It was a blustery day yesterday according to the weather reports, so the first thing I did after finishing my pre-flight checklist on the tarmac of KVAY in the Cessna 172S was taxi on over to the pump to top off the tanks. Whenever you’re dealing with turbulent weather the heavier you are the better off you will be as the wind won’t be able to knock you around as much. So, that done I taxied over to hold short for Runway 26 as a Piper Archer made its approach. I probably didn’t have to wait for it but it does take a bit extra to taxi onto this runway because you have to turn around at the end to line up. So I waited for the Piper to land then taxied out into position and took off – the wind was strong enough from the right that I didn’t have to compensate for propeller torque on my takeoff roll. Once up in the air I set the controls to cruise at 1400′ – although I had it in the plan for 1500′ I realized that was the floor of Philly Bravo airspace and decided to stay 100′ under and clear. I still tuned into Philly Approach for flight following however, and stayed with them until I passed over the VOR before tuning back into local traffic, although NJ84 doesn’t have a frequency of its own. I also realized I had compensated for FSX’s late DST switch the wrong way, setting the game clock an hour behind real world when it should be an hour ahead. Fixing that, I made my approach to Hidden Acres without issue – the flight had been bumpy all along but nothing serious just a few shakes here and there not requiring any serious control input to correct. My first approach to Hidden Acres didn’t go so well, I was expecting the 16-17kts heavy winds to slow me down a bit more than they did and I ended up long on final and had to go around. Second approach I put down 10 degrees of flaps and came down right on the runway after crabbing in slightly to stay aligned against the wind.
Leg 2: NJ84 – N73
I started this leg right after the previous, taxiing back and departing NJ84 – but once in the air since it was getting darker I decided to adjust my ENB settings and when I resized the window to put them into effect the sim continued to run but I could no longer get it to render anything. So I was forced to quit and decided to postpone the flight until the next day.
So today I hopped back into the Cessna around mid-morning and started a flight at NJ84 to pick up where I left off. It was still windy today, and on takeoff I had to be careful no to let the wind blow me into the trees off to the side of the runway. I didn’t have far to climb for cruise so I was shortly en route direct to the Atlantic City VOR where I intended to arc around at a 10nm distance before turning towards N73. It’s been a few months since my last DME arc so I wanted to keep up my technique. Turbulence was minor but persistent along the way and during the arc but never enough to seriously disturb my aircraft attitude. I started the arc fine but halfway through I let myself drift inwards and ended up 9.2nm from ACY at my closest approach before turning out towards N73. In retrospect I didn’t remember to account for the wind blowing out of the northeast pushing me off course. Live and learn! I finally remembered to pull up a track of my flight after I landed so I could see my arc:
You can see how as I turned out of the wind, which was coming from just west of north, I started to get blown inside the ACY 10nm radius. After a short flight out from ACY I reached Red Lion and entered the pattern for Runway 05. Great pattern, rounding out on final on slope and aligned with the runway, although I got a bit sloppy just before touchdown and had a scary left skid that almost took me off the runway thanks to the wind coming from the left making my torque-induced weather cocking worse than I anticipated. After finding a parking space and shutting down I also realized I never pulled an ident on the VOR. I’m very inconsistent with that still…
Leg 3: N73 – KMMU
A few spots over was my V35B from last weekend, and after pre-flight I taxied to Runway 08 and was able to take off right away as no traffic was inbound. I forgot three things in short order though on my climb to cruise altitude. One was that in setting my instruments to take off I had neglected the altimeter. Two, I didn’t circle-climb on departure but immediately flew direct for COL which caused me to skim over McGiure’s airspace. Three, I forgot to complete my after takeoff checklists. So when I was finally leveled off at 3500′ I tuned to KWRI for a weather check (shouldn’t I have done that before departure?) and reset my altitude to find I was really closer to 4000′ – d’oh! By the time I crossed over COL I was back to cruising 3500′ and began to descend again to duck under the NYC Bravo shelf and prepare for entry into the Hudson SVFR corridor. As if it’s not hard enough keeping this aircraft at 1200′ while not exceeding 140kts things started getting real bumpy as I cruised past the city. Like, attitude-changing where all the sudden I would find the aircraft starting to roll to one side. Steady hand on the yoke and smooth corrections though kept me on course without too much of an altitude or speed adjustment. Once clear of the SVFR corridor I climbed back up to 3000′ to head over the north Jersey hill country towards the Sparta VOR. I waited until I was over the VOR before tuning to KMMU for a weather report and then contacting the tower, which told me to make left downwind for Runway 05. This was great because the radial I was tracking outbound from the VOR set me up for a perfect 45° pattern entry. I received my landing clearance as #2 behind a Cessna on approach but the problem was I couldn’t spot him and there was another aircraft waiting to land behind me. So I turned base when I figured the Cessna had passed me by but then his landing light came into view in the distance. I stuck in my turn for final thinking I could cut him off but the tower told me to go around, no surprise. So I went around and slotted in behind the Cessna I was supposed to follow – when I heard the tower tell him to go to ground I turned base and final, rolling out right of the runway on final but I made it down okay. I had to taxi in partway on an inactive runway to get around some traffic taxiing out and shut down in the main tie down area to the west.
Ahhh my first flight of 2012! Also my first flight since the start of November, yikes. Reminded me why the FAA mandates check rides every few months for proficiency, especially considering some of the mistakes I made on this flight. Thankfully I was able to run my computer at 4.5GHz again after accidentally wiping out my overclocking settings a few weeks ago. I didn’t remember I had included details as to how I set up my overclocking in a previous Flight Log entry until I looked back and so getting it setup and running again was easy. Phew! Those extra megahertz do indeed make a difference in performance!
So the objective of this flight was two-fold. One: to get in some night time flying, of which I don’t have many hours logged. Two: to visit some of the airports I’ve designed and released over the last three months.
This was originally supposed to be two legs, from KFWN to KMMU and then on to N73. However I decided that KMMU was way to close to fly to, even for a touch and go – too much too fast for me to handle after just hopping back into the cockpit after a while on the ground. The longer flight from KFWN direct to N73 gave me more time to get back into the groove from takeoff to landing, especially considering I was flying the quicker Bonanza V35B.
The first attempt at this leg is where I made my first mistake by failing to visually inspect my aircraft for properly operating navigation lights. Granted it’s not something that’s on any of my checklists, but it is now! After departing and climbing to cruise altitude I stepped outside to capture some photos and noticed I was running without any lights – strobe, navigation and beacon were all not showing up. Realizing I couldn’t continue into growing darkness without navigation lights, I immediately considered landing at a nearby airport but I was at 5ooo feet and didn’t want to descend to anything right beneath me. I decided instead I still had enough light to turn around and head back to Sussex – bonus would be the sun would be behind me illuminating my instruments as I found my panel lighting also to be malfunctioning. So I backtracked my VOR radial and entered the pattern, cutting my downwind leg a bit short to beat in an aircraft on direct approach – I tried to clear the runway in time for him to land but he waved off just as I pulled onto the taxiway. Sorry dude, but my situation was bordering on emergency with coming darkness and I had to get to ground fast. After pulling up to the repair hangar I shut down and troubleshot the problem – turns out the new updated aircraft.cfg file released with the optional patch had the light positions all wrong for some reason. I replaced them with the light positions from the original .cfg file and all was right again.
So a bit later I was back in the cockpit and once again leaving Sussex behind and climbing for FL05. There was a crapton of traffic still in the air so I called into NY Approach for flight following and I tracked towards my VOR. As I was just hitting the VOR and getting ready to turn east I ran into a small bank of clouds at around 4700 feet, luckily there was a gap between them that allowed me to circle around and resume course without breaking VFR or changing altitude. As I approached the NJ Turnpike I switched off instruments to visual navigation, tracking the Turnpike southwest and trying not to lose it as it snaked past several other major highways. I personally find it a lot harder to identify roadways at night. After intercepting the Turnpike I also began a nice slow descent while NY Approach handed me off to McGuire Approach. I used flight following until I dropped to around 2500 feet and was closer to N73 when I switched to McGuire for a weather report. However it seems ATIS at KWRI is non-existent in FSX so I simply fell back on my weather planning I had done prior to flight and overflying the field to check the sock. My weather plan was spot on and I made my planned approach to Runway 23, coming in a bit high on final causing a little dive towards the runway but still had plenty of roll out and managed to give the Cessna behind me enough time to land afterwards. Once parked and shut down, reviewing my flight made me realize I had forgotten to do an ident on the VOR to ensure it was properly operating and that I was in fact tuned to the right station. Luckily (this time) it wasn’t an issue.
