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Hi. I'm having this problem on FSX: Using FS Recorder, when recording the flight over the other one that I've already recorded, to make some formation flights, the aircraft of the first recording keeps going back and forth all the time. The configuration I use in FSX's FS Recorder is the same as in FS2004 and it works fine there, without these strange pulls on the aircraft. Well, that's the setting I've always used. I've already tested all the other recording options and it didn't work. I also downloaded other versions of FS Recorder and still the problem remains. What I'm using in this case is 2.1, the same as I use in FS2004.
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Ratty's Ramblings - Drifting By Ian Radcliffe Drifting Unless you always land on runways pointing directly into the wind, you're familiar with drift. And of course it's one of the effects of those pesky winds at altitude. Even when you're on autopilot following the magenta line, if there's any sort of crosswind your plane is flying sideways a bit. Exactly how much depends on your speed and heading, and the strength and direction of the wind. I recently elected to fly from Southern California to Sydney, Australia. Don't ask. I decided to go via Hawai'i and Pago Pago, making the trip three hops of a little over 2,000 miles apiece. There are not a lot of landmarks and navaids in the South Pacific, but using a GPS seemed like a kind of heresy as I was flying the A2A Lockheed Constellation. In the Connie, the onboard map looks like this: I can see that wind from the east northeast is pushing me off to the right, so I'm heading 191 degrees to get my desired track of 193. This is, of course, more information than would be available in real life. Back in the day, forecast winds aloft were all you had, and landmarks and beacons had great significance. But those are in short supply over the Pacific, so you need another way to tell where you're going. Drift sights were invented in WWI as a bombing aid, but after that, many aircraft were fitted with them as navigation aids that allowed the pilot or navigator to look downwards to observe the relative motion of the surface and measure how much the aircraft was drifting due to wind. I like that they add a little bit of mystery to a flight. Drift information alone doesn't tell you how much your ground speed is affected, so while you can be more certain you'll reach your destination, you won't be able to calculate exactly when. (Some drift sights incorporated "speed lines" to get a ground speed reading by measuring the time it took for an object on the surface to move between the lines and then factoring for altitude.) The Connie's map is a great stand-in for a drift sight, but if you don't have an onboard map like that, how do you get the drift information? I've found that a simple protractor works just fine; the ones with radial lines and no holes are the best. Go to your top-down view in the sim and set it as "aircraft-oriented". Put your protractor on the screen over the aircraft with the 0-degree mark at the top, and watch the surface slide by. You'll be able to see the surface movement relative to your plane. Read off the drift angle and correct for it. After a couple of minutes, check again and make any necessary adjustments. That's it. Congratulations, you're on course! Formation Flight I'm reliably informed that formation flying is easier in real life than it is in a sim. That's encouraging, because I found it tricky enough in the sim that there were times I thought I'd never get the knack. But it turned out to be much like learning to ride a bike - not getting it, not getting it, not getting it ... got it! My moment was when I first noticed I was moving the throttle without consciously thinking about it. I'm not great; I can hold formation with an airplane that isn't maneuvering too drastically. The trick seems to be: Match the lead's bank angle Adjust throttle to move forward and backward Use rudder to move closer or farther away I've had the opportunity to practice a lot on our group flights, but it's also easy to practice alone with your program's AI. Turn off collisions, take off, and look for someone to follow (Ctrl-Shift-L for labels in FSX). Whatever you're flying, you should pick a target over which you have a performance advantage, because you will be playing catch up. Joining up is an art in itself, and easier if you've played combat sims. It involves juggling wildly variable geometry and vectors, a skill that is largely about feel; like everything else in flying, you get better with practice. It's easiest to join from astern, another instance where the speed advantage helps. Once you're at roughly the same altitude, heading, and speed, use your controls as above to move into the "slot" position, below and behind the lead aircraft. Choose two points on the lead aircraft to line up; for example, the edge of the rudder with the gap between the aileron and the flap. Then see how close you can get. I've been told that formating is easier the closer you fly to the lead. Let me know how that works out for you. If you're feeling particularly ambitious, JoinFS has a function that allows you to record a flight, then play it back and fly along. You can even record that flight and play it back and fly along. Then you can record that flight, and the next, and the next, and thus build a formation. When the British were still flying the Hawker Hunter, there was an RAF Hunter demo team called The Black Arrows. At the Farnborough Air Show in 1958, they executed a formation loop with 22 aircraft, a record that stands to this day. They followed that with a 16-aircraft barrel roll. I guess it just takes practice. Homonyms 2 They're homonyms, I get it, but really, people... HangAr HangEr Ratty's Ramble This time, we explore the Hudson River Valley, from New York City to the river's source south of Lake Placid. The trip is around 230 miles. Take off from Westchester County Airport, KHPN, avoiding the congestion and dodgy frame rates of the NYC area, and fly west to the Hudson River and Tappan Zee Bridge. Then follow the river north, past West Point military academy, Poughkeepsie, Albany, and Hudson Falls, and up into the mountains to the river's source at Mount Marcy, landing at Lake Placid, KLKP. The trip looks like this: /images/features/rattyrm5/3.jpg And the Skyvector plan is here.
