Air hauler

[Travis]

Hi there,

Yes it is possible to mix the two, but it's been well over six months since I've flown AH - so I may have forgotten a trick or two. And with a few newer versions of FS Captain since then, some other things may have changed.

First off, there didn't seem to be a way to force a mixture of "FS Captain pax & cargo" along with "Air Hauler cargo." So since the ethos behind AH was to make money by delivering cargo, I chose to let AH call the shots on everything I did - my a/c, my cargo, my fuel, etc. Then when I was on the ramp ready to start up, I'd call up the FS Captain FCOM and set up a "Ferry" flight from where I was to whence I was headed.

I may have turned off FS Captain failures by setting full reliability or some such too. (IIRC, AH needs to control every thing or it assumes one is cheating.)

Likewise I think I had to turn off autofueling in FS Captain and even override any fuel or load warnings in the FCOM.

Then when I was ready to pushback, I'd "commit" my FS Captain ferry flight and set off.

It should equally be possible to use the FS Captain Administrator to set up a Ferry flight ahead of time too. AAMOF, that's what I'd do if I were to mix the two again. I'm very accustomed to generating my routes using EFB to get a weather lookahead, then import the flight plan into the Administrator (and to refetch the WX there too) to get better ETEs. (Only one not-on-time flight in my current career.)

My never-used plans would have had me - in case of an in-flight AH failure that would have led to an immediate landing - to have declared an FS Captain emergency. If that didn't work well, then I would have simply deleted the failed FS Captain flight afterwards and tried harder next time.

Now it may be possible to reverse things - set up an FS Captain pax/cargo flight and run AH in "positioning flight" mode, but I never explored that aspect.

[petrsurf]

Many thanks will try it

[jkawai]

I've been using FSC fine on its own, and I also have Air Hauler (1) (FS9), and was using that fine independently. Then I mixed the two, and since then everything has started to go wrong and I'm curious to know what kind of data FSC writes as since things started to go awry I have tried every installation combination possible and nothing is fixing the problem.

So the problem originally arose flying a default Cessna Caravan with FSC and AH running. As you say Travis, I let AH do all the fuel and cargo loading. I did my first flight fine but then had to stop to refuel. I landed, and when I went to takeoff, FS crashed and closed shortly after takeoff.

I then tried flying my Flight1 ATR out of EGCD and it did it on this too, crashed. I tried it without running ActiveSkyV in the background, tried it without running FSNav, tried it with just AH, tried it with just FSC. No matter what I did, it crashed, between about 10-60 seconds after takeoff.

I changed airport to EGGP and the problem went away. I flew to EGPF in the ATR, no problem. I took off from EGPF, and bam, it crashed again.

I've tried running without either AH or FSC and it crashes. I've tried reinstalling the ATR, didn't fix anything. Flying my AFG Beechcraft King Air however, it doesn't crash. Tried uninstalling FSCaptain and just running AH; still crashes. When I uninstall AH however, it runs fine (with or without FSCaptain). So this would make one think AH is the problem. However, AH ran fine until I ran it in conjunction with FSC. Which leads to the question, does FSC permanently alter files associated with certain aircraft so that even if FSC isn't running, these files still conflict with AH?

I've upgraded FSUIPC from 3.47 to 3.99, that did nothing. Tried logging through FSUIPC, all I can get it to do is log input data from myself.

Again this crashing has only so far happened with my Flight1 ATR and the default Cessna Caravan. I have no idea whether it's going to do it with my PMDG 737, Level D 767 or CS 757 yet (because I can't afford them on AH!)

Can you think of anything that FSC could have written permanently (that would still be there after a deinstallation of FSC) that may be conflicting with AH? Remember the crashing only happens shortly after takeoff, which is really weird.

Appreciate any light you may be able to shed on this..

EDIT: I am aware actually that the ACARS installation remains after FSC is uninstalled, but even undoing this and reverting to the original panel.cfg doesn't fix the problem (although it DID make autoloading from AH a lot quicker and easier. Beforehand, AH would ask to relocate and load the ATR. FS would cough up an error saying that another flight plan is being attempted at being opened; I'd click 'ok' and the aircraft would not reposition to where AH said it would. I would also have to go back to the load screen on AH and ask it to load again; at which point it would say 'the ATR has 60 load stations, please load manually!' then the Payload window would open in FS, I'd have to click ok three times before it would go away, and sometimes it would load the cargo and fuel, sometimes just the cargo; if the latter I'd have to repeat the last process. Without the ACARS however, NONE of this happens. But it still crashes on takeoff). 