Leg 2: N73 to KBLM
The next morning it was up early and into the Tailwind W10 tri-gear, which was designed by Lionheart Creations. It’s a nifty little plane and I hadn’t really flown it more than once or twice since I got it during a sale so I figured I might as well take it out again. I got into the cockpit and went through a modified preflight – it doesn’t come with its own checklist they just ripped the Cessna 182S one from FS9 – but had trouble getting the engine to turn over. I think this is from the V35B having only left/right fuel tank selection, so when I reloaded the flight from last night and switched aircraft, the Tailwind effectively had no fuel flow since it only has a single tank (or two with one feed, dunno for sure). Eventually I just reset the flight with the aircraft already running. My first impression is that the volume for everything in this aircraft is a lot louder than the other aircraft I fly. The fuel pump, for example, is a loud as the engine itself. Also when toggling the panel lights with a keystroke it doesn’t toggle the dash switch. So if you toggle the lights on with a key then click the switch on, the panel lights will go off.
After fiddling around a bit more and getting used to the instrument layout I taxied towards the runway but after the heavier V35B I wasn’t ready for how quickly this aircraft accelerates and ended up crashing into a hangar. Whoops. Luckily damage was minor and I was able to get back to taxiing in short order, keeping a lighter hand on the throttle as I did so! Once departed from Red Lion it was a quick climb to 1500 feet cruise – this sucker is indeed fast! But once you get it leveled and trim it’s very stable and well behaved. Switching to spot view for some pictures I didn’t stay long because the outside engine noise is on a blatantly obvious loop lasting only about 3 seconds – it was pretty annoying. As I approached the coast and throttled back to slow down and drop lower for a buzz past Barnegat Light I also noticed no real discernible change in engine pitch until I had throttled down to near 50%. Oh at this point too I realized I had forgotten to continue my checklists after takeoff and upon returning to them I realized I still had flaps down from takeoff. And the VOR I used to track out to the coast? Didn’t ident. GAH!!
After following the coast north I made a direct approach for Runway 32 at KBLM after calling in and checking the weather matched the report in my plan. However on final another aircraft decided to ignore the fact that I had been announcing my approach for the last 10 minutes and taxied onto the runway for takeoff. I tried to slow down to let him go ahead of me but ended up having to call a go around. My second time around there was more traffic departing but thankfully they were kind enough to wait for me to land. However I then went and flipped the aircraft as I tried to rush and exit at the nearest taxiway. Although I will say I thought for sure I had slowed down enough to make the turn, apparently I hadn’t – no doubt my inexperience with the aircraft led to this disaster. I should probably have handled it with more care not having flown it much huh?
Leg 3: KBLM to KVAY
So technically I made it to KBLM and was totally not in the mood to try that entire leg again so I just hopped into the ol’ 172S which I had left stashed in one of the long-term hangars north of the airport. Before that though I reset the time to bring the sun up a bit more. I realized a bit later that since FSX was designed prior to the recent Daylight Savings Time changes, when I set the clock to real-world time it would put it an hour behind and not expect dawn to arrive until 8:21 instead of 7:21.
After the disaster of Leg 2 this leg was. thankfully, much nicer. I had no troubles departing KBLM and after reaching cruise I even remembered to finish off my checklists and ident the VOR I was tracking towards. Then it was just time to sit back and enjoy the sunrise and watch the traffic moving about the sky around me. Once I hit the VOR I began a gentle descent that put me near pattern altitude as I approached KVAY, which is bunched up with Flying W N14 and Red Lion N73. I threaded over both runways which set me up nicely for a pattern entry to Runway 08, although I was a bit off on the altitude I otherwise flew the pattern without issue, ending up on slope and centered as I turned final. I made sure to stay on slope to clear the power lines in front of Runway 08 and came down to a slightly bumpy landing.
Since KMMU was the only recently-developed airport I didn’t get to visit, that will be the target of my next flight, though I’m also working on a small grass field a little ways south as well that I might take a small plane to and back, and then cruise up past NYC to get to KMMU and then take a helicopter into the city? We’ll see.
Forecasts were good for the Quadrantid meteor shower set to peak this morning so I decided to check it out since this was one of the yearly showers I had not yet witnessed. Of course, although we’ve been having very above-average temperatures around here the past few weeks last night it decided to plummet close to the single digits, with windchill on top of that to bring the “feels like” temperature forecast from Weather.com down to -2°F. Man I thought I had on enough layers – I was wrong. I was out on the roof just after 2am and 15 minutes later I was back inside getting scarfs for my face. A little over an hour in and my extremities started to hurt. Close to an hour after that, just before 4am, I saw my 25th meteor and called it. When I got back inside I didn’t warm up until I had stripped off most of my outer layers because they were so cold the heat from inside the house wasn’t reaching me!
So the shower itself was about average. 25 meteors isn’t so bad for my neck of the woods. Unlike some other showers like the Perseids that are known for fast meteors, the Quadrantids have slower moving, brighter ones. Indeed that’s mostly what I saw whenever I caught one. The ones that burned bright and long across the sky were quite beautiful. One was definitely throwing off a noticeable blue glow. It’s really hit-or-miss for me since I have a lot of light pollution so when a dense shower is forecast I have to hope that most of the dust particles are large, but not this time. I’m sure people way out in the mountains saw 3 times as many easily. One meteor either came at me head on or was an iridium flare, as a spot of light in the sky grew bright and then dimmed out. That was pretty cool. Most showed up around the tail of the Big Dipper.
This shower is very capable of producing meteors worth watching. Hopefully next year will be just as good if not better if I can catch it.
so 2011 is over, and it was a pretty rad year. Let’s do the quick recap of major events: I attended my 10th Game Developers Conference, I celebrated 10 years of working with GameDev.net, I got to work on my first barge display for Grucci, I got to see the launch of the last space shuttle ever, and I got to take part in a major Hollywood blockbuster film. In between all that I did a fair amount of flying the virtual skies, as well as caught some Perseid meteors even though I couldn’t make it up into the mountains this year thanks to my 10yr high school reunion. That was a great time though so no complaining. The Perseid camping trip is back on again for this year though! I also continued with my scenery design over at MegaSceneryEarth Airports and pumped out almost 50 airports over the last 12 months. One of the more well-known and visited flight simulator sites AVSIM accepted me on as a staff reviewer as well, I have a blog over there now that has my latest reviews and flight simulator thoughts I’ll be cross posting here as well. There was also the IGDA chapter I helped to found celebrating 10 years of meetings this year as well. I got to tour ILM’s Presidio offices while George Lucas was visiting and hell during 2011 I even managed to have an epic game of beanbag, of all things. My health is still with me, I still have a great time coaching at the gym, and my car is running like a champ. She took me on several memorable road trips this year – I finally got to drive the Tail of the Dragon (both ways no traffic!) and I also checked out the Cherohala Skyway and did the rest of the Blue Ridge Parkway that I had to skip when I tripped down to Raleigh back in 2010. Coming home from PAX East I took a new route along the Molly Stark Trail as well. If only my bike was still on the road – but that’s about the only crappy thing of 2011: finally earning enough points to suspend my license and bring down a bunch more fines and fees that kept me from repairing the trusty steed for use this season.
So it wasn’t a perfect year, and I’m fighting not to lose my license again (more on that later this month) but even I had forgotten how much cool stuff happened until just now thinking back on it. So now time to look ahead and see what’s in store for 2012. You can call this list a bunch of resolutions, goals, plans – whatever. These are things I will be working on in 2012. They may all not get accomplished, but they will all be attempted.
