xxmikexx

Steve,

I suppose a blog can be used for anything, including asking for technical help, so let me try to address your problem here ...

It sounds as if the aircraft was built and tested using a particular FSX revision level. If I'm right you will have to determine which rev level the aircraft was built for and tested with ...

a) RTM (the version in the retail box)

b) SP1

c) Free standing SP2 (includes SP1)

d) SP2 as created by Acceleration (includes SP1)

Unfortunately, to install any of these the FSX product manager, Phil Taylor, strongly recommends starting from a clean reinstall of FSX RTM. (Deinstall and then reinstall.)

Furthermore, he said that Microsoft cannot guarantee that the SP2 incorporated into Acceleration is identical to the free standing SP2. He also said that installing Acceleration to get that version of SP2 requires that the free-standing SP2 be de-installed first (assuming free standing SP2 had been installed earlier).

So reinstall the RTM version and then try the aircraft. Then work your way up to the highest rev level that will support the aircraft. (Which may require your rolling back from the rev level beyond the one that allowed it to start working.)

However ... Since not all products conform to SP1 or SP2 it is possible that you will end up with an aircraft that runs on SP2, for example, with some other aircraft not being compatible with SP2.

I wish I had better news but I don't. You might want to post your issue to the FSX forum with a link to your blog, asking somebody to confirm or change what I have said here.

I hope this helps.

I'll research the photo album stuff by creating one of my own, after which I'll report back to you here. Give me a couple of days.

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We did our first driving vacation in 76 in honor of the Bicentennial. Before planning that trip I didn't even know exactly where certain states were. I certainly had no idea what most of them looked like. Ground truth is a wonderful thing.

One of the things that surprised me was the fact that there are glacial moraines along the banks of the big rivers in places like Indiana and other regions relatively close to the Great Lakes. Then it dawned on me that the rivers must follow the edges of the ancient ice sheets as they began to melt back.

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Anyway, my two favorite states are WY and MT exactly because of the low population densities combined with the majestic scenery. (Until that first trip I had no idea what the term "big sky" meant, because we were east coast people at the time.) But we're rooted to CO now because of the kids and grandkids. My point was simply that we could make the deserts bloom while hiding a huge population in those areas.

Re pumping water, I meant desalinating seawater and then pumping it inland. Given sufficient nuclear power this will be cheap and easy to do when the time comes.

And the time is coming. Here in Colorado we're already seeing state restrictions on agricultural draining of the Ogallala Aquifer. Probably a third of the farmers on the eastern plains of CO have been forced out of business in the past two years because they have no way of replenishing what they take out, which is what the state now requires. I don't feel that as a nation we're wasting the aquifer resources, but we're soon going to have to do something different. We'll run out of Great Plains water completely in less than 50 years, maybe a lot sooner.

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I should mention that for three summers in a row -- 76, 77, 78 -- we not only toured the country, we did it out of a station wagon, camping out in KOA campgrounds. A wonderful experience for our then-young kids as well as for us.

We kept coming back to Wyoming and, after the 78 trip, I estimated that we had been over 90% of the paved roads in the state at that time, as well as over many of the unpaved ones east of the Rockies. Wyoming is full of wonderful places like Thermopolis, places that nobody has heard of, thank goodness, because they're unspoiled, or were back then.

At that time Wyoming's state motto was "Wyoming is what America was", and it was absolutely true. It probably still is if you stay away from places like Casper and Douglas, the oil and coal boomtowns. If our kids ever move their families away from us we will move north for sure, but only to some place like Kemmerer which, as I recall, is where NikeHerk67 grew up.

I too like driving around. I've driven in all of the lower 48 as well as parts of Canada, and I'm well accustomed to distance driving. From Denver I can make the west coast in a single day without breaking any speed limits. I've done this three times, twice in the dead of winter over the continental divide through Aspen. I can make NYC in 44 hours (done it about ten times), and I can drive coast to coast in 3.5 days (done it three times.)

In fact, I just got off the phone with a company that does auto and truck deliveries. Business is slow for them at present because of gasoline prices deterring their customers, but I just may end up doing things like truck deliveries to Albuquacky, Durango, places like that.

I wouldn't want to do this full time but at the moment we're under some financial pressure and a weird part time job like that would suit me just fine given that I still have my software development and joint venture responsibilities.

Who knows -- I might even get a book out of the experience, if they ever call me. :) Trouble is, I'm up against four retired airline employees all of whom have travel privileges.

But that's fine, I can always take the bus back. What I said to them was, "Let's at least qualify me as a driver with you because you never can tell, and I'm the guy who will say "yes" when everybody else has said "no".

I strongly suspect that if they use me once they will not stop using me. You and I are both of the generation that understands that always showing up is important and is in fact most of any nitty gritty job.

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Like you I always wanted to see the country from the ground. The broad driving coverage has given me a complete picture of the whole nation, including many of the secondary roads and routes. It has made me appreciate what a marvelous country we live in, and how big it is. At some point we'll be piping water in to the desert areas. At that point we could support a population the size of the entire world's population today, without crowding, I do believe.

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P.S. Nels informs us that the site now has a photo album capability. Perhaps you could create an album of some of your favorite cloud and sunset shots. Certainly I for one would be very interested in seeing them.

Yes, the personal blogs behave like personal forums. Presumably the restriction in Outer Marker and certain other forums that things must always be aviation or FS related does not apply to blogs, we shall see what we shall see.

Anyway, I too got tired of the sniping which is why I've been away. If people pursue us to the blogs and continue to harrass us I will simply turn the tables and formally report them to site management, something that I've never done before even though it has been done to me several times.

Anyway, why don't we discuss more pleasant things. Like how you are after the <month-long?> leave of absence you took about the time I pulled out.

Now ... I'm curious about something. When you were an airline pilot did you spend a lot of time admiring the scenery and the clouds? I certainly do -- even as a passenger I spend most of my time looking outside. (But I don't in FS, where my interest is strictly 2D panels.)

Hi skylab,

I like the above description of blogs. I plan to use mine to post information that really doesn't fit with Outer Marker or any of the other forums. You and I had been doing an extended interview in the temporarily suspended fsOpenComponents forum. Had blogs been available a year ago I would have done the interview in my new blog.

Also, blogs can be a kind of vanity thing as this one is for me. I'm assuming that as long as the content is wholesome and non-offensive, blogs can contain anything. So I plan to post all kinds of strange stuff to my blog simply because I enjoy writing.

GreasyBob,

I like people with complex personalities. The title of your blog entry suggests you may be such a person, as does the question you posed.

I think that the most insigtful answer to your question has to be "because".