Sky Dolly v0.19 - Free Flight Recorder & Replay, Location Management

For Helicopter Pilots - Create Your Personal Helipad

MS Flight Simulator does offer a couple of helipads “out of the box”. But what if you wanted to spawn at your own helipad, anywhere in the world? And possibly even in “cold and dark”?

In this tutorial we are going to define our own custom Rega helipad in Zurich airport (LSZH) and store it as user location in Sky Dolly respectively as imported location when importing from Little Navmap. The following simple steps will lead us to our goal:

  • Define the helipad GPS coordinates
  • Fine-tune (“update”) the location (helicopter attitude, “on ground”, engine)

TL;DR

  • In the Location module (press key F3) paste the GPS coordinates into the table (CTRL + V)
  • Alternatively import a Little Navmap user point CSV file
  • Teleport to the newly inserted location, adjust the aircraft position and attitude in MS Flight Simulator as needed
  • In Sky Dolly, select the desired location table item and press the Update button
  • Update the other location attributes as needed: category, country, identifier and engine action

Helipad Coordinates (Step 1)

… With Bing Maps

Open Bing Maps (or any other map service) and find the desired helipad. As already hinted at in this example we are going with the Rega helipad in Zurich Airport (LSZH). A simple search with e.g. “zurich airport rega” will quickly reveal the Rega Center, just next to the beginning of runway 28.

The helipad is easily found when enabling “satellite view” and zooming in, so in this example:

Fetching the actual GPS coordinates depends on the actual map service, but in most cases it is as easy as:

  • Right-click on the desired position
  • Copy the GPS coordinates

In Sky Dolly…

Now switch to Sky Dolly, activate the Location module (press key F3) and insert the new location:

  • Make sure the location table has focus (click on any row)
  • Paste the GPS coordinates with CTRL + V

That’s it! The GPS coordinates from the clipboard have been pasted into the location table, by creating a new entry with the default altitude, indicated airspeed, engine action and on ground values.

In fact, thanks to the underlying GeographicLib Sky Dolly understands a whole range of coordinate flavours, such as decimal coordinates and various degrees, minutes, seconds (DMS) variants. So the following coordinates would all work

  • 47.458143, 8.571866
  • 47° 27’ 29.3142" N, 8° 34’ 18.717" E
  • And various other DMS variants, with or without comma separator

Hint: activate the User filter in order to only see your user locations:

Before we go to step 2, the fine-tuning of the location, we will show another way to define your helipad coordinates. Perhaps you already have a collection of helipads in Little Navmap, or any other source that provides user point CSV files.

… With Little Navmap (User Point CSV)

  • Add a new user point (CTRL + SHIFT + click) at the desired position
  • Conveniently we can also already define the user point type, here: Helipad, and provide the other information as needed

You can repeat those steps for as many helipads as required. Or possibly you already have some helipad database file that you can import into Little Navmap (in case it is already in Little Navmap CSV format, you can also import it directly into Sky Dolly, as shown below).

Once all helipads are defined as user points:

  • Choose Userpoints / Export CSV…
  • Choose the export options as desired
  • Click OK
  • Choose any suitable location for the CSV file to be exported

In Sky Dolly…

Now switch to Sky Dolly and:

  • Choose File / Location Import / CSV (Comma-Separated Values)
  • Select the previously exported CSV file
  • Select Little Navmap as CSV format flavour

Optionally we can already define the default country to Switzerland, depending on whether that value is defined in the Little Navmap user point CSV data or not. We will refine the default altitude and indicated airspeed later, so we can keep the default values for now as is.

  • Click on Import
  • Activate the Location module (press F3)

Hint: activate the Import filter in order to only see the imported locations:

And indeed, our “Rega Helipad” has been successfully imported, including its description, country and identifier (as set in Little Navmap).

Fine-Tune Helipad Location (Step 2)

Now we are going to place our helicopter as precisely as possible onto the helipad and refine all location settings as needed. Therefore:

  • Launch MS Flight Simulator
  • Select a location anywhere in the world, but best near the desired helipad (such that scenery data can already start downloading)
  • Fly

Before we teleport to our helipad location we are already manually going to change two location properties:

  • On ground: checked
  • Inidcated airspeed: 0 knots

With those settings we are already placed properly onto the ground (regardless of the location altitude) and we should not be moving (*).

(*) Depending on the state of the scenery download and/or your previous flying conditions your aircraft might still be moving erratically, especially as the digital elevation model (DEM) is being refined. Simply wait a little bit until the scenery has been downloaded and simply teleport again to the same location.

Once we clicked on the FLY button in MS Flight Simulator, we teleport to our location with Sky Dolly:

  • Select the location entry in the table
  • Click on the Teleport button
  • Alternatively double-click on the ID column

This will now - roughly - place us anywhere near the helipad. Now we are gonig to fine-tune the heading, position and helicopter attitude. Best use the slew mode (press key Y) in MS Flight Simulator, or - if you are really good with helicopters :wink: - manually land at the exact helipad position.

Hint: the slew mode is very coarse to control with keyboard. If you have use a joypad, or any other available analog stick / input.

Once the helicopter is standing still at the exact helipad position, with the correct heading, and slew mode is disabled (such that the helicopter gets properly placed on the ground), switch back to Sky Dolly again, and:

  • Select the desired location entry in the table
  • Click the Update button

This will update the currently selected location:

  • The coordinates and altitude
  • The on ground setting
  • Pitch, bank, true heading
  • Indicated airspeed

As a final step we will also:

  • Select the desired engine behaviour, here: Stop (“cold and dark”)
  • Optionally we can also set the category to Helipad, change the country, provide an (ICAO) identifier and provide a description

And that’s it! From now on you can always teleport to your custom helipad and start with “cold and dark”.

Tip: By setting the category to Helipad you can then easily filter and find all your helipads, with the category filter.

P.S. “Take and give”: the CSV user point data exchange goes both ways. So if you want you can export all your Sky Dolly locations as Little Navmap CSV and import into Little Navmap as user points (again).

4 Likes