by Peter A. Jacobson

Released in May 2001, this utility which allows to build his taxiways and other tarmacs under Windows is passed (almost) unnoticed in the French world which "contented" to wait the convertion by the ROTW of what had been made for Fly! 1/2k.

It seems the Terramodels release relaunchs the desire to build buildings on his favourite airport, this airfield not being inevitably in the 245 realized by the ROTW.

So, it becomes necessary to begin by the beginning and so to create the missing taxiways.

Once unzipped, the program is installed in a Fly! II folder (it is more practical) and need to provide it the complete access paths of Fly! II and the Data folder which will receive the results files (.bgr, .tms and .txp). It is also useful to choose the colors which will constrast with your background map. All this is made in the "File" menu, under "Preferences" menu .

You must also "unpod" in a Database folder the Airport.pod and Runway.pod files, so that the software can use the necessary informations. This operation is made very easily with "podview.exe" provided by TRI.

In the starting the program displays an empty window and you must click on "File" then "New" (or on the corresponding icon) to be able to enter the OACI code of the airport to complete.

example for Dax-Seyresse (LFBY) to please Gilles (ROTW)

You will see thus appear the runways drawing (only one in Dax).

Now you must load the "Diagram", translate the .BMP picture of your taxiways, picture you will be able to scan from a VAC map for example.

This map is of course to frame with the visualized runways from Fly! by Taxiway in using the "Position" window of the "Diagram" menu. This operation is made by trial and error in making easier the positionning with the x100 factor.

Drawing icons are arranged as follows:

It remains only to draw taxiways (taxiway icon), tarmacs (polygon icon) in remembering taxiways must start or finish inside the runways and tarmacs.
You can visualize the lights and markings in the ground with the corresponding icons. You can also make appear a grid with a fixed step ("View", "Show Grid"). Don't forget to save regularly your work as you go along of its progress ("File" menu under "Save" menu).
In the end of all these operations, you obtain the following result:

Last operation: positionning of the departure ("source" icon) and arrival point ("sink" icon) of the aircraft and final saving before test. Files have for name the OACI code of the airfield (here LFBY.xxx).
The result for Dax in Fly! II: