Tom's Blog Four

[Tom Goodrick]

After some searching, I found this link to the home of FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, the English magazine on aviation which is actually the oldest source of aviation info in the world. Presently, it has some interesting news on the F-35.

www.flightglobal.com/

[Tom Goodrick]

I found something everybody's probably heard of but you might want to know more about. Do you like to read while you fly? I did untiol my eyesight got worse and it was not so much fun reading paperbacks while flying. So I decided to get a Kindle, the electronic book reader by Amazon. It makes reading easy again because you can set the type size, font, words per line and line spacing to suit your needs. The pages are easy to read in most lighting where you'd read other books. (I haven't tried outdoors in the sun at high noon.) "Flipping pages" is easily done while holding the book one-handed (either hand).

Other companies sell Kindles (Best Buy for one) and there are other eBook readers. But Amazon probably has the best selection of eBooks. Not sure about compatibility of Amazon eBooks with other readers and the Amazon Kindle comes already registered to your account so you can order a book as soon as you get the device (and charge the battery a little).

The only warning is that the Kindle can easily drain your pocket book because there is such a wide variety of books so easily obtained. But there are solutions as I found this morning. You are sitting on your couch and you want a new book to read. You turn on the Kindle in WiFi mode and visit Amazon's Kindle shop. Most standard full-length books are available from $7.99 to $15.99. (I find it easily to use the PC to "Window shop" ahead of time. Search for the book you want on the Kindle and press BUY. Wait about 12 minutes and begin reading after you see the book title in your menu and turn off WiFi.

You can see where the drain comes to your plastic "pocket book". But the Amazon Kindle store has a "free" area which is almost free. I bought a short story by a big name author (Baldacci) for $3 and then found many old books (circa 1970-1980) for $0.79 to $0.99. For $2.77+4%tax I have 3 normal length books for next week. For some reason they charge me 4% on books with no explanation though I was not charged sales tax on the Kindle itself. There is no shipping charge or shipping hassel. The new book just appears in the memory of your Kindle. I have the normal Wifi type. If you do not have a Wifi setup, get the 3G Wifi which works by satelite ( cell phone) anywhere in the world (as far as I know).

BTW you can load MP3 files for background music. (I know where you can get those for free.)

Ain't this modern life style wunnerful?

[flaminghotsauce]

We bought a pair of Kindles on sale over the summer. We got the 3g/wireless, and that is just fantastic. I took two girls to their guitar lessons, and sat without any wireless available, and downloaded stuff. We're using them for our homeschooling too. Lots of literary classics available for free, including four that are specific to the curriculum we're using! Yea! They're very handy.

I bought my wife an Ipad last year for her birthday present, and THAT is awesome. It's a monster. It's so smooth, so fluid, it's like magic. I don't use it much because I like a real keyboard, but my wife uses it every day. We also have kid stuff on there like phonics programs, logic games, etc. so the little kids accidentally teach themselves how to read and stuff. Heh. 10 hour battery life works for us, too. It's making me want to get an Iphone to take to work with me. I could stream Pandora music live to my car radio!

Life is definitely wunnerful.

[Tom Goodrick]

One thing not clear is the tax situation with Amazon on books. They don't charge me sales tax on hardware. Alabama asks taxpayers to include a list of prices paid for items bought on the Internet. But on some ebooks Amazon has charged me a 4% tax and on others they have not. i expect to budget about $20 per month for books. That's 2 to 10 books. The first $0.99 book I read took two days of intense reading and was a great mystery.

[Tom Goodrick]

Back to Sim Flying (FS9), I have started doing more of it. I lost interest and essentially quit flying for a while. I had no new plane to test or new place to fly to, etc etc. I am generally more fatigued these days than years ago. After retirement in 1997, I used to get up each morning with anticipation of "unlimited" flying for the day. Of course a few "honeydo's" got in the way but not too many. But recently my flying has diminished. That is partly due to a reduced heart capacity after a couple of heart attacks. This makes it tough to stay awake on flights. Of course a change in my sim flight environment has not helped. I no longer fly at a desk that emulates a cockpit environment with rudder pedals on the floor.

Now I "fly" a laptop while slouched in reclining furniture. (Couch, love seat, chair all recline although I have been wearing them out.) I usually have the TV on nearby so I can watch various things on TV (movies, recorded shows, commercial DVD's of favorite series, or just listening to music.) Many flights are not completed because A: I fall asleep and overfly the destination and orbit aimlessly, or B: I become interested in something else and don't want to finish the flight.

