As I said in the last post; it is very nice to go out to the ManCave and just go flying. Tonight was a night for just that. I flew out to the training area from Wigram and just enjoyed flying around. The sim worked perfectly, the aircraft flew as expected, and even the weather cooperated!
I even dusted off my old helmet and played the ‘back in the day’ reminiscing game 😉
Big smile, happy chap!
It was a nice feeling, last night, to be go out to the ManCave, flick the switch and go flying in the Arrow, with no worries about whether or not the PC would start. Though it was only a very short flight it was very satisfying!
The flight was a quick ‘reposition’ from Christchurch Intl to Wigram just on Dusk. Magical real-time weather, and lovely lighting, even from FS2004 which is now 17 years old!
Now that the sim is operating properly again I am planning to do some maintenance which I’ve been putting off. Both the Pitch and Roll potentiometers need replacing, and the instrument vacuum gauge needs some attention.
For a while the Arrow’s Sim PC has been giving trouble, mostly when trying to start it.
Last week I was flying the sim home to Wigram from Whenuapai when it crashed a couple of times en-route. That was the motivation I needed to finally fix the problem!
Tonight’s mission, therefore was to get the PC working properly, and finish my flight.
As I suspected the problem to be related to the graphics card, I had a wee rummage around in my spares stash to see what options I had without having to buy something…
After a little surgery, a new card and drivers installed and the sim is running sweetly again. I finished my flight with a lovely IFR approach into Christchurch just after the fog rolled in 🙂
Expect more ‘Arrow’ adventures in the near future.
In my normal fashion I have again reversed a decision in my projects. Some time ago I was working on a Tactical Ops program, trying to make MSFS into a pseudo-military sim, which was quite clunky, and requires a PC running a bunch of apps to air it all happen. I called ‘time’ on the project when I decided to focus on DCS for my military sim needs.
Fast forward to this year, and some random internet surfing and I stumbled on an idea for using some existing tools to achieve what I wanted for my TACOPS program.
For this new version of TACOPS I needed to learn ho to work with MySQL I my VB.NET console application. So now I have a simple client app on each sim machine which takes to a Database hosted on Camalus, which is my main server connecting all my sims together. Another small application, this time on Camalus, takes the data from the MySQL database, massages it into the right format then publishes it to my web server. Al this means that anyone, anywhere can run a compatible viewer and see where my sims are. I am using the whazzup.txt format, used by VATSIM and IVAO for displaying their online clients. Viewers such as DOLOYNUM and Qutescoop are my favourites.
Another evening of work on Monowai. My plan was to finish off a few modelling items, then start building scenery in various locations.
I am pretty comfortable that I have the model finished to a standard that I could release, so next up comes the ‘factory work’; Creating each variation of the basic model, then setting up the LOD’s (or ‘levels of detail’) for each variation, creating the scenery and finally writing the manual and packing it all up for upload.
I know, I know… another post about boats on an aviation site! But bear with me, there is at least a screenshot of a helicopter this time!
Development has been moving along nicely on Monowai with the addition of some ‘proper’ boats to replace the generic placeholders I had in early versions.
On the davits are two SMB (Survey Motor Boats), while on the foredeck is a Rotork Sea Truck… like a mini landing craft, which could carry a Landrover or Landcruiser ashore.
The main purpose of this project is to give the AI Wasps somewhere to operate from, and during the week I achieved just that; A small test scenery of Monowai with a Wasp operating from her helicopter deck.
Now that I have the process sorted for building working scenery around the ship I plan on placing multiple ‘copies’ of Monowai in various locations, with associated Waps flying meaningful survey or supply missions.
I’m pretty pleased with how Monowai is looking, and with a few final details I will be happy to draw a line under it and finalise the package and release it. I will be producing my complete package, as well as a ‘Scenery Library’ package for scenery designers to use.
So far this has been a cool project which I have really enjoyed. I am toying with the idea of continuing my ship modelling, and move on to HMNZS Endevour, but like anything in this hobby, that is likely to change!
I did a bit of fiddling around tonight to produce a ‘Static’ version of Monowai, with a ‘landable’ helipad. Regular visitors will notice that Monowai has lost her boats..after a long and informative discussion with a former Monowai crew member, I now have enough details to create new, and much more accurate boats, which is the next step!
As a quick test of the scenery object I added it to the RNZN Fleet in the Hauraki Gulf. The hardened helipad worked as expected, and Monowai looked great! (RNZN Frigates by Mike Hudson, available at all good FS sites)
This evenings task was to tidy up the texture sheet for Monowai. With all the various cobbled together features removed, and lots of nice new vector graphics she is looking pretty smart!
Monowai is making progress on her delivery voyage. Having left Glasgow on Sunday, she stopped in London for a brief visit, and has now made her way back down the Thames and is heading for her next port visit in Gibraltar.
It has been interesting comparing the relative rate of progress of Monowai, at 14 Knots, to Canterbury.. The trip ‘home’ in Monowai is going to be a long, long journey!
After Monowai had left the Thames, and was safely on Autopilot I headed up to the loft to try and sort a PC issue with the 737 sim. After a wee bit of tinkering I got it up and running, and even had a short flight. Motivation suitably restored, I am once again looking forward to getting it shifted to it’s new home and doing more flying!
Canterbury has arrived at Devonport, and since Monowai is at a stage where she is ready to sail, though not entirely finished, I thought it was time to replicate her delivery voyage from Greenock Dock, Glasgow to Devonport.
