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Post by Travis on Jun 29, 2021 23:05:32 GMT -5
Today was a crazy day, so no work whatsoever. Tomorrow starts a light cool-down so that's good, but there's a few appointments to keep. Late day looks good.
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Post by alaskanflyboy on Jan 5, 2023 19:22:46 GMT -5
Otherwise I had a great, but fatiguing, time last weekend with only a minor flameout in moderate turbulence coming into Phoenix over the mountains. I was impressed to not have any software glitches in P3D, Activesky, GSX, SimACARS, FSCaptain, vPilot, the PMDG NGX (which two flights before this event CTD on me when I attempted to enter a revised route ), UGCX, or the REX Skyforce and Environment Force programs. That is an impressive orchestral coming together of various add-ons! (Hat tip to your wife for graciously permitting you the time.) I'm most curious on how you use ActiveSky and the REX "Forces" together. I have ActiveSky as my WX program, but I use REX Texture Direct, Soft Clouds, and Airport Textures. So for me they work together.... REX draws/paints what ActiveSky says should be there.I don't fly multi-leg enough (although I'd like to) but when I do, the only problems I sometimes have is with my ISG gauges and my Multi Crew Experience. From time to time, one or the other want to be cranky in trying to properly reinitialize and switch to a second flight, but I've paused my simulator and been patient long enough to clear things out and restart things so everything works most of the time. (Just not all of the time though, dadgummit.) Best, Sorry, I just noticed this in my notifications. I run Active Sky for real-time weather, REX Sky Force for cloud generation based on the simulator weather input from Active Sky, and Environment Force for controlling lighting, waves, fog depiction and the like. So the same as you're doing with the other REX products. Fortunately, the PMDG 737, FS2Crew, and FS Captain are adept at just cycling through turnarounds. FS2Crew can be configured to run the extra procedures for the first flight of the day, then can be set to acknowledge the last sector of the day, and whether it's a crew change on a given flight.
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Post by alaskanflyboy on Feb 19, 2023 21:04:08 GMT -5
Hi John, Travis will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that the current HOT is determined as the minimum of de-icing fluids that are applied. Would you like to model that one has to return to the stand to only get one fluid re-applied then? The idea of different FBO fluids is very interesting, in particular for economic aspects. Cheers, Peter Unless just Type I was applied, it's usual to reapply both after the HOT expires. Type I is considered a de-icer and applied hot (most have it heated around 180°F) while the others are considered anti-ice. Type I followed by Type IV is common in the US for aircraft that exceed 100 knots on take-off roll. Smaller aircraft typically just get Type I which has a very limited HOT. Type III is available for most small aircraft to use, but its availability is rare in the US since most small aircraft lack FIKI (Flight Into Known Icing certification). Also, the service costs more than most small aircraft owners and operators like to spend, and the fluids have shelf-lives around 3 years. It's usually better to just hangar small aircraft for that reason. We charged around $15 per gallon for Type I and $25 per gallon for Type IV when I was working line. 15-20 gallons is typical for most aircraft the size of a citation. A Baron or Bonanza might have de-icer boots or hot wings, but they don't like spending several hundred dollars to get sprayed off. HOT times are typically the maximum time allowed between the start of the last application and the take-off. So if the typical routine of Type I and Type IV is applied, the HOT starts the second they begin spraying the Type IV. Once that happens, the HOT for Type I is no longer considered as it's considered washed by the Type IV. This is where different brands come in to play. If I'm being sprayed with Kilfrost ABC-S Plus and it's lightly snowing at 26°F, I have a HOT of 3:00. If instead Inland Technologies Eco-Shield was applied in the same conditions, I have a HOT of 2:05 - 2:30. Both are Type IV fluids. Hi John, Thank you so much for your effort! We would welcome any and all ideas that we could turn into "simple behavior models" to be coded! I have only a short time left to write now - the lunch bell just rang out - but I will respond in full later. The original HOT table came from the 2013-2014 FAA tables (and possibly cross-checked with data from Transport Canada). They included "Brands" but they also included "Generic (SAE)" values which we took for our ACME Brand Fluids. The HOT table itself could not support multiple brands, but I've had a set of ideas on notepaper which I could check with when I return home (before Thanksgiving). Regards, While playing around with GSX in P3D tonight, I noticed they quietly added the ability to create remote deice areas (I say quietly as I was only aware that GSX Pro for MSFS2020 was given the feature). This both brought up a question on whether FSCaptain will integrate the GSX native deicing system into the DDF system, and reminded me of this HOT Table discussion. I realized tonight that restructuring the HOT.cfg wouldn't be necessary as much as allowing for multiple HOT.cfgs as we've discussed for seasonal airline schedules (i.e. HOT-KilfrostABCS.cfg and HOT-InlandTechnologiesEco-Shield.cfg).