I’ve already been saving money but will continue to do so until spring arrives and I can get my bike into a shop and looked over. It will need some tuning, new chain and sprocket, probably some new hoses as well at the very least not to mention change of fluids. I’m hoping it won’t cost more than $1k to get back to being fully operational. Thankfully a bike shop opened in the last few years right down the road from me run by people who are friends of one of the coaches at the gym.
FSX scenery design is going well. A year in and I’m still having a good time with it – that’s a good sign especially considering I’ve only gotten one $10 donation. So this year I plan to finish off all the NJ airports and start looking for people to work with on commercial scenery projects.
GameDev.net just launched a new upgrade and we have lots of ideas with how to run with it moving forward. Hopefully we can keep things fresh and interesting, not to mention useful, for our audience and start to grow things out from the business side as well.
I’ll be doing at least one review a month for AVSIM and I’ll be switching between scenery and aircraft. I want to try to get back to flying more often as well.
I will be turning 30 this year and I want to celebrate my birthday feeling a lot more in shape than I do right now. It’s been a downhill spiral ever since I stopped doing the Batman Show – that was great for staying in shape lemme tell you! I spend too much time sitting at my desk, and we all know that’s not healthy. Regular workouts with the Iron Gym will recommence immediately and after three months of strength and conditioning I will start training gymnastics again. Nothing extreme, just working on getting back old skills like giants on bars, tumbling on floor, handstands on parallel bars, press on rings, that kind of stuff.
Oh and of course if the world does indeed end, I’ll be ready for that too.
Part of developing airports for FSX, which I do for my website MegaScenery Earth Airports, is that I need to make sure the way AI aircraft taxi around the airport follows realistic taxi patterns and, more importantly, that it even works and I don’t have aircraft going in circles or not finding a parking location and just vanishing off the runway/taxiway. Normally I would do this by injecting aircraft into the simulation and watching them land, takeoff and taxi, but that only works with individual aircraft. When you get multiple aircraft taxiing about at the same time things can break down.
So in order to make it less painful to sit and watch the sim while it… simulates, I did some research into time-lapse tools for screen capture programs. This led me to a little freeware tool called Chronolapse which allows you various options for capturing screen shots of your computer screen and then also does the job of outputting the video for you. Nice! Getting it setup and running was a snap, just plug in the number of seconds between captures, the capture format and the destination directory and you’re all set to go. A progress bar at the bottom lets you know how much time you have between the next capture in case you want to try to do anything that doesn’t get seen during the pause between captures.
Even better is that if you have multiple monitors you can capture those as well or ignore them and capture the main screen only. This means even though I plan to mostly let this run while I’m not at the computer, if I am I can still work on my other two monitors and not interfere. You do have to watch out that you don’t start up a program or activate a window that will overlay the main screen for too long, but that’s about it.
To test out the capabilities of this whole method, I decided to use my modified Rotterdam X scenery, which I have been tweaking over the last few days to properly recreate the ground movement patterns outlined for the airport. I also decided to check the stability of Chronolapse working alongside FSX so I let the simulation run in real time for 16 hours straight. This didn’t work well at first, FSX crashed some times and other times I would end up with a window over the screen when I came back to check on it. Once I figured our what programs not to have running to make sure no windows popped up, I started from a clean reboot with all non-vital background apps shut down and let ‘er rip.
16 hours later I had 11,357 PNG images in my destination folder totaling 13.9GB. Each individual PNG file was roughly 1.5-2MB give or take a few hundred kilobytes. Had I set the destination format to JPG each image would have weighed in around 200-600KB. The dimension of these images are 1680×1020 as 30 pixels were cropped during capture to hide the FSX window bar – although now that I think of it I could have just used the Autohotkey I have to expand the FSX window (see this thread on AVSIM for more information). These images were captured at a rate of 5 per second.
Some of the images needed to be tweaked, as I wasn’t perfect in keeping stuff from popping up over the screen as I worked alongside the simulation later in the run. This simply meant loading up an image from before and copying the spot and pasting it in the affected image to cover up the foreign window. This was made easier by the fact that the camera was static – a moving shot would have made things much more difficult to cover up.
To process the images into HD video for publishing I used Vegas Pro 9. First I did some testing to quantize the amount of video data that would be required for rendering HD 108oi at the highest quality settings for the MPG codec. So I took 713 images, which comprised approximately one hour of captured footage, and loaded them into Vegas at 0.1 seconds per image. The result was a 1:11 video that came to 224MB and was too choppy to be used for public consumption but decent for use in debugging AI movements for development. Next I compressed the timeline to speed up the video and outputted a 35 second video weighing in at 112MB that was fast enough to be smooth, but would still mean over 9 minutes of video for the whole time lapse. So I took the compressed timeline and punched up the velocity envelope to 300% to end up with a 6 second video at 19.8MB that wasn’t too fast to blur everything.
So from there it was pretty much multiply everything by 16 to get final output times and sizes, which I felt were all reasonable. While the times of course turned out to be pretty precise, I was surprised that the file size output came up slightly less than projected – but no complaints there! The final videos, each taking around 20-30 minutes to render, came out to 3.46GB, 1.76GB and 312MB respective to the order I gave in the last paragraph. I was tempted to add some ambient music and some low-level ATC chatter in the background but ultimately couldn’t be bothered. Then after I uploaded to YouTube I remembered I could add audio from their library, so I found some nice ambient tunes to go with them. No “oontz oontz oontz oontz” I promise
Speaking of next time, while I said this is primarily for development purposes I might take some time down the road to do some real time-lapses like you see in the stunning Skyrim video below. Would need to invest in a better in-game camera add-on for FSX however as I can’t get movement in the sim to go slowly enough to capture nice moving/panning shots like the video below over long periods of time. For now, it’s back to development!
But quickly, speaking now of development, this video did also serve its purpose for that goal as well. I noticed several aircraft disappear while holding short waiting for 2-3 aircraft to arrive. To solve this I installed AI Timeout Patcher. Then I also noticed some GA aircraft holding short using the farthest hold marker which is too far from the runway to give them ATC clearance, so I tweaked the AI pathing network a bit to make that trip (hopefully) too costy for them. Then you can also spot a Piper Cub being stupid turning around in big circles – not much you can do about that. Stupid AI Cubs can’t turn worth shit…. Finally you may see an outgoing aircraft duck through the refueling area to work around an incoming aircraft (not really a big deal IMO) and some un-coded airline traffic is parking way back in the general aviation area.
Yea so it’s been a while since I’ve gone on a planned flight – and even this flight I’m blogging now actually took place back on October 22nd! Besides my airport scenery development I’ve also been busy getting started as an AVSIM staff reviewer – I’ve already written tworeviews and will be working on a third this month. Also at the time I was rather frustrated after not completing the entire flight I had planned out and that put me off blogging it right away. Then the rest of life caught me up in a whirlwind that still hasn’t quite set me back down.
I guess this flight was doomed from the start when I began planning it at like 2 in the morning. It was so long since I had planned a flight that I was forgetting things that needed to be done – my memory retention has never been all that great. So that slowed the process and to make things worse SkyVector decided to stop loading charts on me before I could complete my planning. Then I added to the problem by deciding not to sleep since it was by now after 4am and just get set to takeoff with the dawn and fly all morning/afternoon and then crash the rest of the day.
I started out in the Bonanza V35B out of Monmouth Executive, where it was parked last. Once airborne I had a simple VOR route plotted that would take me within spitting distance of Sussex. Weather was calm and clear and the VOR beacons came through strong and steady. I realize now that I completely forgot to tune into their Morse frequencies and identify that I was setting course towards the proper beacon – luckily that wasn’t an issue this time around (I have caught myself in earlier occasions of being tuned to the wrong VOR!). I did let my attention drift every now and then (sleepiness probably didn’t help) so I was banking left and right to get the course needle back to center, and of course thanks to the tip tanks keeping the wings level wasn’t made any easier. I probably should have topped them off before departing KBLM but didn’t bother.
