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Abacus has succeeded in producing an innovative package which introduces an element of excitement different from simply flying from point A to point B (as interesting as this may be from the point of view of exploring new territory and scenery).
The CAP package is modeled on the real-life Civil Air Patrol organization, which has developed into a very valuable community resource providing a great contribution to countries all over the world, whose job is to search for anything from lost hikers to sinking ships and crashed aircraft. The package provides a range of scenarios which can be customized for any situation, and also allows one to conduct either visual search missions based on standard CAP grid search patterns or location of an Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) which is usually standard equipment on boats and aircraft.
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| Fig. 1 A view of the panel of my favorite RealAir freeware Cessna download to which I added the CAP gauges. (This is an excellent model by the way and significantly improved over the default FS2004 panel. I highly recommend this product). On the left top is the main Autopilot gauge, which links to the Cessna radio panel. On the top right is the ELT gauge, currently showing that you're directly over the target with the left, Direction Finder gauge centered, and the right Signal Strength gauge over to the right. The bottom right gauge is the communication transmitter (currently inactive). You can see the buttons which activate the various gauges, which I added to the standard buttons | Figs. 2 and 3 indicate the communication messages which indicate the location of the object. | |
This article is not intended as a review of the package. There are a number of reviews published which are readily available from the Abacus site and other sites, and the reader can read these and draw his own conclusions. This article is designed for somebody who has had a little experience with the package and to point out some of the main features which may make it easier to understand it, and so gain the best benefits and fun from using it. There are some minor deficiencies in the package, but, knowing them, and how to deal with them, will allow the user to easily correct them and enjoy the full benefits of this package. I must say that when I contacted Abacus with my problems they responded speedily and helpfully, and did agree with the points that I brought up with them.
The heart of the program is the Mission Builder, which allows you to set up a mission for a specific situation, for example, a group of hikers may have gone missing in an area of the Canadian Rockies. You know more or less where they went missing, and what area needs to be searched. You also know that they were equipped with a survival kit which will allow them to fire a flare gun and light a fire to draw attention to their predicament. Without ELT equipment you would have to conduct a visual search and can specify the type of search pattern, depending on the terrain over a specified area and within specified constraints of search legs. On the other hand if you were looking for a sinking yacht, you could simply fly directly to the search area and try and home in according to the ELT on the yacht. You don't have to use the search patterns for every situation.
 Fig.4 This shows a typical search scenario on the Mission Builder. The departing airport is Skukuza in the South African Kruger National Park (an ideal location to practice because of the flat terrain). Under Step 2, you have defined the search pattern as an expanding square, which you can see in the diagram (Skukuza is the red ring in the middle). The object will be randomly placed somewhere within the search pattern grid. The coordinates of the start of the search pattern are shown on the left, bottom. Step 3 allows you to enter the search object, in this case a single person with a flare gun, with black smoke and a flare. |
 Fig. 5 This shows the search object in the Kruger Park. Luckily the lost tourist hasn't been eaten by lions yet. |
 Fig. 6 This shows another scenario with a Parallel Track search grid. You're looking for a sinking yacht (Abacus got the spelling wrong!) |
 Fig. 7 Yet another scenario with a Sector search pattern. |
Abacus did a splendid job with their Mission Builder. It's not easy to cover all the contingencies that arise in real life, like searching in the mountains and cooperation with ground patrols, but one has to be sensible about this. For instance if you're looking for a sinking yacht in a maze of islands, and specify a random location for the search object (which is far more fun than specifying a specific location), you could end up by finding the yacht "sinking" on one of the islands. Or you could find the scene of a car crash in the middle of a lake. Here it would be best to define the search object at a specific location on a winding country road for instance, and then, when you've forgotten where you defined it in a day or two, set up the situation with the specified coordinates and search for it. Remember that the three boxes where you set your coordinates are, DEGREES, MINUTES, and DECIMAL MINUTES. I was a little confused when I started the package and interpreted the third box as SECONDS, which led to some frustration when the location came up differently to what I'd planned. But if you look carefully at the window you'll notice the decimal point in front of the third box. I believe that it may have been possible for Abacus to have gone a step further to check that if one selected a random location of the object, the algorithm could determine whether the position calculated was appropriate to the location, i.e. sea or land, but checking that it was on a road would be expecting too much.
