Jim Robinson

I'm glad you got it sorted out! I used to make some really cool flight briefings back in the FS9 days, they'd have screenshots, maps, links, etc. The FS9 kneeboard had a lot more functionality than the FSX kneeboard. Back in the day you could link to outside web sites and display them right on the kneeboard. I had a web hosting service so I set up a PHP/MySQL database of all the airports in FS9 and put a search button on the kneeboard_keys page. I also played around with virtual airlines for a while, here I was working on "Livewire Kneeboard v2.1" with Spokane Intl pulled up: ...but then FSX came along and broke most of that functionality on the kneeboard, most likely due to security reasons you could no longer link to anything. BTW you can change the color using the tags too, here's more stuff you can play with: red text ...or use hexadecimal values: red text ...or do size & color in the same tag: blue size 1 text ...and the font itself: size 1 tahoma text in green ...and bold: bold text ...italics italic text ...underline: underlined text

No, you don't have to use them, it'll look the same as it does now without them, just smaller text and it'll of course wrap differently as a result. ...but if you need a line break with a blank line you can use or if you just want to go to a new line without the blank line you can use . Basically you're coding an old school web page in html, you can do all kinds of stuff with it, if you're interested check out https://www.w3schools.com/html to learn more than you ever wanted to know, lol. You might find the tags come in handy for example: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_pre.asp You can preview nobrief.htm in your web browser rather than firing up the sim to see it on the kneeboard, then when you edit and save nobrief.htm you can just refresh the page in the browser to see the changes. Jim

That one isn't tied to the style.css so you'd have to treat it as straight html and put at the beginning of your added text and at the end. [color="#FF0000"][/color] Addon airport #1 Addon airport #2 Addon airport #3 etc. [color="#FF0000"][/color] You may have to play with the size because "size" and "pt" produce different results, size=6 is rather large where 6pt is quite small.

Yes, it's in "style.css" which should be in the Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Missions\Common folder. Make a backup of style.css first so you can revert if you mess it up. Start Notepad and drag style.css into the open Notepad window. Probably most relevant would be: .article-bodycopy { font-size: 8pt; and: .BRFbodycopy { font-size: 9pt; Try changing those to font-size: 12pt; and see if that helps. I doubt this will have any effect on 3rd party missions as they most likely won't use the MS style sheet to set these parameters. Jim

Hi Chuck, good to hear from you! Afraid I was wrong though, lol. Nothing a guy hates worse than de-bunking his own theory but here goes: I made up a quickie AI traffic .bgl that flies the CRJ700 back & forth between KSFO and KSEA every 8 hrs, then I loaded up at KSFO and followed him. I passed him somewhere near Mt Shasta and he certainly wasn't flying an offset route! I think I rubbed his belly on the way by with my vertical stab, lol. BTW, how does he "have the traffic"? Does he have a back-up camera on the tail of that RJ or what? :) No idea why using VOR/NAV makes GPS/NAV fly an offset track. I tested it out in P3D v3 as well on the same flight where I tracked RBL VOR on VOR/NAV for a bit then when I went back to GPS/NAV the plane tracked to the left of the magenta line and seemed to settle in at about .64 nm off track. Then I reloaded the airplane (which wasn't exactly a serene experience at FL270 & 330 kts) and it swung right back onto the magenta line.

I've seen this before myself, when you've used autopilot in VOR/NAV mode (as you would on an ILS) and then you try to go back to GPS/NAV the plane won't track the magenta line properly. I don't think it's you, I think it's a bug in the sim and I think it's been there since FS9 and maybe earlier. Probably what it's trying to do is track an imaginary line to the right of the actual magenta line a few miles and ATC is throwing a hissy as a result. I hypothesize that AI aircraft track an offset course - so when you're flying KSEA to KLAX at FL320 and an AI is flying KLAX to KSEA at FL320 you don't crash into one another head-on. My hypothesis is that the sim confuses you with an AI once you've used VOR/NAV on the autopilot and tries to put you on an offset track. Just a guess, maybe I'm completely off base. You might try reloading the airplane prior to taking off on the next leg, that seems to work for me but of course I never remember to do that until I'm 10,000' in the air!