I pulled int KFWN airspace right on target and flew the pattern around the airfield, lining up perfectly with the runway as I rolled out of my base turn to final. Sussex doesn’t have much useable runway left for landings these days – my theory is that to save money on repairs they’ve simply moved the displaced thresholds further and further towards the runway center. Anyways it’s best to land a bit fast in the V35B, so I touched down around 60kts and immediately had to stand on the brakes to come to a stop with just enough room to taxi off at the end of the runway.
Leg 2: KFWN – 1N7
Once I parked, shut down and saved the new location of the V35B I loaded up the American Aerolites Falcon, which was an aircraft I had recently reviewed. It’s a nifty little ultralight and I was going to make a short hop with it down the Delaware River to Blairstown – since the Falcon can only go around 55kts for a normal cruising speed. The falcon is a stick and throttle aircraft so I had to reconfigure my hardware setup a bit to get ready to fly, including some axis and button assignment changes as well. By the time I got off the ground the sun was fully up over the horizon.
The flight down the Delaware and to 1N7 was largely uneventful. I found the river okay and followed it down to the Water Gap, at which point I turned off the engine and glided down through the gap, enjoying the wind rushing past me before kicking the engine back on again near the ground and continuing to power towards 1N7. This I found through dead reckoning and flew the pattern down to land and taxi to a parking location. In doing so I ended up “below ground” and realized I would need to add a flatten polygon to this airport scenery when I revisit it sometime in the future.
Leg 3 Fail
Next it was time to load up a freeware aircraft in my library I hadn’t tried yet, a Cirrus SR20. It looked good at first glance, enough for me to want to try it, but ultimately proved to be less than adequate for my demanding sim realism needs. The controls, especially the radios, were hard to read and see, and every time you so much as tapped the brakes the whole nose would dip down like 2 feet as if you slammed on them instead. It was so bad that when I used the pushback function to move the aircraft backwards out of a parking space, when I stopped the craft tipped back onto its tail and stood there! I had to power up, start moving and tap the brakes to drop the nose back down. To add to my frustration I had forgot I had set my yoke/throttle null zones extremely wide to prevent dual inputs from being sent to the sim when I was using my joystick to control the AA Falcon while the yoke was still plugged in. So I didn’t have enough power, yoke control to take off when I rolled down the runway the first time.
Finally, after making it into the air clouds had moved in to prevent me from climbing to 8000′ like I had planned. Rather than go around I decided to go over – but at around 12,000′ I started losing climb performance and only then discovered that apparently this aircraft has an adjustable propeller pitch but couldn’t see a control in the cockpit for it. Regardless, I was beginning to get seriously tired and annoyed in general so I just shut down the sim right then and there, and went to bed.
Hopefully my next outing will be a bit more enjoyable overall Hopefully it will be sometime soon as well… heh
This past week I was rehearsing and shooting for the film Magnus Rex in New York City, as I mentioned in my last blog post. Here’s what I’m able to say so far:
Rehearsal Days
These took place Wednesday and Thursday out in Jacob Riis Park on Long Island, which has a huge parking lot that we used as there were a lot of extras there. I hadn’t gotten wind of the scope of the scene we were shooting until after I arrived, checked in and sat down for the catered breakfast – it was then I noted the small line I had waited in at 7am had by now grown to at least three times its former size. It was now only about 7:20. It wasn’t until closer to 9am that all 500 or so of us were checked in and ready to go. There were two sides represented – the good guys (cops and SWAT) were wearing mostly white while the bad guys (thugs and mercenaries) were wearing mostly black.
We spent the first day in basic fight training, which harkened me back to the beginning of my Batman Show days. They let us pair ourselves up with a partner from the opposing side after forming us into our separate camps out in the parking lot. I was right across from a fit-looking older guy around the same height as me, so when they let us break rank to find a partner I went straight to him and grabbed his hand to shake it and introduce myself. Once Chris and I had exchanged greetings we waited until the stunt people separated us further into 50-person squads that would each be trained by two members of the stunt team. None of the stunt guys asked for prior experience and I didn’t mention that I had any – I figured they would see it. Sure enough, as the morning went on my partner and I were pretty much ignored by the stunt guys, who walked around giving pointers and lessons to the rest of the group. I spent the time passing on what experience I could to Chris when needed – fortunately he himself, while not having previous fight experience, was able to pick up a lot of the basics on his own.
Before lunch they had us separate back into our good-guy/bad-guy groups and gave us an idea of what would be happening in the scene we would be shooting the coming weekend. We rehearsed the action for a while before breaking for some catered lunch and rest. I’ll admit that my arms and waist were already starting to tighten up from throwing punches and reacting to getting hit – ironically enough my neck seemed to be just fine, which is usually the part that gets really sore from snapping back.
The afternoon was spent back in our groups rehearsing various fight sequences that would fit a brawl-type scene, and we also ran through the scene’s action a lot so that we could do so as a smaller group and fine-tune things. Chris and I also got some attention from the stunt guys as well as the fight sequences became a bit more complex. Later in the afternoon the stunt guys in charge of our group came around taking down names and putting stickers on the shirts of people who would be returning for additional rehearsal the next day. Both my partner Chris and I were selected, which was great because some people were asked to return without their partners and would have to find new ones.
The next day only about half of the people from Wednesday were back, and it was largely the same deal as yesterday except more detail was given to the fighting to really make sure everyone was throwing and reacting properly. Additionally, some of the extras were taken out to receive weapons training (both proper gun handling and actually firing blank rounds) and kill training. I was selected for the latter, and they had several of us from my group and others walk on mats and react to getting shot in both the head and the shoulder and taking the fall onto the ground. Several people fell backwards or flopped down on the mats and were reminded that they would not have this padding during the shoot. When I went down I tried hard to remember to use my contact points – knees, elbows, shoulders, hands, that would be padded. I did almost fall sideways off the mat once and was reminded that I should be aware of where I’m falling in general as well.
Once day two of rehearsals were over it was just a day off before shoot weekend.
Shoot Days
We were all warned about early call times due to the number of extras being used in this scene, so I was ready to wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning on Saturday. Luckily they worked the calls in groups alphabetically, so while people whose last names began with A-F had to report at 2:30 in the morning, my group of surnames weren’t needed until 5:30. This was also a great thing as my plans to stay up with friends in the city fell through and I would have to drive. So it was up at 3:30 and on the road at 4am – I got to the location at 5 but the parking garage closest to the set was full-up – the last car pulled in just ahead of me! So it was a 30-minute scramble to both navigate the city streets and find another garage in the area that wasn’t full – I finally ended up a good 15 minute walk off location but a cab was right there as I exited the parking garage so I was only 10 minutes late for call. Luckily it wasn’t that important I be strictly on time as there were still a lot of us to process and it wasn’t like I was holding up anything by being a few minutes late.
Six flights of stairs up the building led you to check in – talk about your morning work out! They had signs posted on the wall at the top of each flight – “Good morning! Welcome to Magnus Rex” and “You’re almost there!” and the like. Once through check in it was down two flights to wardrobe where we exchanged our clothes for our costumes. Then it was down another flight to our holding area, which was divided into three groups – those that hadn’t attend rehearsal, those that had attended one day of rehearsal and those that had attended both rehearsal days. In here we could still use cell phones and have our bags to read books and eat or do whatever while we waited to be called out to set. The cops and SWAT were a floor below us in a similar holding arrangement.
It was cold out, and although the day warmed up a little it was generally chilly – luckily most of us like myself were costumed appropriately anyways. They organized us out on set by ranks – those who had attended both rehearsal days were up in front, those who had attended one day were behind and those who had not rehearsed were in the back. The idea obviously was to get the better-looking background fighters closest to the camera. Still, those all the way in the back might have been consoled a little to know that they were still part of something big – one of the Assistant Directors or Production Assistants (couldn’t tell who) let everyone know that we were officially in the books as the largest amount of paid extras used in a scene in NYC film history! I don’t have any official numbers but the rumors put it at around 1100 extras.
