Does anyone know if there is a way to declare a parking spot for helicopters only?
No. But you can use military parking type (cargo or combat), so that no other airplanes use it.
Cheers
Ah, excellent suggestion!
Thank you.
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Not sure if I get the question when I look at the answer, but Yes, you can define a starting position dedicated to helicopter and display as this from the MSFS map. Thus you need to have an helicopter to select this starting position.
By memory, you select Helipad as object and then choose from Circle, H, None, Square… And from the properties, you choose it transparent and click “Add Start” to make it possible as a starting position.
Edit : Better source of info
Helipad Objects
You can also consult those posts:
I’m not looking to define a helipad. That was pretty easy and clear and I have done so.
Adjacent to the helipad are 6 circular pads for helicopter parking.
AI airplanes are parking in them, which I don’t want. I want to designate the spots as helicopter parking to prevent this. I’d like to maintain their being active parking spots to provide a place to select from the World Map when starting C&D with a helicopter.
As far as I know, the helipad starting pad that I set in my sceneries are never occupied by AI aircraft (side note: they are never used by any AI as there is no AI helicopter). My helipad starting position are standalone object drop anywhere in the airport. They are not connected to any taxiway via a taxiway path that AI aircraft could follow. And as they are helipad, no player with an aircraft selected can choose them to start a flight.
So back to your need (the need I understand at least), I would define 6 helipads (circle with H) adjacent to your helipad but not different. So 7 helipads, defined as starting position and not connected to any taxiway path.
You’re using the word “helipad”.
As I understand it, a helipad as defined via the SDK is a start point that appears on the World Map with an “H” for helicopters.
However, selecting a helipad from the World Map as a starting point places the helicopter in an already started up state much like spawning on the end of a runway does with an airplane.
I want to define parking spaces for C&D for helicopters only.
Are we talking about the same thing here or are we at cross purposes?
Maybe I should step back and define what I’m doing,
I’ve been slowly making changes to an auto-generated airport that I fly from all the time. The original auto-generated airport does not have the circular parking pads for the helicopters defined as parking spots (they are present visually, but just undefined), so I added them.
Are you suggesting that if I redefine the taxiways (something I have not yet done, but want to) I can exclude those added parking spaces from the taxiways and it will prevent pathing to them for airplanes?
Ok, got a better understanding now, hopefully. Correct me if I’m wrong but you’re looking for a starting point selectable from the world map that put you in C&D. For an helicopter.
As far as I know, it doesn’t exist. Nor for plane than for helicopters. Only way to do that is creating a situation that could be based on the parameter you want (c&d, weather…) and load it whenever you want. You can put your aircraft wherever you want.
The background problem is how helipads are handled in game. As currently there´s no AI helicopter traffic ATC will still route eveyone to runways for landing, even if helicopters can do direct approaches to apron in many real airports. So helipads were a quick solution intended to be special runways with the main purpose of taking off anywhere without the need of a full airport.
As with regular runways once you start there the engines will be running, as game will call the runway.FLT status configuration defined for the aircraft/helicopter addon. Parkings, however, are still common assets for everyone and SDK lacks the special classification for helicopters, so the most effective way to ensure GA will not take those spots is to use military type (combat or cargo). There´s still a chance that AI combat jets spawn there, in particular if used at locations included in the traffic schedules, but then you can still reduce the parking size to something small like 10, so that you can mitigate it as military AI will be then spawned at a bigger military parking instead in case of wingspan limitations.
Cheers
There are a lot of quality free and pay-ware helicopter pads available for the sim. They augment the helicopter experience a lot.
The problem is that a lot of times, normal GA aircraft - especially the Sting S4 but that may be coincidental - appear in the parking spots for helicopters or even on the landing pads themselves.
It’s not other players flying heli’s that I don’t have and got replaced by default aircraft, it’s the sim populating the area, not with heli’s, but rather GA aircraft.
Does anyone else experience this? Is there a solution?
I had a discussion, somewhere in this forum (?), with an amateur dev (I’m also) on using helipad for their scenery.
What you described seems to be scenery where the texture/object are helipad/DZ reserved for helicopters, but the underlying definition is a regular parking spot. It happened for (very) old scenery where the object helipad didn’t exist. As far as I know, nowadays, you define specific helipad spots not connected to any taxiway path, then no regular aircraft should be capable to get spawn there.