Jim Robinson

You were instructed to copy resample.exe into your project folder, that was to facilitate resampling your PR from the local folder by dropping the modified .inf on resample.exe rather than adding your blend mask as a map in SBX and compiling from within the program. Doesn't have anything at all to do with compiling an exclude with bglcomp, they are two totally separate and unrelated processes. Incidentally I created a shortcut to resample.exe and dropped it into my "Send to" folder, resample is available in any folder system wide by right clicking the .inf and choosing "Send to > resample.exe". Jim

If you drag "SBuilderX313\Tools\bglcomp.xsd" into an open Notepad window and then search the file for the text string "excludeExtrusionBridgeObjects" I'm sure you'll find it. It's not a filename that you're looking for, it's a text string within the file "bglcomp.xsd". These are "definitions" (I guess they would be called), a sort of library that bglcomp reads to tell it what to do with the code bits in the XML. I don't pretend to understand how it all works but I know if bglcomp.xsd is not present in the same folder as bglcomp.exe, bglcomp will throw an error. Jim

Hmmm, are you sure you have the Acceleration SDK installed? If you go into Control Panel > Programs & Features do you see specifically "Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Acceleration SDK" listed? I'm grasping at straws here, but if you had a lesser version of the SDK installed, I'm wondering if possibly the SBX installer would detect that and install an appropriate version of bglcomp.xsd rather than the latest one which has provisions for excluding extrusion bridges? I don't know, did you install the SDK 3 times, once from FSX disk1 and twice from the Acceleration disk? You have to install first the RTM SDK from disk 1, then you have to upgrade that to the SP1a SDK from the Accel disk, and finally you have to upgrade to the Accel SDK also from the Acceleration disk. Does that sound like the process you went through? I just checked my SDK-installed copy of bglcomp.xsd and "excludeExtrusionBridgeObjects" is definitely there. I haven't modified anything in my SDK folder, and I also checked a read-only backup of the SDK installation I made about 10 minutes after installing the SDK and excludeExtrusionBridgeObjects is present there too. If you're not finding it in yours it must mean that your SDK is not the most current version, I can't think of any other reason it wouldn't be there. If that's the case I think I'd try bringing the SDK up to date and then reinstalling SBX - hopefully that would convince the SBX installer to install the needed version of bglcomp.xsd. Let us know how that goes, if it doesn't work I'll .zip up my copies and post a link. At any rate here is a .bgl I generated from your code: http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/000_Poole_Harbour.zip Jim

Obviously there are different revisions of "version 313" since Archie's bglcomp.xsd didn't have provisions for excluding extrusion bridges and mine does. I'm guessing yours does too since the link in post 2 points to the PTSim site. That is the official SBuilder site (and is one of the two download options available from the sticky thread I linked in my last post). The SDK itself (where these tools originally came from) has been through 3 revisions that I know of, I wasn't aware of the "excludeExtrusionBridgeObjects" problem, but I know the original RTM bglcomp had problems with airport boundary fences that were fixed in later revisions of the SDK. Bglcomp.exe, resample.exe, shp2vec.exe, etc are not intrinsically part of the SBuilder program, they were simply bundled with SBX for folks who don't have the SDK installed. They originated from MS as part of the SDK and all of this stuff that we're using SBuilder for can be done by writing code and processing it with the SDK supplied tools. SBX basically is a (brilliant and powerful) graphical interface that ultimately writes the code for us so we don't have to do it manually. When you click the "compile" button, the code is written to an XML document (or an .inf in the case of photoscenery, landclass, etc) and that source XML/.inf is processed through the appropriate SDK supplied tool to produce a .bgl. Jim

Hi Archie, I believe I downloaded my copy from Avsim but I would check this thread at FSDeveloper: http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5596 For the time being I'm guessing you could just copy bglcomp.exe and bglcomp.xsd from your "Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDK\SDK\Environment Kit\BGL Compiler SDK" folder into the "SBuilderX313\Tools" folder and compile your .bgl. Probably best to update SBX to the latest version anyway though. Jim