Yawn

I did it too - but I can't remember either! :)

Big "hell yeah" for Little NavMap!

I usually get ILS frequencies from the default GPS. One of the nice things about doing that is when you're flying a plane with a standby channel on NAV1 you can highlight the freq in the GPS and press ENT to pop that freq right into the standby channel, then just swap it into active and you're good to go. You can do the same for ATIS frequencies. You could also use MakeRwys.exe to scan your FS installation and extract that information. From Pete Dowson (of FSUIPC fame): https://forum.simflight.com/topic/66136-useful-additional-programs/ It outputs data in a number of formats, "r5.csv" for example will open in Excel and the cell values are explained in the readme.pdf that comes with MakeRwys.exe.

God I love it when a plan comes together! :)

And make sure this is all taking place outside of the Program Files (x86) folder or UAC won't let bglcomp write the .bgl.

Centennial KAPA because I'm "a bizjet pilot" in the sim and I love the ZOMBZ1 arrival that drops you out on final for the ILS 35R like you were on rails. Also the Orbx freeware KAPA is really well done by a friend of mine Todd Harrell. I visited the airport briefly when I was there in the early 80s going to A&P school in Broomfield, back then it was known as Arapaho County Airport and the ICAO reflects that to this day. Honorable mentions: KEGE, KMTJ, KFNL, KTEX, KRIL, KDRO, KBJC, and KASE. Basically I love flying in Colorado and it's easy to find RW corporate flights in and out of these airports on flightaware I can attempt to duplicate. I left Colorado before the new KDEN was built, never been there, I spent almost all my free time taking pictures of airplanes (they call it "spotting" now) at the old KDEN (Stapleton) though. Seriously miss those days if only because I wasn't so old and grumpy!

He has FSX Standard edition which doesn't come with an SDK, he can't install SDKs sp1a or sp2 because the RTM SDK must first be detected on his system or the installers won't run. The only way to get the RTM SDK is to own a copy of the FSX Deluxe disks and install it from those. That's why I'm trying to steer him towards the P3D v1.4 SDK which was essentially the same, and the generally accepted option for FSX SE which didn't ship with a (complete) SDK either.

I don't know the answer to that but that must be what he did. Really you should get on the fsdeveloper forum where Jon hangs out and get your info straight from the horse's mouth: https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/forums/airport-design-editor.95/ I'm a ways behind on my ADE version, I have v1.7 beta and I haven't touched it in a couple years. It does have a copy of bglcomp but I don't see shp2vec anywhere within the installation folder. The copy of bglcomp matches the copy in my FSX Acel SDK (v10.1.61637.0) so I see no reason why it wouldn't work. Personally I'd point both of them to the tools in the newly installed P3D 1.4 SDK folder and try it. See if you can output an airport .bgl and see if it works in the sim. Make an airport background poly in ADE so you can be assured shp2vec is working too, you should end up with an ICAO_ADEX_**.bgl and an ICAO_ADEX_**_CVX.bgl, the CVX is the one for the background poly and it's compiled by shp2vec, the other one is compiled by bglcomp. If they work and give you what you want in the sim I'd say you're good to go. As I said though go to fsdeveloper and ask Jon directly (or search to see if the question has been asked before).

For FSX I think you should be downloading the P3D v1.4 SDK, the v3.3 SDK may possibly be fine to do what ADE needs it for (bglcomp, shp2vec), I don't know the answer to that question but I do know there are components of the 3.3 SDK that won't work with FSX, makemdl for example now outputs a P3D-native .mdl that isn't backwards-compatible with FSX. That said ADE doesn't need makemdl so you might be OK, dunno. I'd install this one instead: https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/resources/prepar3d-v1-sdk.227/ (orange download button on the upper right)

Neither SimBrief nor the NGX could care less whether default FSX has SIDs or STARs, completely irrelevant. You need to buy an airac cycle from Navigraph which you can apply on SimBrief and install into the NGX to make them coincide. http://navigraph.com/

