TOM'S BLOG THREE

[Tom Goodrick]

Yesterday was one of those days that suddenly becomes a litle darker than usual. I was preparing to post an article on the Coffin Corner for the LJ45. I had run a stall test and then took the aircraft on a normal climb that extended to an abnormal FL450 where it stalled as I was trying to transition to level flight. But I got a phone call that made me quit and go downstairs and pour a stiff drink of Scotch.

We were due to take a cat and a dog to the vets for routine vacsinations and routine blood test. I was planning on doing it with the wife when son Craig stopped by and voilunteered. I styed home where I was due to "cat-sit' for our rowdy boys (cats) later in the afternoon. The call I got was to say the cat died of a heart attack during the ride.

The cat was "Mama Kitty," the two-year-old mother of our four one-year-old black cats. She had been a stray for a few weeks and then brought her five kittens into our garge last year (June '09). We were able to give one kitten away - a gray one. But the four all-black kittens could not be given away. Even the "Humane Society" would not take them. They were always "full". We already had the three boy kitties we literally took out of the mouths of the dogs next door. In July of '09 it got too hot in our garage for the mother and kittens so we moved them into our laundry room (A/C) where they have been ever since.

Alex, Buddy and Charley have lived upstairs in what used to be my music room and also serves as a guest bedroom. (They bunk with me when we have guests. That gets wild. Charley gives me chest messages with claws partially exposed and Buddy likes to pounce on my feet when they move under the blanket.) So Danny, Elloise, Freddy, George and Mama Kitty have lived in our laundry room where they enjoy helping my wife do laundry.

But Mama's gone now. Wonder if I had driven her if it would have made a difference. I always use strong A/C and soft music. (It was 93F.) It did not dawn on me until later that the last time she went to this vet, they had spayed her. She probably had a bad memory of that. This vet is one we chose recently because the whole staff is very good, reflecting the quality of the main vet. But it requires a 25 minute drive through the center of Huntsville and over the 2000 ft Monte Sano. the drive isn't bad but there are a variety of noises including road construction.

She was a good cat who just wanted a few pats on the head now and then. So it goes.

[Tom Goodrick]

I have been off line for several days due to a telephone problem. That seems to have been fixed. I am amazed that very little has changed. It must be close to hybernation time. Or maybe everybody's flying DC-3's. I wont do that this year. I always use GPS and that is frowned upon in both that and the GAAR.

I am proceding to have fun flying various aircraft - and even the Bell helicopter - on my laptop in FS2002.

[Tom Goodrick]

My web site will close during the last week of October.

I am switching to a high speed internet through my cable company. My email address will also change. When I get the new address, I'll correct the one on this site.

AT&T screwed up my phone service again so I could not get on line. In fact as it was getting gradually noisier, I wrote an entry to the saxontheweb forum that must have contained some garbage. They though I was trying to hack their system and threw me off! (That is a forum for sax player exchange info on horns, mouthpieces, etc.) AT&T sent a repairman out yesterday. By the time he arrived the problem had cleared again. It has turned on and off twice in the past week. Nuts to them.

With this change to a faster Internet, I save $30 a month. But I don't get a free web site. This change takes place next week.


Oh ,yes, the big news today is I got a nice pair of Chinese suspenders for only $20. I have been wearing suspenders for 25+ years to avoid cutting off circulation to my stomach with a tight belt. But the local stores have quit selling the kind that button in place. So I tried buying a pair from Amazon.com. They had fancy ones but I just chose a simple pair of "work" suspenders for $18. (I did see one pair in a local store for $50 the other day.) At the same time I ordered some DVD's. Those came in 3 days. The suspenders took 7 days. They came from Chen Li. The shipping notice read direct from Shanghai China to my Madison AL address. They were shipped via some combination of China Post and the US Postal Service. They seem fine. We'll see how long the elastic lasts.

It is new world.

[Tom Goodrick]

It appears I may lose the ability to put this old Dell desktop On Line when the new system is set up a week from today. It will be a WiFi system and many people doubt I'll be able to get an Ethernet card that this old thing with Win98 can run. But I have a couple leads on places that will sell me such a card so I will try those options. But I like to proceed with positive steps and that means I will run FS9 on the laptop. (It is in fact already running and looking good.) I will be transferring aircraft files from the Dell to the laptop. The best way to do that is to use my web site. I will clear off all the present aircraft because the files are a little old and the panels may not show properly. I have more room on that site than before so I will temporarily post fully up-to-date aircraft there that I will download to my laptop. You are welcome to monitor the site and download any you see that seem interesting. Today, for example, I will post a Aero Commander Shrike and a 560, a Beech 36 that looks great but has poor window views, a Boeing 787 with animated ground support, a Merlin 300 turboprop, and a Commander 690B turboprop. These all had good FD the last time I flew them. Oh yes: Boeing Blended Wing transport, Airbus 680 and a great T-38 Talon.

Can't say how long they will be up there - a few days at least.