I don't find any surprises in flying any more. The last "I wonder what happens if..." happened a long time ago. in FS9 I can navigate between any two points on the globe and have flown many places. I can land most suitable planes in most places with tricky approaches. I am not amused by working my way in a DC-3 between the numerous VOR's, NB's and intersections.

But I am getting back to flying at least short flights - no more polar loops! In past years during the holidays I do special flights and I look at statistics - how many hours flown in a year, most hours in one plane, etc. This year all I have for records is the Logbook.log that is automatically updated on most flights. I have not yet figured out how to install son Scott's Aircraft Usage Program that tracks hours in each plane.

Somehow I managed to fly a total of 273.5 hours since Oct 2010 when I installed FS9 on this laptop. in November of 2010 I made 44 flights although many were very short - just a circuit around the airport. I made 36 flights in January of 2011. Then the number of flights decreases. In November 2011 I made 2 short flights.

Evidently you guys have gotten a lot smarter these days because nobody has any questions these days. Of course, most of you are flying FSX while I still fly only FS9 and cannot answer any questions regarding FSX.

I intend to fly more frequently and to explore more of the geography and the technology within FS9. Some people strongly doubt the usefulness of FS as a teaching/learning tool. I agree there are conditions under which it can be terribly misleading. I have worked hard to verify the factual accuracy of many aspects of this sim so that, with proper insertion of aircraft parameters, it will teach us valid information about flying. You'll find in many parts of this Forum my notes on many aircraft and on many aspects of flying.

It would be nice to see some more discussion on this Forum. A number of people glance at the Forum every day with no comment. Between this BLOG area and all the other topics and categories we cover, there must be some place to put a comment or two as you pass by. I'll try to do the same.

In recent flights I have been checking out jets, starting with the Lear 45 that I converted to a 45XR for more range and better takeoffs on hot days.

[skyknight]

Tom. glad to hear that you're back into the swing of things with FS9. Your active partipation has been greatly missed. I, like you, am committed to FS9.

How about the items below (just to name a few) that you might work on for us:

1. providing a good FD and panel upgrade for the Carenado C185 Bush plane?

2. short hops for bush or caribbean flights.

3. an FD upgrade for Mike Stone's Lear 35.

4. some tips or tweaks to make FS9 run better.

5. your preferences for good add-on scenery

6. your preferences for good add-on airplanes.

You're an fs guru and we apreciate all that you do for the fs community.

Hope you have a very, merry Christmas and a great New Year.

Skyknight

[Ed Burke]

You are spot on Tom, we look, read, and pass along without adding any comment. I am as guilty as the next and I do appreciate the work you put in on behalf of the simming community. I will attempt to add some intelligent comment, repeat intelligent, but if it fails me on the moment rest assured that your work does not go unnoticed. keep up the good work, Ed

[Tom Goodrick]

To send me an email, just click on the small icon under my photo. Then I can send files by return email. I have one for Mike Stone's Lear 35. It is a very nice aircraft. I would probably do poorly making a panel for a bush aircraft. I have one I can send that is a modification of the C182 panel that has a big GPS Map in the middle of the panel. I find that is the most help on any panel but especially on a bush panel where you would want to navigate by direct use of the GPS relief map. I have two special panels for the C182. One just has the map and keeps the round gauges for flight data. The other replaces the round gauges by an EFIS or glass panel like the Learjet has. I would think for a bush plane the round gauges would be preferred. The glass panels are good if you do a lot of IFR.

To make FS9 run better, the main thing you need is plenty of RAM. Other things some people say you need are not as helpful as you might think - like a big video card with lots of RAM on board. This computer is a Toshiba Laptop that sold in Best Buy a couple years ago for $399 on a Black Friday special. It remains unmodified. It has an ATI graphics card (good name) but zero on-board RAM. It shares video RAM with general RAM. It has 2G RAM. It flies FS9 with near perfect smoothness. I saw just a little hesitation in Paris which is notorious for chunky graphics. But it is excellent. I did a normal installation of FS9 and made no modifications. It flies through broken clouds very well. IMC approaches are truly blind.

Buying a dedicated FS laptop could be your cheapest solution. I am amazed at what this thing does - railroad sim, digital music recording and processing where a high-res song can be 90 MB. My old main computer with its lofty tower sits collecting dust while I do everything on this laptop. (Hint: get a wireless optical mouse and cover up the touch pad for stress-free input.)

I do not use any add-on scenery. The default scenery seems fine with me. In the US I have checked it against Sectional charts in many parts of the Country and have found it very accurate. I suspect much add-on scenery simply exaggerates the gradients. That is bad if it raises the high points above the actual peak elevations.