Have you tried different times/seasons? Do you have the 9.1 update? I live 50 NM North of that airstrip in the real world and I flew thousands of flights in FS9 around there back in the day and never encountered any unexplained sim crashes. That really does sound like a corrupt AI texture though, I've had that happen myself. There used to be a program you could run that would log all disk activity IIRC, was it "FileMon", I can't remember? Anyway it would log which files were being opened on disk at the time of the crash, I think that's how I nailed down the AI texture. Maybe it would give you a clue what's happening in Idaho. Oops, quick search reveals FileMon was replaced by ProcMon. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/filemon

You can download current metars (last 24 hrs) here that'll work in FSMetar: https://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/observations/metar/cycles/ Or are you trying to load historical wx ie summer weather in winter or weather for a specific day in the past? In that case you could try this one, you'd need to copy & paste the result to a .txt file and load it into FSMetar: http://vortex.plymouth.edu/myo/sfc/textobs-a.html

Yes we had Russians hanging out at the polling place where I voted too. I'd voted for Hillary (only because I can't stand Alex Jones) but there was a very large Russian woman standing next to the ballot box with an abnormal amount of facial hair who checked our ballots before accepting them. She said gruffly "Ð’Ñ‹ не похожи Ñторонник Хиллари мне" which I learned later loosely translates to "you don't look like a Hillary supporter to me", then she simply erased my vote for Hillary and penciled in Trump. With a smile she handed me back my "corrected" ballot and pointed towards the ballot box. Fearing imprisonment, but mostly an indefinite diet of Borscht, I complied. Jill Stein and her band of hippies all thought the Russians "hacked" the election but in reality it was much simpler than that, they simply assisted us in "choosing the candidate we preferred". :) (Now watch CNN run with it, washed up Hollywood actors will make another condescending video, and thousands of mindless Soros rioters will collect another paycheck for destroying innocent people's property in the streets - all because of a silly comment I made on flightsim.com, lol)

Likely one of the following: -You used the FS9-native .mdl from the download rather than the FSX-native .mdl -You didn't correctly define the VC .mdl in your model.cfg edit -You didn't make the eyepoint edit so you're not positioned in the VC (look behind you) -Probably 10 other reasons that I haven't thought about yet A few more details would make "why" a much easier question to answer. :)

Fly a DME arc! I recently wondered how on earth a pilot could manually fly a consistent radius around a VOR. Sure the GPS can do it but DME arcs have been around since before GPS was a gleam in Garmin's eye, so how would you do it if you had only a VOR receiver, DME, and a directional gyro? I figured there must be a technique that doesn't require rocket science so I googled it and sure enough, there is! The gist of it is this: If you constantly fly a course that's perpendicular to the VOR radial you're crossing you'll theoretically fly a perfect circle maintaining a constant distance from the VOR. That of course would mean you'd need to make 360 heading changes in rapid succession to complete the circle. That's a little ridiculous so what you do is divide the circle up into 10° pie segments and fly a 36-segmented circle, adjusting your course every 10°. You want to fly an "average" perpendicular course between every 10° segment. Say you're flying counter clockwise between the 20° radial and the 10° radial, 15° would be right down the middle (or "average") so you'd subtract 90° from 15 [to get 'perpendicular'] and fly a course of 285° for that 10° segment of the circle. Continuing counter-clockwise to the 10° - 0° segment, your "average radial" is 5° so subtract 90 and you get 275° - you turn 10° to the left in other words as you cross the 10° radial. You'll know when to make your turn because you've dialed in 10° on the VOR indicator's OBS knob, when the needle centers you're on the 10° radial and it's time to turn. Once the heading change is established you dial back another 10° on the OBS (aka CRS) knob and wait for the needle to center again. It's just a matter of repetition, reducing your heading 10° and changing the CRS value 10° every "tens" radial you cross. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's a practical application for your new skill. You're flying from KLAM, Los Alamos, NM to KABQ, Albuquerque in instrument conditions and ATC has given you the ILS 03 approach. You don't have a GPS so you look at the chart and choose the NODME transition. NODME is an intersection defined as 10nm DME from ABQ VOR on the 023° radial. Without GPS the only way of navigating to the NODME intersection is to track inbound on the reciprocal radial 203° until your DME shows 10 nm and then turn right where you'll start your DME arc. Here's an overview of the flight, you depart KLAM and fly directly towards SAF Santa Fe VOR. You intercept and fly the 203° radial of ABQ VOR as you cross it. http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/kalm_kabq_ovrview.jpg Here's the chart: http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/chart_kabq_ILS3.jpg Here are your segments, radials, and headings. You continue around this arc until you cross the 164° radial at 10nm DME, at that point you're on the localizer for runway 03 and a turn to the ILS heading of 034° should put you on the approach path. You'll have the ILS freq. tuned in the STBY channel of your NAV 1 radio so all you need to do is swap the freq and ride the ILS onto the runway. http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/00012IL3.jpg Here's your reward for the effort, don't forget to check out your track in the flight analysis or the map after you land! http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/kabq_ILS03_dme_arc.jpg Some tips: -try it your first time with the clear skies weather theme, it'll be a lot easier if you don't have to deal with wind corrections -use the autopilot for altitude and heading, press "D" frequently to sync the directional gyro with the compass. -things happen quickly, each 10° pie segment of a 10nm DME arc is less than a nautical mile. Fly something slow like the Skyhawk so you can keep up. -it's a long ways around a 10nm DME arc! You'll cover 31.4 nm if you fly the full circle. Plan on being up there a while! -Have fun! :)