So you've completely moved the airport away from this flatten? Like how far? If you're completely away from it you should be able to make an exclude poly for the old airport flatten. Tag it with "Exclude_All_Airport_Boundaries", and then if you need to make a new flatten for the airport in the current location make another poly and tag it with "AB_Flatten". You'll need to set the altitude of the flatten in meters. You can also use AB_Flattens to reconstruct the mesh somewhat if needed, just set the altitude of each individual point of the flatten and it'll (sort of) conform to whatever you need. At KBHB I had a problem where the runway was simply too close and too high above the water. I couldn't get any flattens to work without hideous "shark's teeth" and texture smearing so I copied/pasted a piece of imagery over the water and effectively moved the shoreline out 20 yds or so. This allowed me to use a less steeply sloped AB_Flatten poly and got rid of most of the texture smearing. The rest I covered up with autogen trees. Of course you need to adjust your water mask to match. You'll never be completely happy with the results of your flattening efforts (you'll find the sim has a mind of it's own) but usually after fudging this and fudging that you can come up with something acceptable. Repost of a before/after comparison I posted in another thread, all done in SBX with AB_Flattens: http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/north_hill_before_n_after.jpg Jim

Hi Archie, I can't imagine why it wouldn't work, is there a chance you have an early version of SBuilder installed? I'm wondering if the bglcomp.exe and bglcomp.xsd in your Tools folder are from an earlier version of the SDK (i.e. SP1a or something)? Check the file date/time on both of those files and see if they match mine: bglcomp.exe Modified: Monday, ‎December ‎10, ‎2007, ‏‎8:38:52 PM Size: 312 KB (320,064 bytes) bglcomp.xsd Modified: Monday, ‎November ‎19, ‎2007, ‏‎11:42:54 AM Size: 85.8 KB (87,930 bytes) Also, start Notepad and drag bglcomp.xsd into the Notepad window. Use Edit > Find and search for "excludeExtrusionBridgeObjects" (without the quotes). You should find it within a group of other items associated with "ExclusionRectangle", i.e. excludeAllObjects, excludeBeaconObjects, excludeEffectObjects, etc. I suspect excludeExtrusionBridgeObjects might be missing. In the batch file you made earlier, try substituting the bglcomp.exe path so that you're using the SDK supplied copy of bglcomp. I don't know where you have your SDK installed so I can't give you the exact path, but using my path as an example the new batch file would look like this: "C:\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDK\SDK\Environment Kit\BGL Compiler SDK\bglcomp.exe" "D:\Program Files (x86)\SBuilderX313\Tools\Work\000_Poole_Harbour.xml" > bglcomp_error.txt notepad bglcomp_error.txt (if you still have the first batch file on your desktop you can right click it and choose "Edit" to open it back up in Notepad, then just change the bglcomp.exe path so it points to the one in your SDK installation, save.) Run the batch file again and see if it produces a 000_Poole_Harbour.bgl in the "SBuilderX313\Tools\Work" folder. I guess if all the above fails, post the contents of "SBuilderX313\Tools\Work\000_Poole_Harbour.xml" and I'll see if I can get it to compile on my machine. Jim

Hi Archie, First can you check your D:\Program Files (x86)\SBuilderX313\Tools folder and make sure "bglcomp.xsd" is present there? Secondly, go into Control Panel > Programs & Features and check that you have an entry for MSXML 4, it should look something like this: http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/msxml4.jpg Finally, what version of FSX are you using (i.e. SP2, Acceleration, etc), and do you have the SDK installed? Jim

