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KSGU

Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2020 10:10 pm
by CapnDave
Yesterday I flew KMCK-KSGU. From looking at old posts it appears that there were some problems in the past with KSGU (in P3D I think), due to there being an old airport (now closed) and a newer one, and the KSGU designation was transferred to the newer (now the only) one. That newer airport is designated KSGU-N in the FSA database apparently. I fly X-Plane and there is only one KSGU in that sim. That's the one I flew into. When I filed the flight it said there was no revenue earned and (gasp!) I was paid nothing for the flight, because I flew into KSGU-N. Is there any way this can be fixed for my flight (through Solaris VA) and going forward? I have to fly out of this airport as well, so I can see this happening again. Thanks in advance, and let me know if you need any other information.

Re: KSGU

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2020 5:48 pm
by Cat
This airport is a rare case where the FAA simply transferred the same identifier to the new airport once it was completed. In our sims, especially older ones like FSX, the only airport at that location is the old one unless some add-on scenery has been installed that includes the new airport on the outskirts of town. In the newer sims, I'm betting the only airport available is the new one.

The easiest way to tell is this: If you are landing up on the "mesa" almost in the middle of town, you are at the old one, KSGU in both FSX And FSA (for now). If you are landing at the new one on the outskirts of town, you will be landing KSGU-N in FSA even though in your sim it may be showing as KSGU. This is unfortunately a trade off FSAirlines has to make to accommodate such a wide variety of sim platforms from FS9, FSX, FSX-SE, P3D, XP 9/10/11 and now MSFS2020.

As Joe has stated in other posts, when the majority of users are on another platform other than FSX / FSX-SE, he will be looking at switching airport codes to more current ones for that newer platform (that has the majority of pilots) and thus throwing the "conversion issue" back to those who are using the older platforms.

There is no simple "one button fix" to this issue as long as FSAirlines does the outstanding job of supporting such a wide variety of formats.
One cannot simply remove the old KSGU location from FSAirlines as pilots with older systems and no add-ons would then not have any airport in this area to fly into.

So at some point, depending on the database, one group of pilots will have to fly to an airport code that is different in FSAirlines than it is in their simulator. As long as pilots understand this is not that big of an issue as it may seem as FSAirlines determines aircraft location by lat/long and not any particular airport code. One just has to do their preflight research and make sure they are flying into the correct destination in FSAirlines which may not be the same airport code they have in their simulator.

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Re: KSGU

Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2020 3:20 pm
by CapnDave
Thanks for the in-depth explanation Cat. I appreciate the effort you put into this. I still would like to know, however, how to get credit for the flight I made to what in my sim is the only KSGU. Also, for the benefit of an old guy (me), is there a list or database that we can access that tells what all these problem airports are? That would be handy to have in advance, rather than finding out after landing at what for the pilot is the correct airport. Thanks!

Re: KSGU

Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2020 4:31 pm
by joefremont
First make sure in your profile settings your default simulator is the set correctly then when you look at the briefing document in the route section it will tell you about a difference in codes that we know about. I for instance have mine set to p3dv5 and when I booked a flight to KSGU I see in the route section a line that says:

Route
Distance NM 1826
Route
Remarks Charter flight
Note This airport uses code KSG1 in flight simulator Prepar3d V5
Estimated fuel 8,292 kg

Also on the airport information page at the top of the airport data it shows:

Name St George Regl
ICAO KSGU
Alternate Codes: (Prepar3d V5:KSG1)
Size Municipal
IATA SGU
City St George

This of course does not tell you that the airport you that the airport you want to fly to, the one in your sim labeled KSGU is labeled something different in the database, but should at least be enough to let you know you need to do some research.

I will keep digging on this to see if there any issues with this airport.

Unfortunately i don't yet have the airport data for MSFS so I can' t do a comparison for it.

As for updating the database to newer codes I was going to wait till we had two or three months where the number of flights and/or pilots using using a sim with updated codes before switching. September met that test and so far October is also, but not by as much as September. I have used MSFS a bit and I do admit the eye candy is amazing, but the lack of airliners makes it hard to use and the fuel usage on the default B748 and B78X is very bad. The B748 uses too much and the B78X uses way too little, so as a platform for VA's its lacking quite a bit, and the numbers show that, in September over 32% of our flights used MSFS but in October so far its less than 24%. Since I don't have the codes from MSFS I had been thinking of using the P3Dv5 codes and to show people what the changes would be I created a 'Airport Update 2020' page which you can find in the options off your main VA overview page, this shows the changes that would be made if I were to change the codes from our current default to the P3Dv5 codes. And after doing that it would not be difficult to create a similar page that would show, for any of the sims I know about what the differences are between our standard and that sim, and I think I will do that in the not too distance future.

Re: KSGU

Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2020 12:53 am
by CapnDave
Thanks Joe. I didn't notice any of that info in the booking document, but then again I wasn't looking for it either. The flight has been cancelled so I can't check it. I'll try to be a better (old) boy in the future. And yes I do have my default sim set to X-Plane 11.

Re: KSGU

Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2020 3:16 pm
by Cat
Sometimes even the FSA database can be confusing, especially here at KSGU. If you use the database search function in the lower left margin - Database / airports, then type in the code you see this:

Image

So one would "assume" that all formats are flying to the old location .... when in fact it appears they are not in your case with XP11 as you seem to have landed at the new one, yet the database is showing XP11 flies to the old one ..... (play twilight zone music here) Remember too, that FSA uses lat/long to determine location and NOT any specific airport code.

What this chart is really saying is the list of simulators have the code but there are two airports in the area with the same code therefore FSA added its own code to the 2nd (newer one). The only clue one has to go by is the airport name and if you notice in the map above, that is not correct either.

I use fsxmap.com to verify the FSX airport code during my preflight. If this is NOT where I really want to go, then I dig a little deeper and see what FSA has labelled at the airport I really want to fly into. If one clicks on the litle i icon for airport information, you can see in the map right away if this is your intended destination and the data gives you "nearby airports" to refer to as well.

KSGU thus far has been the only USA "same code" issue I have found (thank goodness!).

Re: KSGU

Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2020 4:10 pm
by joefremont
I did notice that while investigating this that while we have KSGU from most of the various platforms, the coordinates from X-Plane were not an exact match compared to FS9/FSX/P3D4. When integrating the data from all the various together the program I wrote to do that would check if there was an airport with the same code already in the DB with the same code and within some small number of nm (6?) it assumed they were the same, otherwise it would look for the closest within some shorter distance and if it did not find one it would add it as a new airport.

I can see the x-plane KSGU coordinates were 5.13 nm away from the FSX KSGU but only 0.2 nm away from KSGU-N. I have re-assigned the alternate codes from X-Plane and P3D5 for KSGU to point ant KSGU-N and will have to do a better analysis of these, I am sure there are other airports that have a similar issue.