Making FSX a Decent Soaring Simulator

Microsoft Flight Simulator 10 is a powerful flight Sim. With its decided bias towards commercial aircraft and civilian power planes, it rather neglects the soaring enthusiast with its one sailplane offering. The stock Dg 800S is a decent flying sailplane with realistic flexing wings, however the thermal modeling in FSX is rather unrealistic and thermals are sparse. The aerotowing is completely ridiculous with straight out tows to altitude.

There are thermal add ons available at the various free download sights. These merely add additional stock thermal to selected global regions, a vast improvement but still rather static and there is no real slope lift except for the missions in FSX.

Enter Wolfgang Piper and Max Roodveldt.
These two guys have dedicated themselves to converting FSX into a fairly decent Soaring simulator. Wolfgang Piper has designed models for FSX that represent nearly every significant modern and vintage sailplane in Europe, as well as a few Schweizer models.

These sailplanes fly extremely well, have GPS, and (unlike the FSX vario)a compensated vario, and a neat realistic working yaw string. The gauges are designed by Max Roodveldt and are Caiset gauges. representing a step up compared to the stock FSX gauges. Way points in the GPS.nav file located in the FSX main folder are editable so you can add your own way points. not as easy as popping up the GPS in FSX though, which is disabled in the gliders. Everything you need to know to get these gauges working is contained on Wolfgang Piper's web page FS Glider.de. This includes installation instructions, files needed, and the tweaking guide.

This is only the beginning. Now that you have these nice gliders and gauges, where will you get realistic thermals and slope lift?

Cumulus X! is the module you will want to add to FSX. It creates realistic thermals using a thermal graphic that looks more like a real cloud than the default spirals in FSX. Invoked under the natural thermal selection in "weather" they self generate, are adjustable by the user for multiple parameters and include several default modeling presets for your use. but wait, it gets better, you can use real time downloaded weather files from various sources to generate lift info. The coup de gras is the nesting module called Sim probe. Sim prob is an add on for cumulus X that provides slope lift in realistic locations based on how you set up wind velocity and direction from within the FSX weather set up window.

I have been using these programs for about a month, and while a little sensitive to set up and glitchy at times, represent a step forward in thermal soaring in FSX.

Be warned if you are not capable of editing your registry files and or are not confident in editing you FSX directory files, don't try these add ons. It is not difficult but you have to follow the instructions carefully and make back ups as you go. In addition, there are some small unclear areas in the instructions with regards to editing your registry for autorun (which is desirable). I will write a detailed update for dummies (like me) in another article.

You will need a clean FSX install service pack two running on XP. Add on planes are OK. Vista users need to do some additional tweaking outlined on Wolfgang Piper's web site.

An additional program that adds more realism and flexibility is "Aerotow" from Paavo Pihelgas that makes it easy to change tow planes , and also to get the tow to fly a selected pattern.

TOWING AIRCRAFT allows one to select a towing aircraft. Lists all aircraft from SimObjects\Airplanes folder. Please note that not all aircraft are suitable for towing. Some are too fast (Learjet 45) and some are too slow (Piper Cub) for most gliders. Towing aircraft are flown with throttle at 75%.

PITCH OF TOWING AIRCRAFT allows to set pitch for the towing aircraft. The resulting rate of climb also depends on performance of the aircraft, so it may require playing around a bit with this value to get an acceptable result. Values between 5 and 10 should be fine for most aircraft and glider combinations.

PATTERN DIRECTION allows to choose the general path of towing. The towing aircraft is currently being flown by flight sim's AI and so the aircraft may not always fly exactly the selected path.

MINIMUM TURNING ALTITUDE is altitude above ground level, below which towing aircraft keeps flying runway heading. In case of left or right hand pattern, higher value means longer INITIAL CLIMB leg.

PATTERN DURATION specifies the duration of one CLIMB PATTERN. Values below 120 seconds may result in unexpected behaviour.

SAVE CHANGES saves all modifications made to towing settings. Modifications take effect after flight sim is restarted (if it is running).

So as you can see, we now can tell our tow pilot how to tow us and what plane we would like to use!

This program comes packaged with the redo of the Microsoft FSX DG 800S by virtualsoaring.org. This plane comes with two missions using the cumulus X and simprobe modules mentioned above.

With these additional modidifications to FSX, the program becomes a workable soaring simulator. If you fly the SOAR DG-800S, you can design your own tasks with way points in the flight planner window and they wiill automatically show on the Caiset GPS.

Sources:

CumulusX! from http://luerkens.homepage.t-online.de/peter/

For the full soaring experience you should also have:

sim_probe from http://carrier.csi.cam.ac.uk/forsterlewis/soaring/sim/fsx/dev/sim_probe/

25 injured in air crash Philippines

MANILA, Philippines: A turboprop plane landed short of the runway then struck a concrete wall at an airport in the central Philippines on Sunday, injuring 25 crew members and passengers, including foreign tourists, officials said.

The accident led to a five-hour closure of the Caticlan airport in Aklan province and forced the diversion or cancellation of several flights, airport officials said.

An initial landing attempt by the twin-engine plane operated by budget carrier Zest Air failed "due to unfavorable wind conditions," Civil Aviation Authority Director General Ruben Ciron said.

