Jim Robinson

There's no such thing in FS2004.

A GPS has to be moving to give you a track, it compares your current position to a position you were X number of seconds ago and calculates the track. It also calculates the distance and uses that against the time between the two positions to give you a groundspeed. If you're not moving a GPS can't even tell you which way is North so nope, the handheld GPS wouldn't work. For that matter a GPS doesn't give you a heading anyway, it gives you a course. It would only be possible to use a GPS to accurately calibrate a compass if you knew precisely the wind direction and speed (which is unlikely in practice), then you'd need to precisely calculate your wind correction angle (more precisely than you can do with an E6B) and add or subtract it from your GPS track (course) to come up with a heading. In the US the process for "swinging a compass" is detailed in the FAA publication AC 43.13-1B and yes it involves using a compass rose painted on the ramp. If you're interested here's a link to that document in .pdf form and the "compass swing" procedure begins on page 620 of the .pdf. https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC_43.13-1B_w-chg1.pdf

Thanks much Michael and puglist! (I'm sorry, I don't know your name :o )

Thank you Larry and James! :)

Seeley Lake and the Seeley Lake airport (23S) Can't decide if I should turn South towards Drummond and fly the valleys or make a straight shot to Helena. Clouds appear to be lifting the further East we go but clearing the mountains will be tight at 7500'. I think we'll risk it, we're fueled for Helena and back to Missoula if we need to turn back. As it turned out the clouds dissipated and we were able to climb to 9500', clearing the mountains with ease. Turning downwind for Rwy 27 at KHLN. On final. Best landing I've made in 3 months, lol. And a couple shots on the ramp with the doors open. Hope you enjoyed my Sunday flight as much as I did! Thanks for looking! Jim

Not sure why or how I came up with this flight, it was sort of on a whim without much planning but it ended up being a great flight! Orbx NRM region, Carenado F406 Caravan II. We've got snow a little earlier than normal this year so NRM's seasonal textures are just about perfect. Start and warm up at S27 Taxi was short, less than 100 yds to Rwy 13 Taxiing into position, ugghh, weather's not looking great in the general direction we're going Did a left climbing turn back over the airport before leaving, looks like we'll need to amend our proposed cruise altitude of 9500' in favor of 7500'. That'll cause a problem with clearing the mountains between us and Helena but I think we can handle it. We fly almost due South over Flathead Lake towards St Ignatius. That wasn't exactly the planned route but we're lacking the altitude to go straight across with the current cloud ceiling. The plan is to find a low spot at the end of that mountain range on the left to cross over into the Seely Lake area. From there we should be able to pick our way through the valleys into Helena. If not our alternate is Missoula through a valley or we can return to Kalispell as a last resort. Looks like we can fly straight towards that low canyon and make it across with room to spare. (more in reply)

Clinging to 57, 58 in January.

My condolences David, that's a rough go. Hang in there! :)

I love Win10 so much I haven't even upgraded yet, because I know the longer I hold off the better it will be when I finally make the switch!

Interesting information on the B-52 Bob, lots of things I didn't know, thanks for posting that. :)

In a nutshell you'd need to add a "magnified" 2D panel window to your panel.cfg and then you'd need to overlay a transparent clickspot on the VC gauge that toggles the magnified window. That assumes the gauge you want to magnify is a 2D gauge placed in the VC by a line in one of the [VcockpitXX] sections of the panel.cfg. If the gauge in question is a 3D gauge built into the model then most likely there will be no way to overlay the transparent clickspot. I think the reason you're not getting help with this is because you need to be more specific. Which specific gauge in which specific aircraft are you trying to magnify? With that info someone with the aircraft installed could give you some guidance or at least tell you whether it's possible or not. Jim

FSX/P3D also have the taxiway_detail and taxiway_detail02 textures. I wish I could remember what I did but I know I copied the runway_detail textures from that download to taxiway_detail textures so I could use them for both. I think I renamed taxiway_detail to taxiway_detail02 (and vice versa obviously) which seemed more appropriate for the given runway/taxiway textures IIRC. I may have done the same for the runway_details, can't remember. I didn't try any of this in FS9 at all so I can't say. I thought the detail textures were a little over the top at 1024px TBH, resizing them to 512 toned them down a bit. Now I see that REX has apparently installed a runway_detail.dds which of course didn't overwrite the .bmp, I'm not actually sure which texture the sim is using (and don't care enough to figure it out), lol.

Years ago I was plagued with an unexplained glitch where the PC (relatively new hi-spec self built) would run fine immediately after booting but then it would lock up. I pulled my hair out for 3 weeks, reinstalled Windows, removed the RAM sticks one at a time and did the mem test, reset the BIOS, basically all the stuff you're doing right now. I needed to use the PC so I started setting an alarm on my watch for one hour to remind me to save my stuff so I wouldn't lose anything when the PC locked up, then I'd just work up until it quit, reboot, reset the alarm and go back to work. Eventually it became apparent that the PC was locking up precisely one hour after bootup. With that I googled around a bit and found out that this was a common problem with my Crucial M4 SSDs where they have a built in timer that logs the power-on time and after a certain number of hours of use that timer was causing them to become unresponsive after one hour, a firmware upgrade was available that fixed the problem in about 15 min time. (They're still going strong to this day over 9 years later). Backstory aside, I'll simply suggest that you add checking for firmware updates on all your hardware to your list of troubleshooting steps. Best of luck to you, I know what it feels like to be in your position right now. Hope you get it sorted out soon. Jim