 Fig. 8 Again in the Kruger Park, the lost man has fired a flare, which you can see descending from a height of 2656' MSL (1900' AGL). Note that at this height, it's impossible to see the object on the ground |
 Fig. 9 A view of the "Black Smoke" surrounding the object in the Kruger Park , from an altitude of 565' AGL. This gives you an idea of how difficult it is to locate an object without using the Black Smoke option. In a mountainous terrain it's virtually impossible. |
 Fig. 10 The same as Fig. 9 but a little nearer. You still can't see the object at this altitude, and without the smoke it would be impossible to locate it. |
 Fig. 11 The same as Fig. 9 from an altitude of 1600' AGL. You can barely see the smoke dead in the middle of the picture. This reinforces the need to fly at virtually tree-top level - and this is FLAT terrain. |
In order to set specific coordinates, here is an important tip. For instance, to define a particular point on a road where a collision has occurred, first slew to the desired point in FS and note the coordinates from the figures at the top of your screen when you hit shift-z. To set up the Mission Builder, when you unclick the "Random" button, in order to specify coordinates, a little red circle appear on the "Pattern" view, which shows where the search object has been placed for the particular settings of your SEARCH START position. Now the location of the object will change as you change the search start location, in order to keep the search object within the search area. (Drag the pattern around in "Airport" view and you will see). The result is that if you specify the location of the search object directly, in accordance with your desired location, IT MIGHT FALL OUTSIDE THE SEARCH AREA. What works very well, is to proceed as follows. Set up your search pattern and parameters, and unclick the"Random" button in the Search Object section. You will then see the little red circle representing the object. Now DRAG the search pattern, watching the object position coordinates, to as close as you can get to the desired coordinates. This will retain the position of the search object within the pattern. THEN click the "Position" button and enter your desired, accurate coordinates. You will now find that the search object may have moved ever so slightly, but will still be in the search pattern. Also remember that if you set up Mission Builder while FS is running, YOU MUST CLOSE FS BEFORE STARTING A NEW MISSION, as the new object scenery will only load when you start FS. With FS closed, you can simply hit the "Fly Now" button in Mission Builder.
I personally found that I preferred to stick to the default location and flight plan names, which come up at the top of the list when you save and load the scenery and flight plan since it starts with the letter A at the top of the list. I keep a record of the coordinates in an instructional briefing from which I can quickly set up the situation, rather than save all my missions under separate file names. It's a personal choice.
 Fig. 12 Here's the sinking yacht. |
 Fig. 13 And the yacht from 1000' a little distance away. It's much easier to spot an object on the open sea. |
Here are the weak points that I found:
Firstly the aircraft models in my opinion (and some of the reviews I've read), leave much to be desired. However I can understand that Abacus was not prepared to provide their top-range payware models as part of the package. So the first thing you may want to do is to copy the relevant CAP gauges into a version of your favorite planes. This is fairly easy if you've had some experience with panels, but is NOT simply a matter of substituting the panel.cfg file, as has been suggested by some reviewers. You will most probably find that due to the scaling used in the creation of the panels, the gauges will not appear correctly in terms of size and location. If you have a panel design software package such as FS Panel Studio, it will be relatively easy to copy the appropriate gauge entries across and resize and relocate them. I don't have FS Panel Studio and spent a lot of time juggling numbers until I got things right. But I now have CAP working perfectly in my modified Cessna Panel and my Beaver panel. My Beaver did not have an autopilot gauge, so I had to copy the full radio stack gauge across from the Abacus version, and had to juggle the size so that it covered the default Beaver radio stack. One thing where Abacus slipped up is that their default communication gauge in the Beaver was not designed to fit the panel properly and appears with a big black area below it. It was very simple to adjust the numbers to remove this, but how it escaped the final testers is a mystery to me. I've reported this to Abacus and am sure they'll rectify it.
Another shortcoming is that the Autopilot does not work efficiently. When you engage it, it locks in the Altitude button (although this doesn't appear as an active button), and you have to push the altitude button twice to deactivate it. Abacus does point out that sometimes the AP does funny things and that you should hit the Z button to deactivate it and reactivate it. This to me is a poor solution to the problem, and in any case, pushing the Z button doesn't solve the problem. You have to deactivate the Altitude button and reactivate it again by pushing it twice, which becomes a habit after pressing the GPS button. This is MOST important because the search object disappears rapidly as you gain altitude. You can't see five stranded hitchhikers if you're more than a hundred feet above them. So if you're searching for an object in the mountains, you need to be able to control the elevation of the plane over the ridges and valleys manually, keeping as low as you dare, whilst following the search pattern locked to the GPS. Locating the object, whether visually or via the ELT gauge, is very difficult because of the problem of elevation above the object, which could be in an inaccessible area in the mountains. It is very easy to track the object via ELT and simply fly over it without seeing it. It becomes virtually essential to specify the black smoke option for ALL searches to be able to see the location of the object. The flares are only fired cyclically, and even if you're lucky enough to see them, it's very difficult to fly towards them because they seem to cover an arc as they ascend and descend and you might end up locating the point of descent, by which time you're well past the source. The red smoke is also not easy to spot unless you're close to it, but is useful to spot the object at a defined location such as a car crash on a road which you are following. If you're low enough you may be able to see the cars, but you'll have to be pretty low, and the orange smoke makes it easier. But if you're looking for a challenge, then fly at tree-top level and watch very carefully.
