It's aircraft carrier time. This is a carrier group placed in locations around the world. 

Think I'm going to class these as a 'stunt' location as there are some, erm, compromises. There are carrier mentions in the developer documentation but nothing else so there are no steam catapults or arrestor cables, just your own boring old engines and brakes to rely on. 

There are however now two programs that do give carrier functionality made by people much cleverer than me that can be used with these so check them out here - 

https://msfs.touching.cloud/mods/cloud-assistant/

https://harddecksimulations.com which also has its own carriers.  

I'll need to work out more realistic runway start points to work with these. 

These carriers are nothing more than lumps of terraformed and dried out sea with a model on top. The irritations are down to making them usable airports that'll show up in the map. A dumb surface to land on would look better and be easier to do but would be less usbale. 

They have two PAPI lights, one on each side, the other two melted down the side towards the sea. I've given the runways landing lights where possible as there is no 'meatball' available. 

There is parking up from the starts of the runway. You will likely need to do a U turn if you start from there. ATC has approach, ground and tower. I did fiddle with ILS but I doubt it works. For the more remote carriers that might ruin your odyssey. Sorry. 

There are now three different models but there are a couple of places with only one as I'm too lazy right now.  To make things clearer each ship has the same runway number at each location. 

Runway 01 - A HMS Queen Elizabeth at 280 metres. This has no visble runway or lights. This is because the model is twitching junk and the runway had to be buried, but it still tries to pop up and say hello. You might get lucky and it'll stay still. You might not. I think it needs replacing. Or slapping. No parking and one start point. 

Runway 02 - A Nimitez-esque carrier at around 340 metres. This is the only carrier to have a parking space and bi directional runway starts.

Runway 03 - An Admiral Kuznetsov at 304 metres. The Kuznetsov suffers from a permeable deck by the island that you'll fall through. Couldn't solve that for some reason. No parking and one start point. 

Why would Russians be trundling around with Americans and Brits? Kaiju of course. 

The Elizabeth and Kuznetsov aren't the most detailed of models but it's the ramp that counts and these were the only ones that were smooth enough to not break you in half on takeoff. All those fancy arse 3D modellers forgot that requirement. I'll try to improve these and all of them need a better deck texture. 

Locations are divided into separate folders per area. All locations are starred unless otherwise stated. 

Current locations - 

UK/ Main File

Isle of Wight. ICAO - ACIW.  Coordinates -   50.595319, -1.443976  The Nimitz is scaled up for sillier aircraft. 

There is a mod by Aviationeh to go with this location adding ships to the area - https://flightsim.to/file/5073/isle-of-wight-solent-southampton-ships

Near London - ICAO - ACLD. Coordinates - 51.496942, 0.663018  

Central Liverpool, in the water obviously. ICAO - ACLV. Coordinates -  53.404951, -3.007382 A lone Nimitz, though you will stumble across a mindless HMS Elizabeth if you head out towards the Isle of Man. 

These are one folder per carrier unilke the others below as I couldn't be bothered to combine them yet. 

Americas

San Francisco in the bay near Alcatraz. ICAO - ACSF. Coordinates - 37.866237, -122.406729  

New York in Manhattan. ICAO - ACNY. Coordinates - 40.602660, -74.043143  

Carribbean somewhere between the Britsh and American Virgin Islands. ICAO - ACVI. Coordinates - 18.08908, -65.0524

Rio de Janeiro outside the bay but not too far away if you want to pop in to town. ICAO - ACRJ. Coordinates -    -23.029428, -43.002231

Hawaii - As requested this is a mystery location somewhere in the correct historical vicinity of where Japan launched their attack on Pearl Harbour.

There are two carrier groups 25 miles part ish made up of three Shinano class carriers with Kagero class destroyer escorts. You can land on these but they're not airports so can't be found unless you stumble across them. 

Europe

North Sea not too far from Heligoland. Equidistant to the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. ICAO - ACNS. Coordinates - 54.72167, 6.995314

Cyprus. The perfect location to play out your nationalist grudges whatever they may be. ICAO - ACCY. Coordinates - 34.80485, 34.24877

Africa

Cape Town. Close to shore with an approach over the hills. ICAO - ACCT. Coordinates - -33.947850, 18.341212

Lagos. I should've put this further out to sea. My arse hurts. So no. ICAO - ACLG. Coordinates - 6.390989, 3.426891

Casablanca. Too close AGAIN. It's late. ICAO - ACCB. Coordinates - 33.646526, -7.707354

Gulf of Suez. This is much more nautical. In the Red Sea about 120km from Suez. ICAO - ACSZ. Coordinates - 28.866822, 32.913080

Australasia/ Asia

Sydney Just outside the harbour. ICAO - ACSY. Coordinates - -33.870341, 151.327391

New Zealand In the Cook Strait not too far from Wellington. ICAO - ACWN. Coordinates - -41.346701  174.450741

Oceans

Middle of the North Atlantic below Greenland. ICAO - ACAN. Coordinates -  59.387623, -33.654331.  This is a lone Nimitz scaled up and with a fuel bay for your lengthy hopping. 

Tristan da Cunha. ICAO - ACTC. Coordinates - 37.239954, -12.435205. The Nimitz has been scaled up to accommodate a fuel bay cos there really aren't too many other places to get some in that part of the world. Trust me. 


Compromises - 

There is no pushback and no fuel apart from the oceans carriers. It won't place items outside official terrain, so once you're parked up you might be there for good if you're on the large side. If you start off in the parking spaces it is pointing in the right direction out towards the runway. 

These seem to often run a bit choppily for me. This actually starts before I even install a model so there's something going on with the sim either with open water or terraforming in it. Not sure why and hopefully it's not the same for you. Some are full on slide shows. Bummer. 

The airports seem to be rather confused, can't blame them, so you may end up being sent to the wrong runway. Dunno why. Or care all that much. ATC often refuses to favour the primary ends of the runways.

The models have pop in and levelling problems and as ever terraforming glitches things viewing them from a distance. This also seems to affect the visibility of Papi lights from a distance too. The bleedin' developer kit cannot deliver a smooth face or level surface or match external textures hence the jaggedness in some runway surfaces or covered up patches. More work is needed. 

Is there loads of other broken stuff? Probably. I'm getting seriously befuddled. 

Model credits - The Stuc 71, Mandun, Hunter_3ddd, Nikos D, Masahiro M, 

If you have a location request let me know with a comment. 


V 1.9 adds two mystery WW2 Japanese carrier groups to the Americas file. The other files are unmodified.

These are in the vicinity of Hawaii somewhere near the correct historical location where they were on the day of the Pearl Harbour attacks.

You'll have to check a diagram and hope for the best just like I did. 

They are 25 miles apart ish. They are not airports so they're not marked and you can't start from them.  The only way to find them is to physically locate them. You can land on them. 

There's actually a third somewhere out way further west. I can't remember where I put it. Let me know if you ever find it. 

Next up - more of everything, everywhere.