I've been using these in FSX and P3D for years resized to 256 px. https://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?DLID=174643&Name=&FileName=&Author=&CatID=root I don't know if this applies to FS9 but I think it probably does, from the readme: NOTE: "runway_detail.bmp" is detail texture for tarmac runways, and "runway_detail02.bmp" is for asphalt runways. EDIT: Oops I lied, been using them at 512px not 256

The software developer could make the download available in manageable sized chunks and that way if you get a bad packet that corrupts your download you could re-download maybe a 10-20Gb chunk instead of dumping the whole thing and starting over. It's a little ridiculous to assume everyone on the planet has a perfect unlimited 100mbps fiber connection for $50/month. If this thread was about lousy internet providers you people would find some reason to defend the ISPs and put the blame on the user complaining about their ISP! On the other hand if it were you having the problems you'd probably be the ones crying the loudest!

To the untrained eye it would appear someone's tired of the cold already and heading South for some sun & warmth! :) (If so I don't blame you one bit, I've begun working my way South as well, just wish I could do it "for real"!) Nice shots & thread, I've always thought the A300 was a good looking airplane, never been able to put my finger on exactly why, it just looks right I guess.

Suddenly I don't feel so bad about 'em cancelling Seinfeld! :)

A pretty good one is the "house tutorial" that was included with the FS9 gamepack SDK. I don't think it was included with the FSX gamepack. Do you have a gamepack installed and if so, which sim is it for? If FS9, go into the gmax\gamepacks\fs2004\docs folder and find "gmaxSceneryTutorial.doc", that's the infamous "house tutorial" and it'll walk you through creating the geometry for a simple house, texturing it, and exporting it to the sim. The texture sheets are included IIRC so you don't even have to make those for this first attempt. If it's FSX you're interested in modeling for you can still install the FS9 gamepack alongside the FSX gamepack to get the house tutorial. FS9 gmax gamepack SDK is available here: https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/resources/gmax-sdk.34/ If you have any questions ask away.

I added "popcorn", what are you, the edit police now? (and I assure you whatever it is it was cheap) :) I hate scenery, let somebody else do all that, they can even have the 2 or 3 kudos they'll get out of it all for themselves. I'm OK with that, lol.

That's a killer screenshot right there. I'm ashamed of my P3D popcorn clouds and I hide my P3D water whenever possible, still FS9 is dead because, well it just is... :D

I think maybe kellyma53 took "It looks like 8000 feet max will do it" as some kind of limitation where you were just describing the max altitude needed to clear the mountains. Glad to hear you guys had a good flight! :)

1S1 is pretty much just a border crossing with a grass strip and some short term parking. I think most people just land there to clear Customs which are within walking distance on either side. There used to be a bar there and at one time you could probably get a burger but I think it's closed down now. It's been a while since I've been up that direction so I really don't know what's going on. I was up there on a photo mission in 2011 for a friend of mine that was interested in turning 1S1 into an Orbx airport, as it turned out I think he was somewhat less than impressed once he'd seen the photos and it never materialized. For eats I'd suggest landing at Bonners Ferry (65S) instead of Porthill. It's about 20 miles South of 1S1. Yoder's Market is marginally within walking distance, Mennonite owned, has a deli and a great sandwich menu. Best in my opinion would be to get a courtesy car and hit Two-Tones on the South end of Bonners. Mia Pueblo on Main Street in downtown BF is also excellent if you're in the mood for Mexican. The Asian Nachos at Two-Tones are absolutely delightful, would be my first recommendation, definitely a meal you won't forget about the next day. I dug up a few RW shots of 1S1 from my photo mission in 2011: This shot is from Hwy 1 on the east side of the airport just before crossing the border, the runway runs horizontally about halfway up the photo. The pole network on either side of the runway are hop filelds owned by Anheuser-Busch. The poles are strung with twine every spring and the hops climb the twine, at harvest they just cut the twine and the vine at the bottom and lay them in a truck to haul them off to the processing plant which is barely visible on the left side of the river behind the trees. Looking South from the NW corner of the runway The parking area, there's a stairway just to the left of the lone hangar. You walk up the stairs and then either walk North or South from there to visit Customs depending on which way you're traveling. The Canadian Customs building is on the far left. US customs on the far right but not visible in this shot. Here's the US Customs building, sorry I didn't have a better shot A little closer shot of the Canadian Customs Finally this shot as you taxi between the runway and the parking area, the brown building on the left is the old tavern, the larger building on the right is the Porthill Mercantile, basically a convenience store.

Can't believe you were 24 NM from my house and you didn't stop in for coffee!! :) (1S1)

You're welcome Ed, glad they worked out. :)

Hi Ed. My graphics card quit working so I can't even look at this in MCX but I had this texture already for another project that also needed white hangars so I just renamed it to make it work with your model. This only changes the hangar you're using, the others are still the same (I think). Try this texture out and see if you like it better: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gPVIrIESUva8uokLu0KToTlp-UnBqPZL/view?usp=sharing Jim