Let's try this, start Notepad and paste the following lines, save it on your desktop as "test_bglcomp.bat". "D:\Program Files (x86)\SBuilderX313\Tools\bglcomp.exe" "D:\Program Files (x86)\SBuilderX313\Tools\Work\000_Poole_Harbour.xml" > bglcomp_error.txt notepad bglcomp_error.txt Close, go to the desktop and double click "test_bglcomp.bat". The .bat file will do basically what the SBX error dialog is telling you to do. It will create a .txt file on the desktop containing the error and then open the .txt file in Notepad when it finishes. Copy the contents of the error report and post it here. From that hopefully we can determine what the problem is. Jim

Archie I think that's an extrusion bridge in your screenshots. You can exclude those too with SBX but you need to do that with the exclude tool (the "X" icon on the toolbar) rather than with an exclude polygon of any sort. Just draw a rectangle with the exclude tool, it'll pop open a dialog when you finish where you can tick the box "Extrusion bridges". That'll make a new "000_PROJECT.bgl" in your scenery folder containing only the exclude since this type of exclude can't co-exist in the same .bgl as the polygon excludes. You can recreate the extrusion bridge in the correct location with the line tool, make a line, right click it, and choose "properties". On the properties dialog you'll see an extrusion bridges tab where you can define the bridge (railroad, freeway, etc). Compiling that will make yet another .bgl in your scenery folder, you'll recognize that by the "_EXT" suffix SBX appends to the filename. You can, but to do that you'd need to blend mask the water out of your PR so that default water poly shows through (or a modified water poly you've made yourself in SBX). Waterclass won't have any affect your photoreal water. Further, a waterclass tile is along the lines of 1 km square so I doubt your area is large enough to get any deep water/shallow water variation going. A better option in my opinion would be to keep the PR water and modify the source imagery (maybe paste some water into it from a more appropriate piece of donor imagery). I found some kicka$$ water in Maine BTW :) , check out the VirtualEarth imagery at 44.2212651, -68.6206674. I made some PR water overlays for that area, blending the islands out so the landclass islands show through. That resulted in what I thought was a great water effect without need to spend a week in the annotator adding autogen trees. Check out this thread: https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?251888-Visiting-Maine Jim

Nope sorry, exclude and redraw :) What sucks is that roads are clipped at QMID 11 too so that means a potentially large reconstruction project unless you luck out and find the default road is just a short piece. Usually they're not too bad from my limited experience. You can make a tiny "exclude_all_roads" polygon just touching the default road and see how much it wipes out. If you're making a photoreal the roads will be covered up anyway though, right? They do have a flattening effect that might show up if your terrain is uneven, but if it's relatively flat ground I wouldn't worry about them. You could try extrusion bridges where the railway crosses the water BTW, I believe they do show up over the photoreal. If that works you can add a shadow to the PR under the bridge for a nice effect. Jim

I would say your next step would be to make polygons in SBX on top of your photo. Make a polygon for each island by selecting around the edges of each. No need to define a polygon type for these, "Polygon of type none" will be fine for what you need to do. When you have all the islands done, make a larger polygon that encompasses all of the island polygons and tag it as "Hydro_Generic_Bay_Harbor_Perennial" or whatever. Then select one of the island polygons, right click, and "set as hole". It wants you to define the "parent poly" at that point so just click the edge of the larger Hydro_Generic_Bay_Harbor_Perennial poly and you'll see that the island shape has been cut out of the hydro poly. Repeat for the remaining islands. "View > QMID grid > level 11", drag the corners of the hydro poly out past the edges of the QMID 11 cell and then right click > Slice to QMID11. Delete the excess poly fragments around the edges and you should have a perfectly filled QMID 11 cell with the islands cut out of it. Make another random poly somewhere in the QMID 11 cell and tag it "Exclude_All_Water_Polygons". Right click it and "Fill to QMID11". That should be about it, select all polygons, compile, and try it out in the sim. Jim