I have been verysurprised at the performance of this little bottom-of-the-line $400 Toshiba Laptop running FS9. I first removed FS2002 after saving those aircraft, some of which I do not have in FS9. Then I installed FS9 with just one hitch. It called for me to load Disk 4 and i founf the pocket for Disk 4 EMPTY! Then I remembered that we had to keep that disk in the drive to run FS9 until we got the nice little fix for that problem. But that first installation was 7 years ago! I could not remember what I did with that disk when I got the fix. A methodical search turned up the disk in a Jewel case at the bottom of my program disk stack. (Those are disks I though I'd use frequently but have not touched in years. Used the disk and FS9 loaded completely and properly.

The display was set by MS at 800x640x32 but I chencged it to 1280x800x32 while flying and saw no degradation in performance. I have clioud density on high and the action sliders as high as I want them (about 25%). Resolution is great and all the gauges are crystal clear----.Astounding!

[flaminghotsauce]

Tom, your machine may still work if it has an ethernet port. Wireless modems still have holes for LAN cables. Are you going to a cable internet provider? I sure hope so, you'll love it. Our cable can go faster than the 5.0 MB that we're paying for, but what it does now is phenomenal. It's not unusual for me to be downloading a file, while my wife is streaming music (Pandora), my son is watching a YouTube video, and the girls are playing games on Facebook, all simultaneously. I love my internet!

.

[Tom Goodrick]

My main concern for the Dell is to be able to send data to the laptop. For that I can easily carry the laptop to within a 4-6 ft cable distance of the Dell.

I don't understand the terminology here. I thought an Ethernet card gave you WiFi with a little wire antenna. I tried buying one today from a site - "Newegg" - recommended by son Scott. But the purchase procedure got all messed up. Maybe my Dell sent some more spurious data.

I did not get to do anything with the web site today. I had a couple of other "fires to put out." The cable company messed up by removing two sets of movie channels that I wanted to keep, and by giving me two poor sets of movie channels that I didn't want. I asked to keep the TV exactly as it was. They fixed it by adding the two good sets back. My wife is after me because she doesn't want us to pay for those extra channels.

I got RW today and it came in very fast using the laptop instead of the Dell. But I had forgotten to check that I want winds aloft. I think I am really going to like the fast initernet with WiFi for that. I can get fresh weather for every leg of a flight.

Anyone know where Vista puts the fs9.cfg file? I might want to change a couple of things that I have gotten used to doing in a certain way.

The laptop running FS2002 never got rid of a few strange little problems like the preference for the Full Window View rather than a view of the complete window with a line of options always in view along the top. With FS9 I see that same thing. It only works fine with no snags when I have set Full Screen View. But I have been able to turn on the small V I like to use and to set a "fixed" spot plane view.

I was getting tired of some of the shortcomings of FS2002: The inability to file a flight plan while flying; the simple black screen of the map view with only airport and navaid codes shown. Seeing the relief map with shoreline geography as you fly and get ready for an approach helps tremendously. Also it is great to be able to enter a passenger, cargo and fuel loading without having to edit the aircraft.cfg file!

[flaminghotsauce]

I forget off the top of my head where the FS9.cfg is located, but it's easy to find. When you click the START button, there's a search bar right there. The search has to include hidden folders. I think. But it will show up, then you note where it is located in the menu bar at the top of the window. Or make a shortcut and put it on the desktop.

The ethernet card is the card that allows LAN cables to be plugged into it, or wireless if it's a wireless card. Just being "ethernet" doesn't mean "wireless" although if you are looking at a wireless, yeah. Those will have the little antennae hanging out the back. I used to use one, but with the desktop which doesn't move, I use the LAN cable because it's faster than the wireless G will download. All our laptops are wireless so they can move, but the download speed is limited to the router wireless speed and the individual wireless receiver cards' capabilities. A wireless A or B card will receive from a G or N router, but not as fast. The cable is the best option for a desktop. My current desktop has wireless built in, but I shut it off each boot-up. It gets about three out of five bars of reception, but the cable screams all the time.

If you are moving files from one computer to another, they don't HAVE to be communicating directly to one another. My wife and I email folders and links to each other constantly. With high speed wireless, it's much easier and much less an issue than it used to be. Both machines can upload and download very quickly.

[Tom Goodrick]

Thanks very much for the info. That clarifies some things. I had hoped the router could be located up here on the second floor near the Dell computer. Then I would plug directly into it. But as I understand it at the moment, it has to be near my digital decoder box which is on the first floor. This room whith the Dell in it has only basic cable for the bird to watch, not digital cable. (The bird is now watching Kansas State beat the stuffing out of Kansas. During the day he watches PBS children's programming. He has the intellect of a 2-year-old. He's 30 uears old.)

I have been using the email-to-yourself trick but that only works if both computers connect to the Net.