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Post by Travis on Feb 20, 2023 19:33:02 GMT -5
Hi John, Give me some time to think on this. How do you think the determination of "use Kilfrost here," versus "use Eco-Shield here," versus "use generic here" would be determined? I have a thought... but I'd like to know what you're thinking of first. Best regards,
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Post by alaskanflyboy on Feb 20, 2023 19:52:41 GMT -5
Hi John, Give me some time to think on this. How do you think the determination of "use Kilfrost here," versus "use Eco-Shield here," versus "use generic here" would be determined? I have a thought... but I'd like to know what you're thinking of first. Best regards, The more I think about it, the easiest may be to just add parameters to deice.cfg such as 1A, 1B, 1C, 2A, 2B, 2C, etc. Then name the new CFGs HOT1A.cfg, HOT1B.cfg, etc. Then, add an optional header to name the chemical in the .cfg files. This would allow the stock ACME fluids to remain unchanged. Then if they want one airport to specific brands, they just have to add the extras to the list.
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Post by Travis on Feb 21, 2023 18:05:53 GMT -5
My idea was to have a new HOT file for each brand, e.g., "HOT_Kilfrost.cfg" or "Hot_Eco-Shield.cfg". They would only contain the values for the Types each brand would support. I'm guessing that not each brand has all four types... but I don't know off the top of my head. They would also support a new entry "ABBR" to denote an abbreviation for the brand, such as (hypothetically)... ABBR=KF... for "Kilfrost". Then "deice.cfg" could accept a new parameter for each airport, such as (hypothetically again): KMSP=1,3,4,M,A,C,KilfrostSo loading at KMSP would take the generic HOT times... but also any entries from the "HOT_Kilfrost.cfg".
We may need to also add a "PRICE" entry so those using Economic Mode could judge the cost differences....
----- I'm a little queasy in using trademarked names, so anyone reading this can just write this off as frivolous conjecture. LOL Best,
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Post by alaskanflyboy on Feb 24, 2023 10:21:37 GMT -5
My idea was to have a new HOT file for each brand, e.g., "HOT_Kilfrost.cfg" or "Hot_Eco-Shield.cfg". They would only contain the values for the Types each brand would support. I'm guessing that not each brand has all four types... but I don't know off the top of my head. They would also support a new entry "ABBR" to denote an abbreviation for the brand, such as (hypothetically)... ABBR=KF... for "Kilfrost". Then "deice.cfg" could accept a new parameter for each airport, such as (hypothetically again): KMSP=1,3,4,M,A,C,KilfrostSo loading at KMSP would take the generic HOT times... but also any entries from the "HOT_Kilfrost.cfg".
We may need to also add a "PRICE" entry so those using Economic Mode could judge the cost differences....
----- I'm a little queasy in using trademarked names, so anyone reading this can just write this off as frivolous conjecture. LOL Best, That may work. Though brands may have more than one product of the same type, which is why product name would mean more than brand. As far as feeling queasy using brand names, you leave it up to the captains to customize.
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Post by Travis on Feb 27, 2023 18:30:22 GMT -5
I believe I see the need for your "abstract names"!
I do need to nail down the items that must be added for 1.8.4 - which will be highly "runway aware" - so I'm going to push this off for a while since I need to work on the READMEs and other docs after I have a successful code freeze. This may be added in a late 1.8.4 build, or it may be punted to 1.8.5. Northern Hemispheric deicing isn't as easy to calendar-ize as it used to be....
Best,
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Post by alaskanflyboy on Mar 3, 2023 21:10:32 GMT -5
I believe I see the need for your "abstract names"! I do need to nail down the items that must be added for 1.8.4 - which will be highly "runway aware" - so I'm going to push this off for a while since I need to work on the READMEs and other docs after I have a successful code freeze. This may be added in a late 1.8.4 build, or it may be punted to 1.8.5. Northern Hemispheric deicing isn't as easy to calendar-ize as it used to be.... Best, No worries. Hopefully in another month, de-ice won't be necessary for a few months world-wide.
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Post by peter on Mar 4, 2023 4:45:12 GMT -5
No worries. Hopefully in another month, de-ice won't be necessary for a few months world-wide. You're obviously not flying much over Canada
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Post by alaskanflyboy on Mar 12, 2023 10:29:08 GMT -5
No worries. Hopefully in another month, de-ice won't be necessary for a few months world-wide. You're obviously not flying much over Canada Nope. Midcontinent hits CYEG, CYUL, CYVR, CYWG, CYYC, and CYYZ. Edmonton is about as far north as Midcontinent Airlines goes.
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Post by Travis on Mar 23, 2023 0:40:56 GMT -5
In the past few months there's been some local mountain-top snow, but the winds and the rain have been some degrees-of-awesome from storm to storm. We've had twelve "atmospheric rivers" since last December, and yesterday we had a "bomb cyclone" erupt just offshore.
I believe that the "runway awareness" of 1.8.4 will help in DDF assignments, but my local weather events have me wanting to come up with new things for winds and precip....
Best,
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