Are you using the FSX version of TMFViewer? I usually just start TMFViewer and drag the .bgls into the TMFViewer window. I'm using the TMFViewer that comes with the acceleration SDK, but I've used the one that comes with the SP2 SDK in the past, they both work the same way. Not sure about other versions. It should be in your "Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDK\SDK\Environment Kit\Terrain SDK" folder. BTW I was wrong about the opacity thing, apparently vector data is always 100% opaque. Save that trick for later when you're working with landclass or seasons. Still, if you drag your photo.bgl into TMFViewer first it will jump to the area you're working with. Then drag your CVX in next and you'll be roughly zoomed in on the problem area. Otherwise trying to find a single stream line or something in the vast coverage area of the CVX can be a little like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. BTW, in TMFViewer you can click the map to center, then use the + - keys to zoom in and out. "Vector data" is/are things made by defining points BTW, lines, polygons, etc. as opposed to something defined by raster data (pixels) such as photoscenery, mesh, landclass, etc. When you guys get around to making shorelines in SBX make your hydro polys first. You can right click the finished hydro poly and choose "Make line" which will clone the outline of the poly into a line. If you've sliced or filled your hydro poly to QMIDxx you'll find the line goes all the way around the perimiter of the QMID cell. At that point hide polygons ("View > All polygons), right click the line, and use "manual check" to move through the points of the line, deleting those at the corners of the QMID cell until your line only encompases the actual shoreline area needed. Tag the line with "Shoreline generic bay harbor" or whatever, then when you get ready to compile just select all polygons and then select all lines - it will compile all the excludes, hydro polys, and shorelines into a single .bgl. Probably all sounds like martian but try it, it's pretty self-explanitory once you see it in SBX. That said, you may not really need shorelines if you're using a photoscenery. The photo will cover them up anyway. You may need to rebuild some shorelines that have been excluded beyond the coverage area of the photo though, and also you can take advantage of the wave effects on top of your photo if you use "shoreline generic ocean". Oh yeah, the strange land anomalies that show up when you make these excludes are because you've eliminated the default hydro poly, whenever you do that you'll see land. Check out Tiberius' screenshot at step #28 on page 2 of this thread. Jim

One thing you can always do is load the default CVX in TMFViewer and see what's there causing the problem. In TMFViewer you can "jump to lat/lon" and zoom in close, You also have options in the "View > Vector Data > Layers" menu of hiding or displaying different types of vectors. Lastly you can right click a vector feature and choose "Identify vector features" and read the GUID associated with it. In SBuilderX's "tools" folder are some txt files, lines.txt, polys.txt, etc. Depending on the type of vector, open the appropriate .txt file and search for the GUID, it'll tell you exactly what you have to exclude when you run into something like this. Great job troubleshooting BTW :) . EDIT: It is also possible to load your photoreal .bgl and the default CVX into TMFViewer at the same time. Load the photoreal first which will jump you to the immediate area, then load the CVX which will overlay the photoreal (or vice versa, can't remember). You can adjust the opacity of the overlay in the "View" menu. Jim

You shouldn't remove or disable default CVX files as a means of updating your hydro polys and shorelines. In FSX you can exclude a default hydro poly using a local file associated with your own scenery project instead. For one thing, you make a hundred times more work for yourself than is necessary when you disable a default CVX. The default CVXs cover an entire QMID 7 cell which can cover something like 300 kilometers in both directions. CVXs contain much more than just hydro polys; roads, GPS polygons, airport flatten polys, railroads, parks, shorelines, streams, utilities, railways, and road traffic to name a few. All of these features would need to be rebuilt for an area covering on the order of 90,000 sq kilometers to make a proper replacement. On the other hand it is possible to exclude only the water polys and only the shorelines, leaving everything else intact. Further, hydro polys & shorelines are clipped at QMID 11 boundaries which means you need only modify an area roughly 20 km in both directions, or around 400 sq kilometers in size. This thread might be of interest: https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?256500-First-project-with-FSBuilder-X-and-first-problems Jim

