Adding AI Traffic to VHHX

In response to an enquiry, this is how I added free AI traffic to 9Dragons VHHX Kai Tak.

Go to WorldOfAI.com and download the WorldOfAI installer. The installer needs Microsoft DotNet Framework 2, a link is on the downloads page at WorldOfAI (WOAI).

Install DotNet 2 (if needed) and the WOAI installer. For the WOAI installer just extract the files in the zip file to a directory on your computer.

On the Traffic Packages page at WorldOfAI download some packages of airlines that use Hong Kong like Cathay Pacific, Qantas, Air New Zealand, Dragonair etc. Basically any of the major carriers and Asian carriers. Don't extract the files in the zip file.

Run the WOAI installer (WOAI Installer.exe). Select one of the WOAI packages (zip files) you downloaded. Choose Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 as the Target. Check the FS2004 installation path matches your installation of FS9.

Press Next and follow the following screens to confirm the installation of the traffic files.

If you were to run Flight Simulator now, that traffic would be operational. But we need now to edit the traffic to use VHHX.

Now run TTools.exe from the directory you installed the WOAI installer files to. This tool extracts the information contained in the Traffic files in your Flight Simulator installation. From the FS2004 Traffic Files section of the screen on the right, choose the airline you wish to modify and press Decompile.

Three files will be created from the traffic file, a Flightplans file, a Airports file and a Aircraft file. By default these files will be extracted to the directory containing TTools. Leave TTools open.

Locate the airports*.txt file and edit the file. Check there is not already a line for VHHX, if not at the correct alphabetic order add the line for VHHX (shown in bold below):

VHHH,N22* 18.51',E113* 54.86',16
VHHX,N22* 18.96',E114* 12.10',13
VVNB,N21* 13.27',E105* 48.33',36

Then locate the Flightplans*.txt file and edit the file. Do a replace operation, replacing VHHH with VHHX. Save both files overwriting the existing files. You have now editted the files to redirect traffic intended for the new Hong Kong airport to the old Kai Tak airport. We now need to load that information back into Flight Simulator. Go back to TTools. Select the three files that were previous extracted and that you have now editted two of and press the Compile button. This will write your changes back into the traffic file installed into Flight Simulator.

You should now have added traffic that was intended for VHHH to VHHX and that traffic should appear in Flight Simulator. But don't go overboard like I did:

SAN SP Problem

Going to start blogging work. Might help someone Googling.

Had a weird problem today with one of the Dell badged EMC Clariion CX-500 SANs I look after. I have two identical SANs, one at the main office and another 5 kilometres away linked via our own single mode fibre to which we replicate some LUNs. One of the storage processors (SP) in the main SAN became "unmanaged", dropping out of the Navisphere management console and the management IP address not being pingable. This broke a number of mirrors using that SP. With several terrabytes of mission critical data, SAN errors are something I don't like to see! The problem started at 5am in the morning, so I didn't think it was a user initiated screwup or change - not even I am working that late! I checked the obvious of flashing NIC activity lights on the SP NIC, replaced cabling and used a different switch port and checked that someone hadn't changed the VLAN or port speed of the switch port the SP was plugged into. Also tried pinging from the same subnet in case it was a default gateway problem on the SP. All ok. Tried plugging a laptop with a crossover cable directly into the SP NIC and on the same subnet, the management IP was still not reachable.

Looking at the SP, there is a RJ-45 console port which helpfully ISN'T actually a normal console port, but a port that requires you to establish a PPP dial up networking connection to. After establishing a PPP network connection and accessing the HTTP setup page (http://192.168.1.1/setup), the setup page displayed the correct IP address of the SP. So it seemed to have the correct setup info, committing these settings the SP then came up. So basically the SP had somehow lost it's management IP settings or required that to be reset. Nice to have it fixed but still not sure why it happened.