 Fig. 14 This shows a group of 5 people lost in the mountains. At an altitude of about 1450' AGL if you look VERY carefully you might spot the wisp of black smoke near the bottom of the view just to the right of the left-most point of the ridge. |
 Fig. 15 Closer now at about 250' AGL. If you look carefully, even at this low altitude and at a distance away, you can JUST make out the figures beneath the smoke. |
 Fig. 16 And there they are at ground level. Can you see how difficult it is to track an object in the mountains? But it's fun trying. |
 Fig. 17 Here's a car accident, with the red smoke effect, which makes it easy to track it. |
Assume that the situation is that an object, like a light plane, has been lost on a predefined route in a particular direction from an airport, and it would be appropriate to use a creeping line or parallel track grid in that direction. For instance, you know that a light plane has disappeared between Penticton and Princeton B.C. (an actual case). The route from Penticton to Princeton is in a westerly direction, so it would be appropriate to use a creeping line grid, entering from the northeast or southeast.
If you set up this configuration, and check in Step 3 Search Object, and click OFF the Random Position checkbox, the object will appear on the "Pattern" screen as a red circle OUTSIDE the grid! This is a bug in the program. Also, the search grid will appear to the left of the departing airport (in the case of a creeping line), but the path will be either ABOVE or BELOW a horizontal line drawn through the airport dot, and NOT equidistant above and below it. (similarly in parallel track, but then in a vertical direction). Furthermore you will not be able to move the grid by dragging it, as you can in an Expanding Square Grid (another bug), BUT will be able to drag the OBJECT circle into the pattern.
The way to set up such a pattern is as follows.
1. Select airport of departure (say Penticton CYYF)
2. Set Pattern Type to Creeping Line (which will display a horizontal pattern) or Parallel Track (which will display a vertical pattern) in accordance with the path you wish to follow.
3. Set Enter From Northeast (in this particular example), or appropriate direct of the search path.
4. Set Track Spacing, Length and Pattern Extent as desired (in this example 1 nm, 10 nm and 30 nm respectively)
5. You will now find that the pattern is offside the center line of the airport in the desired direction.
6. Go to Step 3, and select your object (say, downed GA style plane).
7. In order to align your search direction equidistant from the horizontal line through the airport, go back to Step 2 and change the Pattern Type to Expanding Square Grid, which will allow you to drag it a little to the left of the airport (about 1 or 2 nm).
8. If you now click the "Position" button, you will be able to change the "Course" and "Direction". By changing the "Direction" number and clicking "OK" after each change, you'll find that you'll be able to move the pattern up or down. You should be able to position the grid easily by this method, but just remember that you must always check the "Enter From" direction after each change, because this may also change, and you may have to change the "Distance" setting as well, because every time you change the direction, the distance from the airport will change. The easiest way to do this is to simply change the Pattern Type to Expanding Square and drag it to the right position.
9. When you have the pattern correctly oriented, uncheck the "Random Position" box in Step 3, you will see the red dot of the object in "Pattern" view. If it's outside the search grid, you should be able to drag it to any position within the grid.
I really feel that Abacus could have done a better job in explaining in the handbook how real-life CAP works, and what search techniques are appropriate to various situations. When I purchased the package I hardly knew how CAP worked in the real world, and the handbook didn't give any guidance as to the strategy involved in conducting a search and the relevance of the various search patterns and ELT to the situation. There is a lot of information about this on the internet.
 Fig. 18 Here's a print-out of a typical mission which CAP provides from the input data. |
So, in summary, the package is fun and gives you a good idea of how this would be approached in real life, but you have to accept the limitations in a package of this nature and its reasonable price for what you're getting. Taking this all into account, you can enjoy many hours of fun setting up missions and deciding on your strategy for locating the object of the mission.
Stan Shear
stankaron@shaw.ca
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