Tonight I spent a bit of time downloading, installing and configuring scenery and AI for an upcoming event (to be announced here soon!). After everything was sorted I flew a quick test flight to make sure all the new elements were working together in the sim.
This evening, after a refuelling stop at Shanghai, Pudong Airport we blasted across the Yellow Sea, headed for Osan in South Korea.
Once we get to Osan I hope to try out some of my Multi-player mission ideas…. More on that later!
It’s been a while since an update, and despite working long hours I have something to talk about!
I received a B737 passenger safety card in the mail, which will fill its place in the seat pocket..
Then, I bought a new phone, with a much nicer camera… So I had to try it out;
This was taken on the climb out of Trondheim, headed North and eventually to a small mining town in Russia.
During the climb I did some research on interfacing my new EFIS panel to Project Magenta. It appears that most of the functions I need should be easy to implement, and may only need some LUA scripting for the more complex tasks.
Initial machining on the EFIS panel is complete, now I just need to find some time to assemble and wire it! Once everything is fitted and tested I’ll remove the face plate, paint and engrave it.
The final bit of news is Huge… I got new boots today which means…
(drum roll please)
Susan the fighter pilot gets some boots at last!
For some reason I’ve always wanted to visit Trondheim in Norway. Perhaps it was all the Alistair MacLean novels I read as a teenager, with the Russian Convoys as their theme…..
So far Norway has been a great adventure. Next I hope to explore around a little more, then set sights on the UK to continue the exploration I started last year.
For links to the Norway scenery I am using go to Freewarescenery.com
From Kolkata we continued on our North-Western heading, landing in Tashkent, Uzbekistan before the final hop to Oslo in Norway…
Tonight’s mission is the arrival and landing in Oslo. The beauty of X-Pause means that the sim automatically paused 100 NM’s from it’s destination… waiting for me to come home and fly the arrival 🙂
Now that everything is working properly, I thought it was time to send the 737 out on another mission. Part test flight, part exploration 🙂 I had been looking at some great scenery for Norway and thought I should go and check it out!
NZCH-YBBN-WSSS-VECC so far… Heading mostly North West from there.
Nice weather in the cruise, and a good opportunity to tune the settings for the displays…
Something I have been messing around with is a terminal server, with all sorts of devices connected to it. Tonight I had an old android phone working as a moving map, as well as managing X-Pause
After much research, head scratching and changes of plans… I *think* I have a workable solution for my sim intercom systems.
I had gone down the track of hardware intercom solutions, even as far as using headset distribution amps and mic mixers, but after quite a lot of research, and a suggestion from an internet post I have found a really simple solution:
Basically it is a software mixer, which enables both internal intercom and a connection to and from either TeamTalk (which I use between all my sims) or Squawkbox when flying on VATSIM. Only required hardware are USB sound cards for each headset, plus any impedance matching circuitry for the individual headset. So.. ALiexpress order placed for a bunch of cheap sound cards… and then to set it all up!
After posting a couple of videos recently, I thought I should get a bit carried away and make a video-intro…..
Cheesy… but this is a re-run of my last video, with the intro on it…. 🙂 Happy watching!
Tonight, after a little research and subsequent tweaking I did a little more flight testing. For some this kind of flying is as boring as bat-sh&*…
for me it is interesting, and challenging! The program tonight was all about the interaction between the MCP and the flight model.. so lots of dull motoring around on autopilot….. Testing Autopilot pitch control through a range of speeds and configurations. The main issue I had initially was that the MCP was commanding trim changes which were way too aggressive, and so caused the aircraft to porpoise quite badly. After the tuning the aircraft is stable in *most* phases of flight, I just need to tune out some pitch sensitivity when the aircraft is in approach configuration.
I have also switched to the Wilco sound package… it is better than what I was using, but I’m still not completely happy with it. I’ve since downloaded a couple of freeware sound packages to add to the test programme.
Tonight I did a little flight model swap and tested ‘Wilco/Feel There 737PIC’ in the sim…. The test proved better that the model I have been using, but still has a couple of *small* issues to resolve.
A great little flight, with a challenging cross-wind approach. The flight test went well. Once the small issues are resolved the flight model and autopilot should work happily together!