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Formation Flying By Tony Vallillo (20 August 2006) Northrop T-38's in formation. (Aircraft by FSD.) Formation flying is one of the most challenging and fun things to do in the air! Over the years I've had opportunities to indulge in it with real airplanes, and for some time now I have been looking for a reasonably realistic way to do it with MSFS. Up to now, though, the options appeared to be quite limited. The easiest way to join up was to find some AI traffic and tag along; but, of course, this put you at the mercy of both the type of plane and the flight pattern that had been locked into the AI traffic file. In addition, the AI traffic tended to be point to point, which made for some fairly boring, albeit easier, formating. A few much-more-computer-savvy simmers than I had managed to tweak the AI files to create lead airplane traffic that at least offered some semblance of realism, but unless I've been looking in all the wrong places they have kept the fruits of their labors pretty much to themselves. That unhappy situation is now at an end, thanks to a new program called Recorder, by Matthias Neusinger (http://www.neusinger.net/recorder). And a big thanks to Sammy Yousef for bringing this program to my attention! Although I'm not sure if Matthias had formation flying in mind when he created this add-on, (actually, a .dll module) it has a feature that is tailor made for us formation enthusiasts! More on that in a moment. The Recorder program itself captures many of the parameters of a flight, enough to play it back with just about all of the bells and whistles intact. For example, it allows you to: record flights of unlimited length replay jump forward/backward during playback control playback via keyboard or control window loop part of a recording change playback speed custom keyboard controls recorded data is customizable (available are throttles, control surfaces, gear, flaps, spoilers, lights, engines on/off, propeller/mixture, nav and com radios, data/time, smoke) In addition, it supports: multiple tower/spot views free and automatic panning automatic zooming saving/loading sets of tower and spot views The program is freeware, and if the user so chooses he or she can make a donation via PayPal. I must confess that I did just that (please don't tell the airline - such profligacy with money is strictly against the airline pilots' code of conduct!) because it took Matthias a week or two of experimentation to work out some irregularities that cropped up due to my computer's configuration. That he did so as quickly as he did is a credit to the state of product support in the MSFS community! The basic Recorder menu. To record a flight from here, just select Record... Just select OK from here to start the recording. After you select Play as Traffic, select the lead aircraft recording from this The program itself is quite easy to use, so I won't go into any detail about its normal operation. All you have to do is drop the .dll file into the modules directory of FS9 and you're up and running. As a recorder, it works just great, but it has a special feature that makes formation flying possible: Play-as-Traffic. To end a recording, select Recorder and, from this resulting menu, Stop recording To save your recording, name it and click on Save. Yes, you read that right! You can play back a recorded flight as AI traffic and fly along with it! This is the breakthrough that enables you to record your OWN lead aircraft, and have them do just about anything you are capable of making them do during the recording session! Do you just want to fly straight and level, the better to practice rejoins and the wingman position and station-keeping? No problem! Want to add some turns, climbs and descents to make things more challenging? Again, no problemo! Want to really up the voltage and record the lead airplane doing acrobatics? Again, no problem! No problem, that is, to record and play back the lead ship. Keeping station under those circumstances is a BIG PROBLEM! But that's the joy of formation flying! Although the recorder is capable of recording in 1/8 second intervals, the resultant AI traffic playback is still a bit jumpy when you get really close, within around 20 feet. If you are content to stay farther away than that, and you certainly will be in the beginning (!), then you will see a smooth lead airplane. So let's go through the steps of creating your own formation flight. Sammy Yousef chose a relatively easy to fly aircraft for his first attempt - the default Mooney. Create a flight with the Mooney in takeoff position at the airport of your choice (Sammy chose Sydney, Australia). Use slew to slide your airplane over to the middle of the right side of the runway. Also, be sure to set the traffic level at 100%. When this is done, save the flight. Call it something that ends with "right wing". This will eventually be you, as the wingman. Now slew the airplane over to the middle of the LEFT side of the runway, and about three ship-lengths forward of where it was when you saved the wingman portion of the flight. You are now ready to record the LEAD airplane, so be sure that everything is set up just as you want it - flaps, lights, smoke and so on. The Recorder module appears on the top tool bar of FS as "Recorder", and clicking on that brings up the recorder menu. "Record" is the first option, and clicking on it brings up a simple menu that you use to set the recording interval, and, if you wish, an auto-stop parameter that stops the recording at one of several events. I don't bother with this, I simply