KNOWN ISSUES
============
I used Area 16 commands to harden my helipads in my Maui Oil rigs scenery and they seemed to be ok and i used them initially to harden my runway on the aircraft carrier. However there was obviously a problem with this as highlighted by other scenery developers ( read information below ) ... so i switched to invisible hardened runways BUT there is a catch....
There's something about FS2002 and these add-on runways that
requires the user to manually refresh the scenery library
if you fly far enough away and then return to the carrier.
You should do this: when returning to the carrier, as soon as you
pick up the VOR signal on 108.0 press ALT-W-I, UNCHECK AND
THEN RE-CHECK any scenery, then hit OK. That should refresh the
scenery and "wake up" the landable surfaces.
Add a reminder to your approach checklist.
If you dont do this the carrier looks like it is sitting on a sea blue hill which looks ridiculous. Its because the flatten file is not activated and the scenery tries to suck the sea up to the level of the hardened runway which in this case is at 66 feet ..
A more detailed explanation of this phenomena is explained below :
Known Elevated Helipad/hardened elevated runway Issues in FS2002:by J Morgan
In FS2000 and Prior, elevated helipads could be reliably made and used
with the commonly known SCASM Area16 syntax in routines as published by J.
McNulty and D. Barnes (Re: Helopad.api). FS2002, however, seems to have a
"refresh cycle" or something of that nature that periodically "dumps" the
Area16 elevated surfaces. Further confusing is the fact that the period
of this "dump" cycle seems to be random. Hopefully, if and when we get
a FS2002 Scenery SDK you C++ guys can enlighten us as to the reason for
this damnedable feature. Or, if there are any "sympathetic" MS scenery
engineers reading this, maybe you could help explain these "new
natures" and clue us how to design around it.
This FS2002 issue has forced the use of elevated invisible (small of course)
runways for use as helipads, which technique is used here. This seems to
work good, however, it requires a small (or any size appropriate to your
scenery project), FLATTEN AREA be located directly under the elevated hard
surface. If the flatten area is not placed under the elevated hard
surface, the elevated invisible runway literally "Sucks" the ground
terrain up to it's own altitude. On tall buildings, this is impressive
(Not).
Another "Quirk" to be dealt with: When originating a flight from the
scenery area and then flying approx 0.6 to 1.0 degrees away from the
area and then returning, the flatten areas will sometimes become
inactive, resulting in the above described condition where the ground
surface level terrain has been sucked-up to altitude of the elevated
helipad.
A quick fix for this is to simply select the Scenery Library
<Alt+World> and click on <scenery library> and press the <enter> key.
If you have properly activated the scenery in the Scenery Library as
directed above, this refreshes the flatten areas back to their proper
ground level altitudes and brings everything back into place.
As mentioned above, this only occurs in FS2002 (and maybe CFS2?).
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) might be able to help 
That should give us hope.