We spent the first day working all the way up until the sun was too low to shoot. Obviously there were numerous takes we had to go through to get things up to a level acceptable for the director, especially considering the number of people that were being used. We shot several different scenes throughout the day and we had lunch breaks in waves so that there would always be enough extras out to use on camera at any given time. At the end of the day they had us all return to holding and reversed the process we had gone through in the morning, letting the people who had arrived at 2:30am get checked out first. We all managed to get out in just over an hour – which pleased production immensely as they had expected it to take more like 3 hours to get everyone checked out.
The second day of shooting was similar to the second day of rehearsals in that only about half of the extras were called back to shoot some additional scenes and some closer shots of the scenes we worked on the previous day. I was able to park in the garage right down the street from the location this time and was early for my call, which was a bit earlier at 5am. The day didn’t last as long as Saturday, and we actually got our last shot in one take for a wrap.
Apparently production was extremely pleased with how the weekend went, and many of the ADs and PAs went to lengths to tell us they weren’t saying good job just to make us feel good or anything but that they really were happy with our performance and cooperation. Well, we get to wait and see now as the final result won’t be viewable until Summer 2012! Once the film hits the theaters (in IMAX!!) I’ll be able to post up more information about the scenes we were shooting. Until then, stunt-wise, we’ll see what comes up!
I was notified by a friend a few weeks ago via a generic tweet that a certain blockbuster movie was having an open casting call in the city for background stunt performers (non union) and being that it has been a while since I tried nabbing some stuntwork I decided what the hell, grabbed my fellow Batman show buddy Dizzle and we caught the first train up to the city at like 5:30am. We got to the location around 7am, 3 hours before call time and were only like 17th in line. So we chilled out and waited, thankfully the rain held off although we had to watch out for pigeon shit falling from the flying rats resting on window ledges over our heads when we leaned against the building wall.
We were the first batch of people in at 10am where they sat us all down, explained what was expected of us, had us fill out forms, take a picture and sent us on our way. We were out of there in 15 minutes. So I asked Dizzle why the hell did they make us show up just for that? He posited that it was an initial culling process – whoever took the effort to show up was someone worth looking into, as opposed to just some kind of online sign-up where thousands of people could have easily participated. Well that made sense. I hoped they were taking it a step further and keeping all the people there first on the top of the pile
When walked out we checked the line – it went all the way down the street (streets in NYC are long), around the corner and halfway up the adjacent avenue. Despite the fact that it probably moved pretty quickly we were happy to be done and gone to continue on with our day.
A few days later an email landed in my Inbox confirming my participation in Magnus Rex! From that point it occurred to me that I should probably do some training to get some stunting moves ready in case I needed them. I’m not deluding myself – I’m a background performer and will probably not be asked to do anything seriously difficult or demanding. At the same time however I’m not going to assume this is the case and want to be as prepared as possible to do whatever they might want me to do. As a gymnast, I knew I could do some of the more demanding stunt falls like gainer flips and such, but to be completely honest I had never tried before. So after coaching I would stay a while and gradually worked up to performing the falls on floor starting with practicing on trampoline, moving to tumble trak with an eight inch-thick mat to deaden the bounce a bit, then on floor with the eight incher and finally on floor with only 2 thin “sting mats” and with shoes on. Here is the result:
Here’s a breakdown of the moves:
Swing-leg gainer 3/4 back – a “gainer” is any flip that travels opposite its rotation. So a backwards gainer is a backflip that moves forwards. Because you are traveling forwards, it makes it difficult to impossible to go upwards as well (especially considering you’re pushing off one foot), which is the direction you would prefer a flip to go. At best, you stay level to your takeoff height and so it can be a bit disconcerting to perform as you don’t feel yourself lift for the flip and can freak out a bit thinking you’re not actually turning over. The “swing-leg” part helps induce the forward motion, which you see carried into the hips as well before I arch back. This kind of fall is what you see when someone gets clothes-lined or arm-barred while traveling forwards
Swing-leg gainer arabian crash dive – another gainer, this one adds a 1/2 twist. As I mentioned earlier, it’s hard to rotate these flips. So when you want to add a twist, it’s best to do the twist before you do the flip. An arabian is a 1/2 twisting front flip that actually begins with a backwards rotation. “Crash diving” out of the flip lays you on your back in a 3/4 rotation. This is another clothes-line/arm-bar fall that is a bit more dynamic and can accompany something like a spinning back kick or similar move that would induce a spin reaction.
Standing 3/4 back flip – a static standing flip like this can be cut in to react to something like a smashing uppercut or kick that catches you under the chin. There’s also a “break-fall” 3/4 back that you can use for harder surfaces that has you placing your hands down early to “worm” the flip down in a more controlled fashion. You just have to ensure a nice arch to your flip to avoid actually breaking your arms
Standing 3/4 back flip with 1/2 twist – as mentioned earlier, it’s hard to twist a gainer late, but for a standing flip where you can lift upwards, this is easy. The only danger is twisting too soon, which will leave your feet behind you and you on the back of your neck. It’s simple not to make this mistake – spot the ground first. This is a reaction similar to the 3/4 back but again just more dynamic and a better response to anything with a spin in it.
Double-twisting fall – I love doing this move. A haymaker punch or spinning back kick lends itself nicely to performing this. Nothing complex, the hardest aspect of this move is rushing the twist – best is to stand up and spot over your shoulder prior to wrapping in for the spin. Note how I “flail” my right arm out – this is part dramatic, part functional. When I wrap I have greater momentum in my spin just like a figure skater pulling their arms in to spin faster. I kept the second take in because LOL BOUNCE
I’m hoping to next spend some time performing these moves against other actors.
So while I was working on these moves I got called back to the city for wardrobe fitting. I showed up and my fitter went about finding me some clothing to wear for the shoot. I got handed a nice-looking outfit and went into the dressing room to try it on – which was just an adjacent office with a sheet over the door. One poor guy, when told to get changed, was like “there’s someone in there”. He was told succinctly that he better get used to it, haha. Another extra was in the process of trying on his 3rd outfit, because we’re supposed to look run down and so far he had remained “sharp-looking” according to the fitter. Well you have to take a compliment where you can I suppose! My outfit was snug and good-looking on the first try with a few small additions once we saw the costume director.
I’m thinking they should have called it “Myopic Rex”
Next it was on to hair and make-up. At first, when I decided to stop getting my hair cut, the decision was based on the fact that I was tight on money and didn’t want to spend it on a haircut. Then I realized hey – if I get a stunt gig they can just do whatever they want with my hair. It is, after all, easier to cut hair short than grow it long when needed. So I went to see the hair and make-up people expecting to have my head worked over – but they actually liked me just the way I looked, and wrote down on my sheet for shoot day “come as seen in fittings”. Well alright then that was easy! Even the costume director, for my reference photo in costume, told me to make it look “as crazy as possible”. After that it was the usual contract and payment information signing and I was on my way once again an hour later or so.
It’s actually longer now!!
So that’s pretty much that. If you follow me on twitter you’ll know when I’m rehearsing and when I’m shooting, but that’s about all I can say until the movie comes out – and even then due to the contract I signed I might not be able to say that much, but I will of course report what I can! The kids I coach at the gym were a bit disappointed to hear I only have a background role, but I tried to explain to them that it’s not really the role that’s important, but the fact that you’re able to perform in any capacity – especially on a movie like this. They were even further flabbergasted when I told them I might not even make it into the final cut “Well why bother then?” asked one. “Because it’s fun!” was my response.
I should have enough vouchers after this gig to join the Screen Actors Guild, which is something that would help in finding future work, and I’ll probably put a bit more effort into hunting down jobs than before. If you’re not familiar with past stuff I’ve worked on, here’s the synopsis.
It’s that time of year again for the dust from comet Swift-Tuttle to come crashing into our upper atmosphere with spectacular effect. I wasn’t planning on starting the party early but the skies were totally clear tonight after some late evening clouds moved out so I decided to give it a go although the peak doesn’t start until tomorrow – I’m viewing from my backyard this year as my Adirondacks trip did not work out this time around. But still, the heavens did not disappoint! Even better is that there are clear skies forecast for both Friday and Saturday mornings as well. The only detriment is that the moon sets a bit later each day but there’s still a window of darkness before the sun rises. Know that the best times for catching meteors is from 3am-sunrise. We’re passing through a cloud of debris left behind by a comet that crossed our orbit, so as you spin to face the direction of Earth’s orbit (the night/day terminus) you’ll be heading more head-long into the cloud and thus more bugs shall splat into the windshield, so to speak. And before you go any further make sure you’ve read my meteor watching tips in case this is your first outing.