I've tried that too! The real world guys were always sitting in the pilot's lounge working on their 2nd gin & tonic by the time I got there :) . Didn't seem to matter what I did, I couldn't keep up with 'em, lol. Jim

I will, but thanks for the enlightenment since this is all new to me :rolleyes:

A .gif by definition can only contain 256 colors, a .jpeg can use up to 16 million colors. That advice is flawed. Jim

ScatterbrainKid posted a thread a while back about thermal visualizations which I hadn't seen in the sim yet. I had flown the DG–808S a couple times and enjoyed it, so this evening I decided to see if I could catch a thermal and ride it up. Had a blast, ultimately made it to 15,500' from a 4500' tow and was still climbing like a homesick angel when I finally closed the sim. Go into Settings > Display > Weather and turn on thermal visualizations. I used the "Schematic" setting this time around (which makes soaring too easy but for the first try I figured I'd need all the help I could get). Next load up the DG–808S and slew it to the end of the runway at your favorite airport, I set the flight up for mid day around the middle of June in North Idaho with the "fair weather" theme. Use CTRL+SHIFT+Y to call a towplane, the Maule will appear in front of you with the tow rope connected. Try to stay behind the tow plane and don't do anything too crazy or you'll break the tow rope. Let him tow you up a couple thousand feet, then release the rope with SHIFT+Y or use the yellow knob on the panel. Look around for the thermals, they look like a green ribbon corkscrew affair. Fly into one and you'll hear the variometer start chirping rapidly when you're in rising air. Circle around in the lift until you gain enough altitude to fly on to the next thermal. Have fun :) . http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/thermal01.jpg http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/thermal02.jpg Jim

I recently had the pleasure of reinstalling the FSX SDKs from my FSX Gold disks on Windows 7, and unfortunately ran into some problems while doing so. I found a workaround and eventually got the job done, so I thought I'd post my solution here in the event that others may be encountering the same problems I did. For whatever reason, I am unable to browse the FSX install disks in Windows Explorer, I think this probably has something to do with the copy protection on the disks and possibly also something to do with my cheap DVD drive. Installing the SDKs should be as simple as double-clicking the installers provided on the install DVDs, but if you can't browse the disks, that of course is impossible. I successfully did an MSDOS "dir" on the disks from a command window and located the installers, after which I attempted to run them directly from the install DVDs both from the command window and from the Windows "Run" box with only partial success. Actually the FSX RTM SDK located on FSX disk #1 ran fine, but when I tried to run the SP1a SDK installer located on the Acceleration disk, for some reason the installer hung and would not install. Again I suspect this has something to do with copy protection on the disk. My solution, which ultimately worked, was to copy the installers to a temporary folder on my C:\ drive with a DOS command and run the installers from there. Here's a rundown of my workflow, and I'm not messing around with trying to run any installers from the install disks in this example, I'm just copying all three of them to the temporary folder so I can run each from there: Put the FSX disk #1 in your DVD drive, cancel out of the FSX install program that autoruns when you insert the disk. In Windows Explorer, make a new folder somewhere on your hard drive, I made one named "C:\Temp" but it really doesn't matter where or what you name it. Right click the new folder while holding the Shift key down and choose "Open command window here", a small black window should appear on screen. Right click the command window and paste the following command, substitute the actual drive letter of your DVD drive for [drive letter], then press "Enter": copy [drive letter]:\SDK\*.* It'll take a few seconds to copy the necessary files, wait patiently while it finishes. Once finished, the command window should report "6 file(s) copied." and return to the prompt ready for your next command. With the copy job complete you should have the six files listed below in your temporary folder. The actual installer, "setup.exe", is dependant on the remaining 5 files although you need not concern yourself with them, just make sure they are there so setup.exe can find them as it needs them. Defaul~1.cab EULA.RTF Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDK.msi eula.dll setup.exe setup.isn Remove disk #1 from the DVD drive and put the Acceleration disk in, once again cancel out of the Acceleration installer that autoruns when you insert the disk. You need to get 2 SDK installers from the Acceleration disk, unlike the RTM SDK installer you copied above, these two are both stand-alone installers so you only need to copy two files in this case. Get the SP1a installer first with the following command (paste the command into the command window as you did above): copy [drive letter]:\SDK\SP1a\fsx_sdk_sp1a.exe When that one finishes copying, go after the Acceleration SDK installer next with the following: copy [drive letter]:\SDK\sdk.msi When finished copying you should have three main installers in your temporary folder, "setup.exe", "fsx_sdk_sp1a.exe", and "sdk.msi". They need to be run in that order. You can now remove the Acceleration disk from the drive and put it away, you're finished with it at this point. Close the command window, you're done with it as well. Run "setup.exe" first and work through the install process. To be on the safe side, run it with right click, "Run as administrator". By default the SDK will want to install into your "Program Files (x86)" folder which I don't recommend due to Win7 permission issues, it's up to you but I would put it in the same folder you have FSX installed into. My FSX is installed in "C:\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X" so I installed the SDK into "C:\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDK" for example. Once you've worked through the first installation process, move on to the SP1a SDK by running "fsx_sdk_sp1a.exe" (again right click, "Run as administrator"). The installer will find the previous installation so you don't need to worry about directing it away from "Program Files (x86)" this time around. You will be warned that the installer will need to remove previous versions of the SDK which is fine, it seems silly that you just finished installing the first version and now it wants to remove it again, but that's the way it works and if you don't install the previous version first the SP1a installer will complain about not finding it. Just roll with it and let it do it's thing. Finally, once SP1a has been installed, install the Acceleration SDK by running "sdk.msi". This one won't give you an option to "Run as administrator" so just double-click it. Same as before, it'll find the previous version and warn you about removing it, let it do it's thing. That should do it, you may delete the temporary folder now or maybe it'd be a good idea to burn it to a CD or copy it to an external drive so you don't have to go through this the next time you need to install the SDKs, it's up to you. Good luck, Jim