Just sent an email with logs

[Travis]

Hi, sorry for the delay in answering. (It's been a busy week with a non-FS job and with supporting AivlaSoft....)

For your big question - no we do not change any existing files with the exception of the panel.cfg file if we're asked to install the FCDU gauge.

If anyone wants to uninstall FSCaptain, just delete the \FSCaptain\ folder... the FCDU and FCOM gauges in the \Gauges\ folder... (and for FS9 users) the FSCaptain.dll file in the \Modules\ folder.

All panel.cfg files that were 'touched' when an FCDU was installed would need to have the gauge uninstalled only if the panel window needed freeing. (A panel window that asks to load the FCDU when there is no FCDU would load... nothing.)

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With that said, I've glanced at your logs and I've seen a recent flight where you took off, landed, looked for new flights, then after taking off again... the log stops.

I'm not certain if we are the cause of that or not. Nothing that I've seen points to us, but we need to have Dutch take a look at this... and he's nearly incommunicado this week. (He did discover and correct a 'multi-leg flight CTD' last week but I don't know if it's related to your original crash.)

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It reads as if you've done good work in trying to eliminate possible problems, but one thing I haven't seen in your description is mention of the 'default flight.'

Now it's been years since I was 'elbows deep' in FS9. I've been in FSX since 2009 and P3D since it's version 2.0.

I don't know the details, but I seem to think that Air Hauler (v1 at least) generated its own 'flight file' which is how you can always start in an aircraft where you last left it.

(I love that... I with FSCaptain could offer that capability... but it won't just yet.)

And I'm certain that Air Hauler doesn't directly affect the simulator's 'default flight.'

Before I started using FSCaptain, I had an Air Hauler career... and I would have other flights I would make in the meantime.  I knew that when I went back to Air Hauler in my default Caravan, it was always parked where and how I left it!!

So this is just something that I'd like for you to check (just so you've covered all the bases)... is your 'default flight' unchanged from what you expect? (In my FSX, I have my default flight still in the Trike over Friday Harbor with all settings unchanged.)

I ask because I know that in FSX I can go to the "Save Flight" menu and I can tick the box to make the save the new default flight.  IIRC I've made that file 'read-only' so I don't know if I could update it by accident....

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Again back to your key question - I don't know of any file that FSCaptain changes which after uninstallation would affect anything. (Panel / Gauge windows aside.)

Dutch may correct me in a few days, but I don't think he will (I'm that confident).

I will be away for the better part of the next several days. (My secondment back to AivlaSoft is not yet complete... plus the family has their New Years plans which need attending... plus a new Sherlock beckons.)  But please keep this thread open with anything that you discover.

Regards,

[jkawai]

Hi Travis

Thanks for the extensive reply. The default flight was still in tact, didn't seem like anything had changed. What I have ended up doing is facing reality and just doing a fresh install (6 hours in, still only about halfway there). It's overdue anyway as I had a LOT of addons that I no longer used so I'm making it nice and clean this time and I'm going to install Air Hauler first, use it for a bit without FSC installed, then create a restore point (which I pray will work) and install FSC and try to use it alongside. I'm just really worried about doing that because of course since the problem started as soon as I had installed FSC, given a fresh FS install for me is a good day's work (and that's with a very comprehensive manual written by myself!), it's not something I'm keen to risk at the moment..

[jkawai]

Well, how very interesting!

Done a completely fresh install on a new hard drive and didn't go anywhere near FSC, not installed it yet. Tried my first flight on AH in the ATR and bam, immediately on takeoff, FS crashes. So that concludes it then - FSC is nothing to do with it, AH for some reason doesn't like my ATR. That's that then...

[peter]

Hi Jkawai,

thanks for letting us know. I hope you can resolve this issue with AH.

Cheers,
Peter

[Travis]

Hi Jkawai,

That's good to know that FSCaptain wasn't part of your problem. Here's hoping that you can get everything sorted out so you can fly as you wish to....

FSCaptain has changed in the (nearly) six years since my original reply in this thread. But I would hope that we could keep FSCaptain 'agreeable' in working alongside the original Air Hauler.

Please keep us updated if you can....

With regards,