The issue of suddenly being elevated out of the water, sparks flying and wheels down is an object issue. Let us know where you encounter this, with a screenshot and coordinates, and we should be able to fix it. It almost certainly as to do with the way the offending object was sized when it was placed in the scenery. It doesn't have anything to do with mesh, terrain, or elevation issues. Competing scenery would be a 1 in a million chance as well. I'm 99.99% certain about this.
Steve
You are right, Steve. It's the dock object's hard deck which was not sized properly to the visual model. I know there was one at Nina's Landing, for example. Not sure if that was fixed. I'll keep an eye out for them as I travel. Seem to remember one at an APP location too. I'll see if I can grab a pic or three of one now ...
Nina's Landing ... I taxied to the dock, and am sitting above the water and stopped.
For the elevation issue at 5BK, use FTX Central's settings page to open Vector and disable airport elevation correction for it.
No Jeff, it isn't actually a matter of the hard surface not being properly sized to the object, but rather the original object itself, in this case the dock, was resized when it was placed in the scenery with IS. So, if the dock had been placed without changing it's size, there would be no problem. As an object designer and scenery developer, I know this from experience. Hardened surfaces are actually treated as separate, and are invisible, attached objects to the underlying object that they rest upon. So when the underlying object is resized, the attached object (hardened surface) doesn't resize along with it. Now when the aircraft hits the invisible, hardened surface (object) it bounces or floats. Finally, any competent object designer who creates an object requiring a hardened surface, would size the hardened surface to sit exactly on the underlying surface. Clear as mud, right?
Truthfully, I don't know why a dock would require a hardened surface anyway, unless it was intended for a helicopter to land on it.
Steve