I am the wrong one to ask about addon aircraft because I have never downloaded an FD file that could not be improved. That includes some of mine done a few years earlier. I used to write programs at work. I never finished one because I could always find ways to improve them at each use. I can send some FD files if you have a suitable folder. My FD files generally involve both the aircraft.cfg file and the [name].air file. On this Forum we have discussed some FD files as we developed them. Ask a question here and we can work out an answer in most cases. Many people benefit from a discussion within the Forum.

One of the worst faults we all have in using this sim, is that we jet too many aircraft. The best thing to do is to get one good representative of each type and then build a warehouse hangar where all the rest of the aircraft get stored. Fly the same plane for weeks as you would in real life. Learn its capabilities and limitations.

[Allen Peterson]

Hi Tom,
A couple of weeks ago I heard about Sport Air Racing, see the link below.
I decided to see if I could set up a course and fly it with several different planes.
The course is as follows:
KCOE to LEENY to ID21 to WN54 to WN92 to 03WA to 72S to 73S to IDB to IDA to ID13 to ID43 to ID06 to ID22 to ID34 to S62 (2ID4 in FSX).
Create a flight plan from KCOE to S62, then move the red flight path to add each of the waypoints.
I fly the course with the weather set to COLD FRONTs and navigate with the GPS map using the BRG window for the heading to fly and the TRK to stay on course. The auto pilot is OFF.
Take off from KCOE and fly to the first waypoint, LEENY. As you approach Leeny be ready to hit the P (pause) key. When the red course line changes to the next waypoint hit the P key and note the time on your FTime gauge. This is your start time.
Now restart the sim and turn to the heading as shown in the BRG window and fly to the next waypoint. Wait until the red course line changes to the next waypoint then turn to the new heading as shown in the BRG window. Continue overflying each waypoint until you get to the last one. As you approach Silverwood (S62) be ready to hit the P key. When the red course line changes to white hit the P key and record the FTime. This is your stop time. Subtract the start time from the stop time to get your course time. The time course is 139.2 nm (145.7 minus the distance fron KCOE to LEENY) and only takes an hour or so.
I fly about 1500' agl - I use your RadAlt gauge - at full throttle, trying not to exceed Vne and keeping the CHT and Oil Temp out of the red.
Flying in Cold Fronts gives some wind, a little turbulence and some low clouds just to keep thing interesting.
So far I've flown the course in the 182S, the SR-22T and the Velocity.
Give it a try, it's fun.


sportairrace.org/index.html

[Ed Burke]

Allen you are into FSX, Tom is not so he will have to enter co-ords for the waypoints, a PITA. Sounds like a bit of fun though. I can point any one interested in the direction of entering points in FS9 plans. Ed

[Allen Peterson]

Hi Ed,
Yeah, I'm into FSX, but I also still fly in FS9. I purposely picked airports in FS9 for Tom or anyone still in FS9. If someone wants to use FSX the airports are the same except for Silverwood which is 2ID4.

[Ed Burke]

Sorry Allen, I was leaping ahead to where you can drag the line to anywhere in FSX. Of course that's no necessary. I can only claim senility, hangs head. Ed

[Allen Peterson]

No head hanging necessary, Ed. We all have our senior moments.

[Allan_Lowson]

I loaded up FSX in the last few months, but have mostly been using it to try to make sure that the airport listings for features are not too far out of whack between the two sims.

My first impressions were not too favourable in terms of an advance on FS9, but my FS9 setup is a long way from the original default in terms of ground textures, mesh and improved airports.

So the sim did not seem that much of a step-up or even as good in some respects, and the loss of decent 2D panels grates still.

I'm not a great fan of some VCs; they are too much like flying in a wide angle goldfish bowl, the "head latency" can make me queasy, or take so long to pan round and check instruments that I make contact with terra firma even more frequently than usual.

So, while I expect to continue using FS9 for most flying, I am trying to work up some more enthusiasm for X and think I need to follow Tom's suggestion to keep the number of types flown and loaded in the sim more under control than my FS9 hangar. For classical airliners, Jens Kristensen's are weening me on to the VC. So I have a couple of those installed.

One of the reasons for setting up hoplists alongside the feature airline routes was to provide shorter flights that could be done in less time in more types of aircraft. Perhaps I should be making more use of them myself!

[Ed Burke]

I too am finding it difficult to break away from FS9. I have made several serious attempts but I get a bit irrational about trying to see where I am going and being able to scan the panel at the same time. I, like you Allan, prefer the 2D panel and when I combine that loss with the mass of really good add-ons I have accumulated for FS9 I forgo the better graphics (?) of X and settle down with ol' trusty 9. Comfortable describes it well.