Today is the completely insignificant 32nd anniversary of the great Mt. St. Helens eruption. I'd hold off on posting this for another eight years to make it an even 40, and therefore possibly significant, but I'm afraid I won't live that long, and If I do, I'm sure I won't remember it anyway, so here goes: I was 17 yrs old and getting my first look at a real live P-51D at an airshow in Sandpoint, ID (KSZT) that day, "Cottonmouth" to be exact. (there were some other airplanes at the airshow too if I remember correctly) I was completely in awe, the crowd was allowed up close and I inspected every square inch of that puppy. It had those diamond tread tires like Robart made for R/C airplanes, I'd seen them in the Tower Hobbies catalog. The guy that owned it even did a couple high speed passes for us! I'll never forget the sound! There was no internet, no live news feeds, nor any cell phones back then - we saw some "black clouds" moving in from the west and everyone just assumed it was building thunderstorms. Later in the afternoon some of the attending aircraft left the airshow early to get a jump on the thunderstorm - pretty soon a few of them returned. Apparently they'd been in contact with FSS and learned of the eruption. The airshow announcer finally came over the intercom and told us what had happened, that the airshow would end early, and everyone should go home because the ash cloud was heading our way. I was with my family, we drove the 35 miles or so back to Bonners Ferry in our barf-green '72 Ford Country Sedan without incident. Woke up the next morning to what looked like a scene from a low-budget sci-fi movie, we got a very light dusting comparatively, yet some parts of my hometown were covered by as much as 3/4" of the stuff. I believe every pair of panty-hose in the county were pressed into service as a pre-filter of some sort, the local auto parts stores sold out of those white paper dust masks by 9:00 AM that day. My Dad owned a body shop, dust masks were not a problem for us, and he supplied several of our neighbors with masks as well. The schools were closed for several days, much to my dismay (not). There wasn't much traffic on the local roadways, most had sense enough not to drive anywhere unless absolutely necessary. Some vehicles lacking adequate filtration were abandoned alongside roadways after the abrasive dust destroyed their engines. Everything had an orange cast from the dust in the air similar to the orange cast associated with forest fire smoke. I remember vividly the dust clouds any passing vehicle would churn up, it was strange though because the ash was heavy and dissipated quickly. Several days later we finally got a good rainstorm which sort of stuck the dust to the ground, rinsed everything off, and life returned to normal. I think there is still a baby food jar full of the ash on the mantle at my Mom's house. Mom always did that sort of thing...