Happy viewing everyone!
The Preshow – 8/11
I rolled the lounge chair out onto the lawn at 3am to settle in. Given my amount of light pollution it would have been better to wait until around 4am but I wanted to give my eyes plenty of time to adjust. I spotted my first meteor just before 4am, a dim streaker shooting through Taurus. From that point up until I quit the field at 5am I counted 14 more for a total of 15 – not bad for the day prior to peak! One of them skimmed the atmosphere, which is cool because they last a good 2-5 seconds and track across a good deal of sky – you need to turn your head to keep them in view. You can see them dim and brighten as they dip in and out before burning up completely. Four others I saw were more head-on collisions – these meteors are the ones that leave the bright trails behind them as they burn up quickly – the bigger they are the longer they last. The rest were dim, quick specks – the kind you spot only if you happen to be looking at the right place at the right time as they aren’t bright enough to pull your view from another section of the sky. In addition to my 15 meteors, I caught a handful of satellites orbiting by overhead – most I spotted out of the corner of my eye since they are rather dim. Four of them however caught my attention thanks to bright flashes of light off their solar panels – really bright ones are usually Iridium Flares. To cap off the night, just before 5am a Jupiter-bright object soared across the sky. No commercial airliners fly high enough for you not to see their strobe lights blinking, so if you happen to catch a bright object traveling across the sky that doesn’t blink, it’s a good bet you’re looking at the International Space Station. To confirm this, head over to Heavens Above, use the map to get your location coordinates and check the times for ISS passage – mine this morning was from roughly 4:50-4:56am. I checked my clock as it passed over me at 4:54am. I’d say that closes the case I waved and shouted “Hi astronauts!!!”
So – great start. We’ll see what the peak days have to offer tomorrow and Saturday morning!
Peak Day One – 8/12
Tomorrow is really the Big Day but this morning is also considered to be part of the peak time to spot Perseids. Unfortunately I was tired from only getting 5 hours sleep after the previous night’s watch and although I got a few hours earlier at night to wake up to watch at 4am, I really couldn’t keep my eyes open. Still, in the 20 minutes I was outside I saw 6 bright meteors flash by overhead and the ISS made another appearance lower in the northeastern sky.
Peak Day Two – 8/13
I slept in the previous day so I could stay up this morning to watch starting around 4:30am – the full moon was still above the horizon tho thankfully at least low enough to be behind my house and tall trees so it didn’t shine on me directly but it still had a noticeable effect on the darkness of the night sky. From the southwest, high-altitude clouds were beginning to move in, which started to haze out the area of sky they covered as they slowly (thankfully) crept northeast. In my first 15 minutes I caught 4 meteors, bright ones obviously since you can’t really see anything else. The first left a nice long streak in the sky behind it. The ISS once again made an appearance, this time pretty much straight up in the sky traveling from the northwest to the southeast. And then…. and then I fell asleep I woke up about an hour later as the sun rose and headed back inside.
Oh well, haha. Still caught a couple good ones. Hopefully I can make it back out to the mountains again next year.
So since I was on a break from airport development the past few weeks and thus had no new airports to fly to, I decided it was time to go through and check out the many freeware aircraft I had downloaded months ago all at once as I troved various download sites. They had been sitting on my FSX hard drive just taking up space – time to rectify that! I began by figuring out how to install them outside of the main FSX folder. This didn’t present too many problems. First I made sure to add a SimObjectPaths entry to the FSX.cfg file [Main] section that pointed towards the folder on my other hard drive. The second problem I came across was the fact that some of these aircraft use the default FSX sounds and gauges, so I also had to edit their sound.cfg and panel.cfg files. In sound.cfg, I needed to put in the full path of my FSX folder in the alias property. For the panel.cfg, some aircraft were using the “../” method of referencing a folder one level up the tree from the current one, assuming they were to be placed in the default Airplane folder in the FSX install location. So I needed to do a Find-Replace on all instances of “../” to change it to the full path of my FSX Aircraft folder.
Some aircraft just weren’t made for FSX, and many said so explicitly in the documentation but I tried them all anyways just to see. One by one I installed them, tweaked their files if needed and then loaded em up in the sim to see how they looked. Luckily, FSX can handle the addition of aircraft as it runs, since it reloads its database each time the Aircraft Selection window is called up. If the airplane just looked like crap, I deleted it. If it was missing too many gauges on the panel to be functional, I deleted it. If its propeller alpha was messed up and showing the blades as an opaque disc, I deleted it. In the end, I went through all my civilian helicopter and civilian single-prop airplane downloads and wound up with 47 various types of airplanes and helicopters to play around with.
The screenshot gallery above is a conglomeration of various different flights I’ve taken the past few weeks since my last Flight Log entry. I either started at Monmouth Executive, or I departed from an airport I had just arrived at. The first flight was in the Dodosim Bell 206B that saw me departing from Monmouth Executive and flying up to Linden via the Garden State Parkway and Route Linden. It was an uneventful and routine flight, with a touch of hampered visibility and light rain for a few minutes enroute. Landing at Linden proved to be a bit of an exercise as I am still not consistent with my landings being smooth in the Dodosim 206 – sometimes I can nail them other times I’m hovering and futzing about all over the place. This time it was the latter but I managed to get her down in one piece as the darkness grew deeper. But we already know my thoughts on the Dodosim, so let’s get on to some of the new aircraft.
Since I can’t remember where I downloaded most of these files from, I’m hosting some locally if I can’t find them on AVSIM or FlightSim.com. No point in people reading these reviews and then not being able to try them out if they want!
This is pretty sweet, someone took the default FS9 Cessna Skylane and converted it to be fully FSX compatible. Not only that, but they brought over a crapton of different liveries (30 in all!!). My favorite is the one featured in the gallery, which sports a Jolly Roger on the tail. ARRRRRRR!!!! The 3D panel and cockpit are fully functional and there’s also a 2D panel included. Like most freeware craft though, no additional in-cockpit camera views are available and you’ll have to add them yourself. The radio stack is a bit hard to read from my normal .70 zoom level, but the rest of the instruments read clearly and function perfectly. All lights are functional, including the taxi light. The flight model has been tweaked from the default but not having flown the FS9 version I can’t comment on any improvements. However it does handle very well on the ground and in the air. Textures are still FS9-based and have not been upped in resolution for FSX, but they still look good. This aircraft is also set up to work with Shockwave lights. Because it’s a default aircraft in FS9, it comes with a checklist and reference file for the kneeboard.
In this aircraft I departed Monmouth Executive and navigated by dead reckoning and visual flight northwest to Old Bridge. Flying the pattern I slotted myself in between two aircraft, one that had just landed and one that was a few miles out on approach. I came down when that second aircraft was only 2 miles out and hastily exited the runway to clear it for them to land after me.
This is a definite must-have addition to your hangar!
This bird was created by a real 177 owner, who chose to model his actual airplane. It’s a basic model that doesn’t have any fine details to the exterior, but the animations do include cowl flaps and opening doors. The 3D panel is composed mainly of 2D gauges and switch clusters, so it doesn’t look as good as a fully 3D panel but everything is there and everything is functional so that’s really all that matters! Well, almost everything that is – my one beef with this plane’s cockpit is that I can’t find a parking brake indicator anywhere. On a whole, the textures are very “shiny” both inside and out, but not so much so that they are annoying. It’s just something you notice when the camera is at the right angle to the light. Some of the texturing work is pretty nifty tho – the windows for example are textured to recreate the warped-glass view of the bubble cockpit. Just like the radio stack in the 182S, it can be a bit difficult to make out the numbers at .70 zoom. You’ll find all the lights to be implemented properly – something I find most pleasing about a freeware aircraft because not even the default FSX 172 has taxi lights! There is no checklist for the kneeboard, however the author does include a document that details some of the operational procedures of the aircraft and discusses the flight model that has been tweaked to match the real aircraft as closely as possible. One important value he doesn’t mention I had to look up is the Vle, which luckily I found in the POH handbook online although it wasn’t listed anywhere but in the Let-Down checklist. A 2D panel is supplied but the aircraft is designed to be flown from the VC. There is also no pilot model.