The accident injured 22 crew members and passengers, including two Germans, two Australians and a South Korean bound for the popular Boracay beach in Aklan, about 190 miles (300 kilometers) south of Manila, airport official Ma. Mecine Torres told The Associated Press by telephone.

Two airport guards and a utility man on the ground were injured by flying debris, said Rachel Hilada, a doctor at the Aklan Baptist Hospital, where the injured were treated mostly for fractures and abrasions.

Amateurs Win ARCAA UAV Competition Flying 30-Year-Old R/C Kit

Sun, 26 Oct '08

"Team Telemaster" Bests Engineering Students' Entries
Aaron Donaldson and Simeon O'Neill entered and won the Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation 2008 UAV Outback Rescue Challenge in Queensland, Australia last month with a Hobby-Lobby Senior Telemaster kit purchased over 30 years ago by Aaron's dad.



Converted from gas- to electric-power, Team Telemaster's plane featured a fully articulating belly-mounted camera. Their ground-based control displayed airspeed, altimeter, artificial horizon, the plane's GPS coordinates, and included an autopilot system and a video screen.

The two other entrants, both university-sponsored teams spending four times as much on their projects as Team Telemaster, crashed their planes. "Everyone [else] was aerospace engineers," Donaldson said. "Simeon and I didn't finish more than a semester of engineering."

The 2008 UAV Challenge, a direct outcome of "The Future of UAVs -- Challenges and Applications in the Asia Pacific Region" workshop ARCAA conducted in 2005, was held from September 23 to 25, 2008 at Kingaroy airport in Queensland, Australia. Kingaroy is the site for a new UAV test and training center being used by Boeing Australia and ARCAA.

The goal of the Outback Rescue competition was to rescue "Outback Joe," who is lost in the Australian outback and desperately in need of assistance. "A total time of one hour is allowed for the mission. This includes all time for set up, launch, mission, landing and recovery," ARCAA rules stated.

"Your system must be capable of searching an area of at least 2nm x 2nm, up to 5nm from the aerodrome. The target for your search will be a human (or dummy) wearing light khaki clothes and an Akubra hat. The target will not be moving and will be positioned in a typical resting pose in a rural setting.

"The GPS coordinates representing the four corners of the search area will be provided in the days leading up to the competition. The air vehicle must not travel outside of the search area or transit lane, for its flight will be terminated if it does so. The search area will be not more that 5nm from the aerodrome.

"Over a 60 minute period, teams must deploy their air vehicle systems and conduct the search. Once the search has been conducted a decision must be made as to where Outback Joe is located. A GPS coordinate, representing Outback Joe's location, must be provided to the judges.

"Once Joe has been located with the judges' approval, the air vehicle must be tasked with delivering its emergency package. The emergency package will contain 500ml of 'life saving' water. The package must be dropped as closely as possible to Outback Joe, without landing on him. The UAV will then return to the Kingaroy airport for recovery."

Though they failed to complete the challenge after a loose wiring plug forced them to land, Team Telemaster still walked off with top honors and a $5,000 AU prize.

"The entire team at Hobby-Lobby is thrilled to see our classic Telemaster take on the big guys and win," said Hobby-Lobby President Jay Graves. "The Telemaster has been a consistently great plane for R/C pilots looking for easy flying characteristics combined with a simple assembly process."

Hobby-Lobby International is a 43-year-old, Tennessee-based company manufacturing R/C airplanes, helicopters and boats. The high-wing Telemaster comes in a variety of sizes from micro to a version with a 12-foot wingspan. Assembly options include kits, which are built piece by piece, or "Almost Ready to Fly" (ARF) planes that only require the addition of an engine and electronics.

Cebu Pacific Buys Aircraft

Philippines-based airline Cebu Pacific has taken delivery of its third new ATR 72-500 turbo-prop aircraft from Toulouse, France.

The aircraft will be based in the airline's Cebu hub in the Philippines to support further expansion. Cebu Pacific has ordered up to 18 new ATR aircraft as part of its overall domestic operations expansion.

Cebu Pacific has the youngest fleet of aircraft in the Philippines with 10 A319, eight A320 and three ATR72-500 aircraft.

U.S. to aid C-130 search

A US Navy vessel was steaming to the southern Philippines Friday to help locate the wreckage of a Filipino military transport plane that crashed at sea, the Asian country's air force chief said.

The oceanographic survey ship USNS John McDonnell is set to arrive in the Davao Gulf on Saturday, five days after the C-130 went down killing all nine people on board, said Lt. Gen. Pedrito Cadungog.

"The survey ship should arrive in the area tomorrow afternoon," Cadungog said. "It would help us locate the position of the plane."

He said the government needed to recover major parts of the wreckage, which lies in deep water, to determine the cause of the crash.

"We are no longer looking for survivors," he added.

The 41 year-old US-made aircraft lost contact with air traffic controllers shortly after taking off from Davao airport on restive Mindanao island late Monday.

The Philippine military has ruled out its own earlier suggestion that it could have been shot down by Muslim insurgents.

Meanwhile, a civilian training plane crashed at sea off the island of Lubang south of Manila on Thursday, killing its pilot, Cadungog said.

The cause of this second accident, involving a Piper PA-38 aircraft, is under investigation by civil aviation authorities, he added.