[Tom Goodrick]

On FS9 on my laptop, I have been seeing strange lights in the sky! I always fly with the small V on the windshield showing the axis. Recently on several occasions the red V turns into red letters giving the names of some airplanes in my hangar and a few odd numbers. These images start in the center of the screen, near where the V would be, and then move off-center as I turn as though fixed to the sky. This happens only sometimes but with just about any aircraft I have flown from the Piper Cub to the Beech B350.

My son Scott tells me he streams movies from NetFlix to his Nintendo Wii via WiFi. So the WiFi transmission rate can't be too bad in his case. He tells me the cable modem can go in any room, including my computer den. So This old Dell will be connected by cable to the router using a normal Ethernet card for which I have seen drivers for the Win98 OS.

I know that my email address will change. But I am not sure what it will be. I will put the new one on this Forum so you can just click on the mail icon.

[Chris Ross]

Tom with FS9 running goto "options/settings/traffic" and tick or untick whatever you want to see or not see
Chris

[Tom Goodrick]

Don't know why you thought I didn't know that. I seldom run with traffic. But I have at times when I wanted to use ATC. I seldom do because they send me off chasing wild geese, require continual frequency changes, and keep telling my to look behind me for traffic. How does a guy in a station 150 nm away (obviously going through several repeaters) know what my altimeter setting should be?

Today I changed my web site. For awhile I managed to screw it up so bad I couldn't find it. But now there are 6 aircraft up there for downloading. They are complete aircraft files. You should be able to just download them and plug them in. The will run the way they ran for me the last time I ran them or tinkered with them.

They are Learjet 35 by Stone, Beech Queen Air, Beech A36, Fairchild/Merlin 300, Beech C90B and Rockwell Commander 690B (turboprop). All turboprops except for the Lear. They all have significantly enhanced FD from what I got originally. Most do not have fancy insides though the Lear and the Queen have nice insides with interior lighting I added. You can fly the 690B with either a slim file or a fancy file with inside detail - whatever your computer can handle.

I have virtually no limit on the amount of junk I can put on that site now. I will probably add some more without erasing any.

I wanted to post the AC560 but at 14 MB it crashed during uploading. I may try it on a better day or may wait until I have the fast system.

It now looks like this Dell, with a clean interior and all fans turning, will be the main upload/download machine since it will probably be wired to the router.

[Tom Goodrick]

OK, Chris, I see what you mean't to tell me: Those red letters and digits in the sky were tags for traffic. Wow. In all the years I have been flying FS9, I never turned those on before. They were left ON by default after loading FS9 on the laptop. I had turned them all off shortly after installing FS9 seven years ago. When I wanted traffic, I just checked the airline and ga boxes and left the others blank. Thanks for enlightening me. Now those boxes are all blank again.

While flying the Merlin this morning, I discovered it was still messed up from some experimentation I had done after working with Lou on his DHC-6. To fly that one and perhaps a few others, you will have to reset beta min (flight) to 6 and min beta on ground to 4.

I was trying to set up a "beta mode". I got one and it worked great. But it could not generate enough thrust to take off. I put the change on several aircraft and then forgot to clear it from all aircraft when I found it wouldbn't allow normal flight!

[Chris Ross]

I couldn't think of any thing else it could have been. I was a little surprised you hadn't figured it out, and realized maybe you had never turned them on or off in your previouse set up. I wonder what other little surprises await you in your new setup. Sorry my \message was so brief and vague.
By the way I notice there are two different Tom Goodrick DC3 FD's. One on your website and one in the DC3 Airways download.Which one do you recomend? I have been using the one on your website in the Cal Classic DC3 which is different to the microsoft version(only way I can use their paint jobs) but the CG is out It needs 13 degrees of trim to take off

[Tom Goodrick]

I re-examined those FD a year ago. The one in my Dell DC-3 (the one I flew last year is dated Dec 09. That is probably the same one that DCA is passing out because I did it in consultation with Charlie Woods, a former real DC-3 pilot. He liked it mainly because it was easier to stick the wheels on the runway. I also paid more attention to carrying cargo last year when I worked on them. And I just downloaded the old FD from my site for my laptop.

Just to be sure you get the good stuff, I'll email the aircraft.cfg file dated 12/22/09that I felw most recently.

[Tom Goodrick]

OK. I am sending this via my new internet connection from my old Dell computer. It is working well. All the hardware is set up but I have not yet set up the router to talk with my laptop by WiFi.

My internet site and my old email have been deactivated.

My new email address will be set in the base data of this Forum in a minute.

The new connection is not lightning speed but is a heck of a lot better than what I had. Using my laptop (as connected by wire to the router for programming the router) I was able to stream music from my soundclick site. That's all the speed I wanted. I could not do that before. Now I will be able to check each song after it is uploaded to be sure the file is not garbled as a few have been in the past.

Well, System Man, here is a strange one. I changed the my listed email address. i got a message saying an email was being sent to that address with a code that would have to be entered the next time I got on the Forum.

I had to go to my ISP and get the particulars for hooking up in software. (Intended to anyway.) got it finally and verified.

Now what do I do with it? I was able to get back on twice with my regular password. Oh well, I have it if I need it!