I used the Robbinsville VOR to depart from Monmouth Executive and make for Trenton-Robbinsville. Up in the air the aircraft had the usual yaw issues that plague single-engine craft and I was able to rudder trim it stable. Don’t forget to raise the gears! It cruised very well (and very fast!) and in no time I was setting up for a straight-in approach to N87. However despite my calling final on the CTAF a Piper Cub decided to taxi onto the runway and take off anyways. Bastard! I slowed waaay down hoping to give him room to depart but you know these slow-poke Cubs. Took him forever to line up and start rolling down the runway so I had to pour on the power and go around. During my go-around I heard a call on the CTAF of an incoming flight 6 miles out. I can beat that, I thought, only to come around on final right behind the approaching aircraft. I actually flew under him as I made my second go-around. Yeeeesh! Finally I made my final approach clear of traffic and lemme say that this thing glides down so smooth – I’ve never felt such a rock solid descent from another aircraft. However, and the doc that comes with the aircraft does mention this, as you approach over the runway you’ll need to play with the rudder to keep her aligned – I wasn’t able to hold my heading and landed off to the side of the runway (which, ironically, saved me from crashing on a bug in the airport).
Not satisfied with my performance and knowing it was me not the airplane, I departed Trenton-Robbinsville for a dead-reckoning visual flight north to Central Jersey Regional to try my hand at another landing. I got a bit lost on the way since I missed that there were three railroad tracks I was going to cross over and not two, so I looked for the airport too early and ended up backtracking along the Raritan River to finally reach it. A check of the wind told me it was crossing the runway, though at a light 4-5kts. I should have listened to the CTAF longer to see which runway FSX was using for its traffic but I chose the one I thought was closest to upwind and set up my pattern and approach. I still wasn’t listening to the CTAF even though I was tuned in and giving my position, because on final I flew under a plane taking off from the opposite end of the runway. Erm. Oops. At least, this time I managed to keep my nice descent all the way down over the runway now that I knew I needed to work my rudder more to stay aligned properly.
So the exterior and interior modeling aren’t great, but again they are fully functional and the flight model is superb.
Looking for some extra passenger capacity? This craft’s got you covered with 4 seats to the rear – unfortunately things start off a bit disappointing right there because the Payload Settings screen only lets you adjust values for Pilot, Copilot and Baggage. So if you plan to fill those seats and have it affect the flight model I’m afraid you’re out of luck. In terms of modeling, both exterior and interior are well done, if not fully detailed. Textures are also of good quality both inside and out. The virtual cockpit has some character to it in the form of a briefcase and some soda cans in the passenger seat – it would be nice if you could turn them off though to properly simulate an empty seat. 2D panels are provided but as usual the VC is where you want to be. A mixture of 2D and 3D gauges and controls make up the main panel, and the compass is missing completely – there’s not even an entry for it in the panel.cfg file. The radio stack is stretched vertically making the numbers look tall and funny and the smaller ones, like on the DME and Transponder, are harder to read because of it. Since there are no views other than the default, it can be very hard to read the electronic map screen in front of the copilot’s seat. However there are some really cool and unique features of this craft that help make up for its shortcomings. For one the propeller spin mask is very nice – you can see the individual blades spin and the yellow tip outline. The exterior doors animation include the rear passenger scissor doors as well as the main cabin door. Finally, and coolest of all, you can open both the pilot and copilot windows! I love that stuff. But again, there are still some disappointments – for some reason I couldn’t get the engine compartment and sun visors to animate as the documentation says they are able to. Speaking of documentation, it’s all in French/Italian and has lots of pictures that don’t show up. There’s no checklist.
I took the Stationair out from Monmouth Executive on a VFR trip down along the coast of NJ to Eagle’s Nest. It’s pretty much the only convenient way to approach the airport thanks to the restricted airspace nearby. One thing I noticed right off the bat is that it’s very solid handling on the ground taxiing, and you don’t get as much of the delayed steering reaction you’ll find from the default 172, for example. Once airborne it was rock solid once I trimmed up for cruise and coasted down along the shore. Suddenly though I glanced at the RPM gauge, which I don’t notice much as I fly so close to sea level, and saw the needle was a good 200 RPM over redline. I pulled out on the propeller pitch to bring the RPM needle back to the green arc and puzzled over this behavior. I was only flying 1500 feet above sea level, atmospheric pressure was normal and had not noticed similar behavior in the other variable-pitch propeller aircraft I had flown. So this may be a slight error in the flight model.
Well, I haven’t deleted this aircraft from my hangar yet, so that says something. However its various shortcomings do make me less inclined to fly it very often. My main reason to fly this would be the extra cargo capacity when I want to simulate ferrying passengers, but without being able to model that what’s the point? Maybe if the flight model felt more unique…
Alright! Something that’s not a Cessna Here’s a nicely-modeled Grumman aircraft that amazingly squeezes 4 people into its body – you have to all climb in through the slide-back cockpit canopy (animated) – no doors! Unfortunately the weight and balance modeling does not take into account any extra passengers in the rear, it doesn’t even have a Baggage field. Missing stuff like this really takes a lot of value out of an airplane. The interior of the plane is nicely done, although the gauges on the instrument panel do look a bit large and not very crisp. The radio stack is easy to read though! One cool thing about the gauges is that you can “cage” the attitude indicator, which locks it into place and is used when the gyroscope tumbles during acrobatic maneuvers to return it to its upright position. Unfortunately that’s the extent of the modeling – doing some spins and loops failed to tumble the attitude indicator. But it’s cool so see the functionality added anyways. However one thing that annoys me on this instrument panel is the heading indicator. You can turn the knob but since there’s no “bug” you actually move the heading card and then you have no idea which way you’re going! The magnetic compass appears to display backwards (see my next review for a fix), so unless you have a VOR to tune to and use your CDI gauge to calibrate the heading indicator you’re hosed. Speaking of the CDI, there’s a NAV2 CDI when there is no NAV2 radio on the stack. (I ended up removing it from the panel after realizing this). The Primer knob is interactive, but I’m not sure if it actually does anything since there’s no checklists or documentation included. The fuel tank selection can be confusing as well because the “OFF” panel is also labeled “BOTH”, yet setting the fuel switch to that panel will cut the engine, so it’s obviously not both tanks. I suppose it’s actually supposed to read “BOTH OFF” but if you’ve had a lot of experience with a plane that can cross-feed tanks it’s easy to not see it that way at first. All the lights are implemented, and although taxi lights don’t work at least it’s because this aircraft actually doesn’t have taxi lights! I must say I like how the windows have a “dirty” look to them and the propeller mask is also very well done.
Alright so how does she fly? To test it out I departed from Eagle’s Nest and continued my run down the coast to Ocean City. You can immediately tell you’re dealing with a decently high power to weight ratio by how easy it is to get this bird moving on the ground, and how responsive it is turning about. It’s even more apparent in the air when you lift off and have to apply a good deal of right rudder to prevent the torque of the propeller from putting you into a barrel roll! But as I climbed out and trimmed up I enjoyed the responsiveness of the aircraft – it’s definitely one that inspires you to attempt some acrobatics. Instead, I just cruised serenely along the shore southwards and kept my eye on the DME indicator tuned to the Atlantic City VOR. I was going to DME arc around the Atlantic City Bravo airspace using just the DME. Previously on two occasions I had used the CDI gauge together with the DME to fly my arc, but for a new challenge this time I decided to just use the DME. It’s not that difficult, you just have to adjust your heading to make the speed indicator on your DME register 0kts, which means you’re pacing the station. The only difficulty arises in that you can’t tell if a reading of 8kts means you’re traveling away from the station at 8kts or towards the station at 8kts until you see the distance number tick up or down. So it’s a lot more of a wobbly back and forth path than using the CDI gauge to perform smooth turns around the station. But hey, it got the job done and kept me 13-14nm away from the ACY VOR and outside of Bravo airspace as I cruised at 200 feet above the floor level. I had flight-following activated with KACY as well since I was flying through one of their approach corridors. I arrived at Ocean City with no problems, the plane behaves very well during descent and approach.
