J Allard Airport Diagrams

[romoni]

Hello!

At first - thank You this very nice product called Plan-G. It's very useable and very good program.

I have a small problem with those J Allard airport charts. I downloaded Papua New Guinea Bundle pack from Muttley's Hangar and after that I made a Charts folder and extracted them to this folder.

Path is C:\Documents & Settings\ Plan G Files\Charts but I can't see any chart as I open Plan G - only those that are default.

If I try to set a path to via Option -> Location -> J Allard Charts I can't to do that. Browser try search file called AllardJD_Readme.txt and I can't use any other file form. Very odd...

I use FSX - Windows 7 64 bit.  FSX and Plan G are on the same computer.

Any ideas?

Rolf

[sky one]

This is what I did to get things working:
- created a folder under Documents\My Plan-G Files\Charts named JAllard
- unzipped the charts into this folder
- renamed the txt file (in my case it was italy.txt) as AllardJD_Readme.txt
- in Plan-G -> Options -> Locations I browsed for the file above

Please try and let us know.

Ciao
Cristiano

[PhillyPennPilot]

Slight off-topic, but related:

I was wondering if it's possible to download ALL of the North American charts in one bundle?  (Or all of them around the world for that matter.)  I noticed the section for bundled charts by country, but for me that's still going to be a TON of clicking, downloading, extracting, dragging & dropping, etc., so I was hoping there'd be a way to get them in a larger bulk download. Thanks.

[PhillyPennPilot]

Regarding my previous post: after some research, I actually don't think there is one link / one big bundle out there for J Allard's maps unfortunately.  But back to the original question....

If I try to set a path to via Option -> Location -> J Allard Charts I can't to do that. Browser try search file called AllardJD_Readme.txt and I can't use any other file form. Very odd...

Yes, same for me.   I have a downloaded a LOT of JA's charts thinking this would integrate with Plan-G, but I'm having the identical problem.  I downloaded many different bundles and moved the charts (the .jpg files themselves into a folder called JAllard in the ...Documents\Plan-G Files\Charts folder, and I did the same thing by trying to locate charts.  And I tried your workaround, sky one, but renaming one of the text files to fit what Plan-G is apparently looking for didn't do anything.  Is this elusive "AllardJD_Readme.txt" file supposed to be a directory of some soft?  Regardless though, in my case since I'd like to use many charts from many different bundles (each of which comes with their own .txt file), I don't think there's going to be one file that includes all pertinent info about all the charts.

Here's an example.  The bundle for the state of Oregon in the U.S. comes with 29 .jpg files (the actual airport chart) and one text file called "US - Oregon" which contains the following:

US - Oregon.zip

Updated 6/25/14

This zip contains airport diagrams for...

- 00S McKenzie Bridge State - McKenzie Bridge, Oregon - US
- 13OR Aubrey Mountain Airstrip - Oakridge, Oregon - US
- 2OR7 Sweet Home - Sweet Home, Oregon - US

....

...and it lists the airports.

Anyhow,  I doubt Plan-G can use this file -- or any of the corresponding files for other bundles -- to index which airports have J Allard charts.  And even if it could, there are (in my case) tons of text files.  Very puzzling.

[allardjd]

There's a glitch but it's an easy workaround - Plan-G expects to find that text file as a "marker" that it's in the right place but doesn't use it for anything.  Create any old text file with anything or nothing at all in it, name it AllardJD_Readme.txt and put it with the diagrams and Plan-G will be happy.

The text files you are finding when unzipping the country bundles (they'll have the same file name as the zip file but the txt extension) are just documenting what's in the zip file and the update history, etc.  They're mainly a tool for me; Plan-G doesn't need them and if you don't, you can delete them if you wish.  They don't hurt anything by being there, but deleting them won't cause any problems either.

Once Plan-G knows where my files are, right clicking on an airport which has one will have a "Charts" pad on the flyout.  Click that and you'll get another flyout with the name(s) of the applicable file(s) for that airport. 

John Allard

[PhillyPennPilot]

Ah ha!  Brilliant, John.  After fiddling around with this a little more, it also seems one shouldn't create a sub-directory in the Charts folder.  So I just dumped all the .jpg files right into ...Documents\My Plan-G Files\Charts, and with the help of that txt file -- presto, it worked!   :)


Thanks for the help, John!  Hope this helps someone else in the future.  Cheers.

[romoni]

There's a glitch but it's an easy workaround - Plan-G expects to find that text file as a "marker" that it's in the right place but doesn't use it for anything. Create any old text file with anything or nothing at all in it, name it AllardJD_Readme.txt and put it with the diagrams and Plan-G will be happy.

The text files you are finding when unzipping the country bundles (they'll have the same file name as the zip file but the txt extension) are just documenting what's in the zip file and the update history, etc.  They're mainly a tool for me; Plan-G doesn't need them and if you don't, you can delete them if you wish.  They don't hurt anything by being there, but deleting them won't cause any problems either.

Once Plan-G knows where my files are, right clicking on an airport which has one will have a "Charts" pad on the flyout.  Click that and you'll get another flyout with the name(s) of the applicable file(s) for that airport. 

John Allard

That was the trick - I made empty AllardJD_Readme.txt and now all works very well. I tryed hard to found some information this Readme.txt file via Google but nothing found.

Thank You all!

Rolf

[allardjd]

Not sure if you guys are aware of it or not, but Plan-G will display any jpg or pdf file in a similar manner, the only requirement is that the file name must begin with the airport ICAO code.  If you had approach plates for an airport, for instance, you could rename them as you wish, with the ICAO code at the beginning of each file name and put them in with my charts.  Plan-G will display them in the flyout menu under Charts.

John Allard

[Peter Dodds]

It's described in the new (revised) manual, including the workaround to create the dummy text file with the right name.

Peter

[allardjd]

Peter,

Thanks.  Where is the download link for the new manual?

John

[PhillyPennPilot]

Not sure if you guys are aware of it or not, but Plan-G will display any jpg or pdf file in a similar manner, the only requirement is that the file name must begin with the airport ICAO code.

Did NOT know this ... until now.  Thanks, John!


Also, yeah, didn't realize there was a new manual.  I assume it's in the same spot as the old manual (which is the main PG installation folder)?

[sky one]

I assume it's in the same spot as the old manual (which is the main PG installation folder)?

You can open it from the Windows Start Menu and/or in Plan-G from the Help Tab.

Ciao
Cristiano

[mike182s]

See the manual ver3.1.1 section 13.2.5

[destination]

Thanks for posting this reply, Cristiano.  I could not get my airport charts to work but this helped!