For a chuckle fly the RNAV (GPS) RWY 32 approach into KSTS "Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport", note the waypoint names: WDSTC LUSEE PIGPN http://155.178.201.160/d-tpp/1513/00696R32.PDF After your visit you can fly the STS8 departure where you'll cross "SNUPY" on your way to Scaggs Island VOR. You also have the option of flying the CHARLIE FOUR departure if you like :)

Something's wrong Bean, I'm seeing 29 pages http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/29_pages.jpg Are you ignoring half the forum, lol? Look at that, I'm a poet and didn't know it :) EDIT: Somebody's hoggin' my login, normally I don't post stuff like this.

I have been obsessed with the LDA 25 approach into KEGE Eagle County (Vail) since watching this video a couple months ago: Supposed to be one of the most dangerous approaches in the world (assuming IFR conditions, it's not too scary if you can see where you're going). You really have to nail your altitudes for each waypoint, if you're too low you'll find yourself scattered across a mountaintop, if you're too high or fast you'll float right past the runway and end up on the missed approach. Here's the chart for LDA/DME 25 at KEGE: http://www.airnav.com/depart?http://155.178.201.160/d-tpp/1513/06403LDAD25.PDF Here's a saved flight if someone wants to try it in IMC, this loads the Lear 45 at Centennial KAPA (Denver) on Jan 7, 2012 at 21Z (14:00 local) which is about the only day I could find where the airport was IFR. It's hard to find an IFR day at KEGE so that's why I'm attaching these flight files, the Wx saved with the flight is from ASN with historical wx synced to sim time and visibility at KEGE is 3 nm. Put the included files in your Flight Simulator X Files folder and then load KAPA-KEGE from the "Load" menu. http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/KAPA_KEGE.zip EDIT: Use ATC if you want to, but when they start vectoring you into KEGE tell them to "standby" and select the RNAV D approach with the RLG transition (don't load it in the GPS though), they'll give you a bunch of "circle to land" nonsense but the tower will clear you for straight-in when you finally get there. The metar is: KEGE 072050Z 00000KT 3SM -SN FEW009 SCT013 BKN023 M01/M03 A2989 As the waypoints come up in the GPS these are your altitudes: RLG > VOAXA: 13,800' or above VOAXA > AQUILA: 12,900' or above AQUILA > WEHAL: 12,200' or above WEHAL > AIGLE: 10,400' or above AIGLE > WASHI: 9,800' or above Beyond WASHI hopefully you'll be able to see the airport, if not maintain about -1200 FPM and 140 kts until you can, you'll either crash or land successfully, one of the two. :) Hardest part for me is hitting 10,400 at AIGLE, you have to drop like a rock so slow it down to about 165 kts with a couple notches of flaps when you cross WEHAL and then descend at about 1500 FPM. Only takes about 30 minutes.