Several unfortunate drawbacks diminish this aircraft, but its unique flight model and performance characteristics gives me reason to come back to it every now and again.
This package comes with a model file and a .air file labeled a “B” variant of the AA-5 however none of the included documentation – which isn’t much – tells me if this is really a tweaked flight and visual model or just a re-labeled variant of the previous AA-5A I reviewed. The visual model is definitely tweaked – there are sun visors (un-animated as far as I could figure) added to the cockpit, for example. Flying it though I couldn’t feel any significant difference in the flight model but I will assume it’s been tweaked to match the “B” variant performance characteristics. It retains the same issues I had with the previous model, however this panel came with a proper magnetic compass, so it was a simple matter of copying out that gauge entry and replacing the magnetic compass gauge in the “A” variant’s panel.cfg file. Also this variant is missing a NAV1 CDI gauge, so I had to copy the gauge from the “A” variant over to the “B” variant. Then I deleted the VOR2 indicator in both. Well at least the panels are better now!
To test these wings out, I departed from Ocean City and headed inland, once again arcing around 13nm out from Atlantic City VOR to end up in the general vicinity of Hammonton Municipal. That worked like a charm and other than some traffic flying through the airspace, I hopped in the pattern and landed without any trouble. Again, I could not discern a noticeable difference in the flight model between this and the “A” variant.
If you’re going to try either of these planes, best to get them both so at least you can swap the gauges!
TO THE CHOPPAS!!! Enough of this boring fixed-wing nonsense, let’s check out some heliboppers. And not just any helicopters, but retractable gear choppers. Yes. They are so sexy. There, I said it. Skids are cool and all, but retractable gear is where it’s at. We start with an excellent GMAX model of the Bell 430, which does indeed look rather superb from the outside – the model itself is very smooth and streamlined, especially the exhaust ports, and the textures are well done. The rotor masks are also very nice-looking… but if you down through them you’ll see that they erase ground objects and textures, and the shadow they cast is a blocky texture. Given that this model was made for FSX, it’s a bit disappointing. Moving inside, things aren’t much better. The textures are very low-res, so much so that in some cases you see them stretching across polygons. The instrument panel gauges are not all very crisp, and the ADF guage comes up blank – I had to replace it with the default Bell 206B gauge, which worked okay. Again, thanks to there only being one VC view it’s practically impossible to read the DME gauge all the way over on the copilot’s side. The ADF select numbers are barely readable even when you zoom in. There’s also a gap between the panel and the covering on both corners exposing a little bit of forward view, enough to be annoying and too little to be helpful. A plus though is that you get a basic checklist and performance figures for your kneeboard, and there are a lot of decent liveries for this aircraft from civilian to law enforcement to medical. You can also have some models with skids. In what is sadly a common trend amongst these freeware models, weight and balance is once again ignored, and you can only set the weight for “Station 1″, which I assume is the pilot.
I flew this from Hammonton up to Princeton, and from the Wall Street Heliport around NY harbor in the Port Authority livery to land on the One Police Plaza helipad. The flight to Princeton was done at night so I got to check out the night lighting capabilities and the helicopter was well-equipped with switches for Nav, Beacon, Landing and Panel lights. Turning on panel lights had a strange effect of dimming the external nav lights, but that wasn’t a huge deal. The landing light, however, was not well-implemented – at least for me. Maybe it’s how I have FSX set up or the addition of REX textures but the landing light did not illuminate the ground at all and you could barely see it underneath the helicopter. I’m guessing this isn’t only my problem since someone went and added in Shockwave lights support for this model. Flight dynamics-wise, it’s definitely a different helicopter if you’re used to flying something like the Bell 206. The most noticeable difference is that it turns differently, you can’t bank hard like the 206 without sinking a lot in the process unless you add some power. You’ll also find as you pull back to stop from sinking the helicopter will want to slow to a hover. Speaking of power, for some reason the torque gauge registers 80% torque when my Saitek X52 throttle is at 50% thrust. If I open the throttle fully the torque needle will go all the way to 120. Reminds me of the Stationair’s weird RPM overspeed issue and makes me a bit uncertain of the quality of the flight dynamics.
It’s got issues, and the flight model may possibly be flawed, but it will challenge you in new ways as it handles differently than a stock helicopter and you’ll have to get used to setting up a nice long approach when it comes to landing because there is not much floor visibility once you’re over the pad so you want to see it the whole approach.
The “L” variant of the 206 is, as its name suggests, for “Long” and that’s a literal interpretation of the variant as it is 30 inches longer than a regular 206. The model is very good looking externally, and there are a decent amount of varieties with the model itself – like having no doors, a camera for a news chopper, a searchlight for a police chopper, floats for a Coast Guard chopper, etc. Unfortunately things like the searchlight are not operable, and in fact the landing light does not exist at all although beacon and navigation lights are there, as is panel lighting. However unless you have these mapped to a joystick or key you’re going to have trouble turning them on since with the exception of the main panel and radio stack the interior cockpit just has flat textures for some control panels that offer no interactivity at all and in some cases are badly stretched over the polygon surface. The rotor mask is better than the 430 in that it doesn’t alter the appearance of object textures, but it still casts an unwanted shadow on the ground beneath the helicopter. There are no checklists or reference speeds included. A 2D panel is included, but there are no extra cockpit views. Again, we have a model with extra cargo capacity, and the weight and balance modeling has no support for it at all, only offering up weight loadouts for “Station 1″ and “Station 2″ which I assume equate to the copilot and pilot, respectively. Bah!
I took this chopper from the pad at One Police Plaza back to Wall Street heliport, buzzing around the city on patrol as I did so. It handles, unsurprisingly, much like the default Bell 206B. The only thing you need to remember is that if you’re ever in a tightly-confined landing zone that you have an extra 30 inches to make room for. Since it basically uses the default Bell 206B panel as well, all the instruments are readable and functional, although you’ll notice that bad texture stretching at the bottom of the radio stack. Actually I think that stretches the Transponder tuner out of sight. Bummer, luckily FSX ATC largely handles that for you anyways! Yea but still…
There’s not much special here, and the lack of weight and balance modeling annoys me, but the thing that makes this aircraft stand out most are the variety of visual models that will add some more role-playing opportunities for you in the sim. Quick, a car chase downtown – hop in the news chopper and get that on Tee Vee!!
I had intended to review this after flying it but upon searching for the download file I came across a much newer version than the one it seems I currently have installed right now. So you can check out the pictures but I’m going to hold off on my review until I can try the new model, as it sounds from the description alone like it fixes some of the problems I have with this one.
Oh dear, I just spent the majority of the day compiling this entry instead of working on KMIV. Sorry MSEA folks! Will get back to work on that tomorrow… better update the schedule…
driving to work with the windows down on this fine winter's day :) 1 hr ago
and let me state once again I fucking hate having a government for a mom my whole goddam life 2 hrs ago
well partially successful. They don't do comm service so it was either take 45 instead of 90 days or bump the case up to a judge. 45 it is 3 hrs ago
off to Trenton for my prehearing conference regarding my license suspension. Fingers crossed! At least it wasn't like 9am... 5 hrs ago
watching PBS show "Carrier" on Netflix, 10 ep series from a 6mo deployment aboard the USS Nimitz during Iraqi Freedom. Pretty awesome so far 20 hrs ago
my god did the people who made the checklist for this aircraft product actually *use it*? Oh this review's going to be another fun one... 1 day ago
swapping gigs of data between 2 drives cuz I'm an idiot & made my FSX storage drive the small one & my install drive the large one /facepalm 1 day ago
Hopefully it will be sometime soon as well… heh
