Simviation Forums

I've been carefully going through all the advice as to how to get a third-party aircraft to work in a campaign, but for some reason I just can't get the 1% B17G_MollyII  to show up.

Here's the situation:

I have all the official patches and am using the nocd patch to save wear on my CD player and game CD.

I have installed the Airfield fix for Big Bombers that you are supposed to download from Netwings. You install the files in the Facilities folder of your Combat Flight Simulator 3 Folder, incidentally. Neither of the authors mentioned this - thank you guys for assuming we're all psychic.

I've gone into my Combat Flight Simulator 3 Folder, located the Campaigns folder, and opened fortress europa.xml with notepad.
About half-way down with the slider, under Tech Tree there's a list of aircraft. I've inserted the B17G_MollyII here, like this, between the B_26C and the B_26G:


       
     
     
       
     
     
       
     

I put in Date Month figures that would place it after the B_26C, but before the B_26G
I used the Model name of the aircraft, taken from the aircraft.cfg, which is B17G_MollyII, rather than the folder name which is 3_us_b17g.

I then opened the B17G_MollyII.xdp file with notepad, and under , I altered the "entered service="  to read 09/01/1942. This would mean that the B17G_MollyII would be available at the campaign start. I chose this date because it comes exactly after the B_26C entered service date of 08/01/1942.
I then deleted the B17G_MollyII.bdp, because I understand that this needs to be re-created with whatever changes you have made to the xdp next time you use the aircraft.

I believe that this is all you need to do to get the B17G_MollyII to work in a campaign.

I now shut down the computer, re-start, go into the CFS3 Sim, and start a new campaign. I select American, Bomber Career and go to select my aircraft: Currently available is the B_26C. I then go into teh Squadron room to see what the next available aircraft is and it says: B_26G.
No sign of the B17G_MollyII, which by entered dates should be before the B_26G, or at least in that list.

So has anyone actually got the B17G_MollyII to work in a Campaign, and if so, what did you do that I'm not doing?

I have flown it in the Fortress Europa campaign as well as the 46th Italy campaign and never had problems with it.  I didn't do anything you didn't, except I didn't change the entered service date and didn't delete the BDPs or anything, which shouldn't affect anything.  Your tech tree entry is fine, so I 've really run out of ideas.  You did save the changes to the fortress europa XML file after you edited it, didn't you?

I play the Fortress Europa campaign from Simouthouse that uses all the 1% aircraft.  It is used in it as well as the Condor and Henkel for the germans and the Swordfish for the British.

Yes thank you, I saved the fortress europa.xml file, and confirmed it was altered by re-opening it directly through html.

Thanks for alerting me to the Simouthouse version of Fortress Europa. I notice a lot of aircraft need downloading, so before I do that I'm going to try the download that Bear mentioned in a previous thread which involves using the excel spreadsheet.

If that draws a blank, I'll go for the new Fortress Europa.

It's irritating to find that you're doing everything right, but stil no result. I'm sure I'm issing something somewhere.

Thanks for the help.

Okay, this is interesting, I've just downloaded and used the Campaign Generator from SimOuthouse. I checked out the B-17 and was given the message that it was missing the B-17 410 gallon Ferry Tank from the weapons folder.

This may have been the problem all along: I had not downloaded the 1% weapons pack, just the B-17 and whatever weapons came with it.

Now I'll try again...

Missing weapons, guns or pylons will prevent the plane from showing up as will an uninstalled 3.1 patch.

BEAR - AvHistory

Nope, I still can't get this to work.
And whatever I do with the campaign generator, whatever aircraft I select to be in the campaign, I always get the big NO message that says I don't have aircraft available for any of the three countries.
There was a question about this on this board earlier so I'll now search that out.

Anyway, not to worry, I can always fly the B-17 in single missions.

Thanks guys, for all your support and advice.