and 27 open for landing only? Because for reasons nobody has been able to figure out the ATC engine will then happily disregard both commands and you will get landing traffic on 09 and departures off 27 in the relevant winds. This is why to "force" the ATC engine to respect the command at one end you must force the other end to be the same.

Parking assignments are designed to avoid as much overflow as is possible with airlines parked at the correct areas. You will see different results based on how your AI traffic files are named as FSX loads them alphabetically, so parking gets filled up on first load on that basis. Another limitation is that FS only recognises the first 5 codes of a gate's parking codes. Any codes you enter after the 5th are a waste of time. This is why at a lot of stands KLM will be the 5th code listed because I find it preferable to have as much traffic as possible on jetways rather than heading straight to overflow. Of course a multitude of things play into gate assignment, radius, code etc being just part of the equation.

An airport this complex is always going to throw up ADE issues, I'll be happy to try and address as much as I can but please be aware there are many limitations placed on what the engine can and can't do and often times much of what is desired just can't be done (ie opening 36L and another runway for takeoff)

I will get out an ADE with all runways open for online fliers and those who don't care about AI or wind dependent runways. Unfortunately I'm a bit under the weather at the moment and it was as much as I could do to get this posted. I'll have the online ADE out very soon and then hopefully everyone will be able to enjoy this wonderful airport as much as possible

[flusi748]

Thanks for those informations!

[Sydney1962]

Should be nice if your explanation will also be published in the user manual.

thanks for help, and looking forward to AFCAD for all runways open.

[ashun]

In case of long haul flight which i assume many co simmers wold be flying in to EHAM, the wind predicted at the beginning of flight may change by the time we reach TOD. IS it possible to change runway AFCAD in FSX while coming close to descent in flight without shutting FSX?

Thanks

[emilios[flytampa]]

You could, in theory, do that manually, before entering Netherlands airspace (ie amsterdam airport files not loading yet) like below :

1. When you want to switch, open scenery library, and de-activate 'FlyTampa-Amsterdam'

2.Open the \FlyTampa\Asmterdam\scenery' folder and manually activate whichever AFCAD you want by switching between *.bgl and *.off. They are comprehensively named so you know what is what.

3. When file renaming is done, return to FSX/P3D, and re-activate the FlyTampa-Amsterdam entry

4. You should now be continuing your flight with a different AFCAD setup, although not 100% sure what would happen if you've progressed enough in flight and the previous AFCAD is already pre-loaded in the sim

perhaps someone more knowledgeable in AFCAD could comment?

[Sydney1962]

Hello Emilio

should there be an option to mention in the airport setup description in the scenery configurator

the runways used for depart & Arrival.

so we can see immediately when selecting a setup which runways are available.

rgds sydney

[Woozie]

Hi atco,

Thanks for the detailed description, very helpful. As some tools like Aivlasoft EFB or FSCaptain require a scenery scan to capture RWY's and gates of addon scenery (usually via MakeRunways by Pete Dowson) i'm wondering which AFCAD i need to activate before the scan to ensure that all EHAM runways and gates are captured. Am i assuming correctly that it will only see the runways that are active in the current AFCAD (which would be bad) or is that something that doesnt affect MakeRunways output?

Or do we have to wait for the "full AFCAD" you mentioned in your post?

[Woozie]

Hi Devs

Any news or ETA on the full AFCAD? Those special AFCAD dont really play nicely with addons which require a scenery scan after every change. Currently i would have to run a full scan everytime i switch AFCADS for EHAM.

Thanks

[atco]

I'm afraid I can't answer your question with great confidence about MakeRunways as I'm not sure what criteria it uses for capturing runways. In theory all the runways exist in all the ADE files some ends are just open or closed, which shouldn't affect it. All gates are the same in all the ADE's.

The all runways open ADE has been done and I imagine will be included in the first update.

It is absolutely imperative though that the all runways open ADE is only used for online flying or for users who do not use any AI at all and do not use default ATC, otherwise undesirable problems may occur in terms of runways assignments and traffic flows. For use with AI and the ATC you really do need to use one of the supplied wind dependent ADE's.
If anyone is looking to limit the ADE choices as much as possible, you can replicate 70% of EHAM operations using just the North or South ADE's as these cover the most common runway configurations.

[Woozie]

Hi atco

Thanks for your reply. If definitely clashes with EFB as this throws an error when trying to load EHAM with an AFCAD that wasnt active during the last EFB scenery scan.

Guess thats something that cant be worked around so i'll have to run a full scenery scan every time the wind is different at EHAM.

[atco]

In that case you may be able to just install the all runways open ADE when its released in the update and run a scan, and then you should be able to replace the all runways open one with the correct wind version and be OK as EFB should have all the runways then saved in its database?
Without knowing exactly how EFB scans and stores its information I'm having to guess but that seems possible to me.

[Woozie]

This should work with addons that use Pete Dowson's MakeRWY tool, but EFB has its own scanning procedure. Unfortunately it throws an error when it cant find the AFCAD bgl that was active during the scenery scan.

Its not a showstopper as winds often seem to come from the south at EHAM (at least that was the case when i flew from EHAM).

However, when using the South AFCAD my AI planes keep departing from RWY06, which doesnt make any sense at all as this is a landing only RWY as far as i know and its also the totally wrong direction if winds are coming from the south.

Anyone seen this as well? This is with the AFCADs from the GSX thread.

[funkyj4ever]

One problem i have with the afcad that there are a lot of klm 737 on stands where normally only there fokkers and embrears are..

[funkyj4ever]

One problem i have with the afcad that there are a lot of klm 737 on stands where normally only there fokkers and embrears are..