stop the recording manually, when the time comes. Select the recording interval you want and click OK. You're back in the cockpit - Lights! Sound! Action! Give yourself a few moments just sitting there, to allow you some time later, as the wingman, to gather your wits about you! Then begin your takeoff roll. As a technique, add power slowly, and don't use full throttle - use around 90% of full power. If you read my previous article on formation flying you will recall that the lead airplane must always "give away" a little bit of power to the wingmen, so that they have a bit of an edge to play catch up, if necessary, and it will be necessary! At the proper speed, rotate slowly and raise the gear when airborne. Fly with EXCEPTIONAL smoothness. As a technique, use the autopilot if it flies more smoothly than you do! For this first attempt, just continue a shallow climb at your takeoff power setting of around 90%, and fly straight out. At around 3000 feet, smoothly level off, and SLOWLY reduce power to normal cruise setting. Remember - you will soon have to fly the wing on this lead, so give yourself a break! Now, just keep flying straight and level for around 5 minutes. When you think that, as a wingman, you will have had enough, just click on "Recorder" once again. Now the only thing on that menu that you can select will be "stop recording". This will bring up a "Save" menu, and give the recording the same name as you already gave the wingman flight, except substitute the word "Lead" for "Right wing". Having done this, you are ready for some fun! Now it's show time! End the flight you just recorded, and select the "right wing" flight. When that loads, you should be back on the right side of the runway. Double check to see that the AI traffic level is set to 100%, and then click on Recorder again. This time your selection will be "Play as Traffic". This will bring up a menu that should, hopefully, contain the lead flight you just recorded. Select that lead flight. You should be returned to your wingman cockpit, but now you have company on the runway - the lead Mooney! In a moment or so he'll start his roll, so release your brakes and get ready to rock and roll! Stay in the same relative position during the takeoff roll, and rotate when you see the lead Mooney rotate. When his gear comes up, raise yours. From here on out it's a matter of staying in the same position. For tips on how to do this, I refer you to my previous article "How to Fly in Formation", here on FlightSim.Com. The start of the rejoin - the tanker is off to the left, turning across our flight path 1000 feet above. (F-14 aircraft and panel by Steve Hinson and Ivan Kostic.) Now we have caught up with the tanker and are moving in for refueling. The join-up continues through a 180 degree turn. the refuelling pattern is a gigantic holding pattern. (Boeing KC-135T by Rok Dolenec.) You can already see the possibilities! Air refueling, for example, can be simulated in this fashion, although the airborne rejoin that that entails is a bit trickier to arrange. You must ensure that both aircraft are in the same airspace when the playback begins. It will be easier, of course, if you start the flight in the pre-contact position, about 1/4 mile aft in-trail and around 300 feet below the tanker. But real refueling involves a rejoin, in which the tanker heads toward the receiver on a reciprocal heading and makes a 180-degree turn to end up just ahead of the receiver around 1000 feet above. The receiver can then climb up to the pre-contact position. The timing of the 180-degree turn is the difficult part to program, but it can be done with a little experimentation. Give it a try! This would be very close to the refueling position. Recorder does not capture the boom position, unfortunately, at least not yet! The usual chase plane views still work, and the lead plane is visible. You can even record the lead aircraft doing a breakaway after refueling is complete. You can even program a dogfight, although there are other platforms such as Combat Flight Simulator that are better for that purpose. Someday someone will put together a welded group of Blue Angels F-18's or Thunderbird F-16's with a space for you in the slot position. (Although for reasons not yet understood, the Red Arrows formation will not play back in Recorder, probably because the 4-ship welded group entails some special programming that Recorder can't handle just yet.) You could even program the opposing solo routines with Recorder. It just takes a sense of timing and some experimentation. Of course, having done all this, you will have to learn to fly the wing or slot position well enough so that you can keep up. That, I can assure you, is more difficult than it looks! Formation is tough enough in a real airplane, and in MSFS there is a dearth of cues that makes it much more difficult to fly really close formation well. You will also find that the airplanes that are normally flown in close formation - the military fighters - are, if the flight modeling is accurate, very difficult to fly smoothly! After all, they weren't designed as airliners! So if you are thinking of recording the entire Thunderbird routine in an F-16, good luck! Let me know if you succeed! All in all Recorder has the potential to unlock a whole new aspect of flying in MSFS, something that previously was probably limited to multiplayer. Using Recorder, you can do it all yourself, and just as you like it! Good luck, and Happy Landings! Tony Vallillo avallillo@charter.net Download Matthias Neusinger's Recorder Module -
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