I managed to keep myself entertained for an hour or so the other night with the default J3. I set up a 40 kt wind directly down the runway and had some fun hovering, levitating, "flying backwards", etc. Takes a while to get trim, power, etc dialed in, but the Cub will eventually hover in place ten feet off the ground with your hands off the stick. It's impossible to hold the airplane still on the ground with brakes, you have to fly it continuously, also don't let yourself drift downwind or you'll spend the next hour trying to get back to the airport. Fun, try it... :) Jim

A few years back Project Airbus released an A320 for FS9, I downloaded it, tried it out, etc. I thought it was quite nice at the time, but couldn't see any real advantage over the good ole' iFDG Airbus for which I had amassed dozens of repaints, panels, etc. For that reason, plus the fact that I fly tubes only about once every 3 months, I never really followed the development of the PA Airbus beyond initial release. On a whim I downloaded the latest "Airbus A318 V2 Special Version" for FSX a few days ago, and finally last evening I loaded it up and did a flight. WOW is all I can say! It's completely amazing what several years of refinement can do for a project! I loaded at KGEG Spokane, really just to check the airplane out. Always a Frontier fan, I loaded up the Frontier livery with the cougar on the tail. I was expecting that I'd switch to a Carenado GA bird to do some actual flying after checking out the 'bus for a few minutes. I fired up ASEvo which injected some nice cloud layers and favorable winds. Next thing I knew I had the 'bus fired up and taxiing towards the active. I took off rwy 21 at KGEG and hand flew the little beast all the way up to FL290, where I finally turned on the autopilot after a feeble attempt to level off and maintain cruise altitude. The only VOR frequency that popped into my head was 116.2 DNJ located near McCall, ID so I tuned that and flew directly to it. From there I tuned BOI on 113.3 and descended southward towards Boise. I turned otto off at about 12,000' and hand-flew the entire approach, pattern, and landing onto 28R at Boise. Really impressed with the feel of this aircraft in the stick, 30 seconds after takeoff I knew I was flying a winnner! I thought about closing the sim at that point but I was just having too much fun so I took off again, this time kinda-sorta heading for Seattle. Seattle VOR was out of range, and Kimberly (IMB) was the only VOR I could think of in the general direction of Seattle so I flew to Kimberly. By the time I got there I realized I was getting low on fuel and closer to KPDX than Seattle, so I decided to go into Portland instead. I tuned Battle Ground (BTG) VOR and flew direct. I haven't tuned an ILS frequency in 3 years, but I was "Joe airline pilot" by the time I reached Battle Ground and I didn't want to spoil the flight by screwing up the landing, so I got the frequency for 10L and flew the ILS into Portland in all it's ORBX glory just as the last light of day was vanishing. In a word, surreal :) . I know, I know, some of you are cringing because I didn't have a flight plan before takeoff, and I didn't follow any approach or departure procedures, and what's up with the VOR navigation, we haven't used those in years... I guess you had to be there, but it turned out to be one of those flights that happen every couple months for no good reason... you know, and then you spend the next 2 months trying to recreate it, but it just isn't possible to plan such a flight? Anyway, big kudos to Project Airbus, this one is a permanent addition to my hangar, and thanks for a very enjoyable flight :) Jim