|
|
Easy Runway Aligment by: Steve Sokolowski  
In the 1990s, I lived
in in a place called Waikoloa. A village located on the island of
Hawaii. On those lazy days in paradise, flying a Piper Tomahawk with a
buddy of mine was one of those experiences I'll not soon forget. Taking
off from Kailua-Kona Airport in the early morning; with its sunlight
glistening like the sparkle of diamonds upon the crystal aqua-blue water
of the Pacific; I reached my crusing altitude of 2000 feet. With ocean
water below; majestic mountains, topped with a light sprinkle of newly
fallen snow; reminincent of whipped cream covering the top of a
childhood ice cream sundae; to my left. If this wasn't heaven, it was a
close second. With only 5 hours of flying time under my belt, I left the
black sand beaches of the Big Island for the now crowded state of
Florida.
Leaving my friend and his Tomahawk behind, I longed for
the days of strapping myself in the seat; releasing the parking brake
and pushing that throttle to the firewall; waiting for that moment of
freedom. Freedom from the bonds of earth called gravity.
I had
it. I admit it. I had the flying bug, deep within me. And the only "fix"
that would satisfy this strange addiction, was the purchase by
Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2002. Nothing can compare to flying with
the clouds, but Microsoft has come close.
The biggest problem I
have with FS2002, is trying to visualize a three dimensional world,
while being confined to the realm of a two dimensional computer monitor.
While on "final" to Ocala Reginal Airport (Florida - KOCF) it's hard to
visualize your attitude in reference to the airport. To help with a VFR
landing, I made use of the available ILS signal from Ocala. At a
frequency of 111.5MHz, both horizontal location and altitude above the
airport is easily made available at a glance. But it stilled lacked
"reality".
While surfing the internet one day, I came across the
"HOW TO . . " articles found on the FlightSim.com web site. There was
one of the many fine articles that caught my attention. It was
titled:
"Stay Aligned With The Runway On Approach" by Bob
Allison
 Bob came up with a novel; yet
simple modification that literatly painted a small blue box on the
computer monitor in the approximately location of the runway threshold.
But when I tried the "trick", I found out pretty fast that the blue box
was moving out of the range of the viewing window when decending 500
feet per minute to an airport. So why not convert the small blue box to
a 4 inch long blue vertical line.
Take a look at Figure 1. Just
by changing the box into a line, you can easily align your "172" for
perfect landings without the use of the ILS. With just the use of the
VOR (130.70MHz for Ocala Reginal), compass and the magical blue line,
you can easily maneuver your aircraft until the runway threshold is
located within the boundries of the blue line (lets call it the Alignment Bar).
Modifying the Panel.cfg File
To get the Alignment Bar to appear
on screen, a small number programming lines must be added to the
aircraft you wish to change. To add the Aligmment Bar to the Cessna 172;
for example, just locate . . .
C:Program Files/Microsoft
Games/FS2002/aircraft/c172/panel/panel.cfg
using Windows
Notepad editor. Just remember; it is a good idea to save the PANEL.CFG
program to another file or hard drive BEFORE making any changes. So that
if any errors are made, the original .CFG file can be easily
re-installed.
With Panel.cfg displayed on your Notepad editor;
lets tell the computer that we will be adding another window to the
program. Under [Window Titles] - add the following: window05=target (see
below). The original program is colored in "Brown"; while the added material is in
"Blue".
//
Panel Configuration file
// Cessna 172sp
// Copyright (c) 2001
Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
[Window
Titles]
Window00=Main Panel
Window01=Radio
Stack
Window02=GPS
Window03=Annunciator
Window04=Compass
window05=target // <== Add this Line
[Window00]
file=panel_background_640.bmp
file_1024=panel_background_1024.bmp
size_mm=640
position=7
visible=1
no_luminous=1
ident=MAIN_PANEL
Now we must define the color, position and thickness of the
Alignmenr Bar. To do this; just add the following 11 lines to the .CFG
file as seen in Blue (below) after [Window04}
[Window04]
file=172SP_compass.bmp
size_mm=70
position=2
visible=0
ident=COMPASS_PANEL
gauge00=Magnetic_Compass!Magnetic-Compass,0,0
//------------------------------------------------
[Window05]
// VERTICAL BLUE
LINE
Background_color=41,200,253
size_mm=512
window_size_ratio=1.00
position=0
visible=0
ident=Target
window_size=
0.003, 0.407
window_pos= 0.505, 0.07 // Position left, Position
Up-Down
// Increase this Number '.505' Line goes RIGHT Lower this
number '0.07' - Line goes up
//
------------------------------------------------
[VCockpit01]
size_mm=512,512
pixel_size=512,512
texture=$C172s_1
background_color=0,0,0
visible=0
gauge00=Bendix_King_Radio!Bendix-King
Radio Nav-Comm 1, 0, 0, 205, 77
gauge01=Bendix_King_Radio!Bendix-King
Radio Nav-Comm 2, 206, 0, 205, 77
gauge02=Cessna172!Clock, 413, 1,
93, 93
gauge03=Bendix_King_Radio!Bendix-King Radio DME, 0, 86, 198,
51
gauge04=Bendix_King_Radio!Bendix-King Radio . . . . . . . . .
ECT.
With the added lines complete,
SAVE the file to its original hard drive location:
C:Program Files/Microsoft
Games/FS2002/aircraft/c172/panel/panel.cfg
It's now time to
RUN Flight Simulator S2002 and take a look at our handiwork.
When
loaded, select the Cessna C172SP and hit "Fly Now". With the 172 file
running, you will be greeted with the usual Cessna Panel display and
scenery window. To activate the Aligmnent Bar; hit the SHIFT-6
buttons. Magically the Blue Line will appear. To remove the Bar; just
hit the SHIFT-6 buttons again.
Using the Alignment Bar
Lets say your flying at 2100 feet and you're at 30
degrees to the left of the centerline at the desired airport (Use the
ILS if available). Turn on the Alignment Bar (See Figure 2). Notice the
ILS indicates that you're over too far to the left and need to
compensate. The idea is now to manuver your Cessna so that the Runway
"Centerline" is parallel to the Alignment Bar. Figure 3 indicates that
you are on the Glide Path and that the Alignment Bar is parallel to the
runway's centerline. Figure 4 is from a previous flight, note the
Alignment Bar is centered with the Runway. The ILS indicates proper
positioning; although a bit low. I've also included the GPS in this
photo. See how the GPS shows proper alignment with the Runway.
 
Figure
5 shows your Cessna about .5 miles from the Runway; the Alignment Bar is
still centered with the Runway. Continuing your final decent on this
approach will guarantee you a successful landing. Time and Time
again.
Figure
5
I can be reached for Comments
or Suggestions at:
Support@DesktopAviator.com
On Feb 3, 2009, I received an
email from one of my Flight Sim buddies, Stan Shear, from Vancouver, BC.
He came up with a small modification that allows the Runway Alignment
Bar to be used on multiple aircraft, using FSUIPC and a Hot Key. Well,
enough with my explanation on how it works, here is Stan in his own
works.
Hey Stan, Thanks
for the email, the modifications and the OK to reprint your
code.
Hi Steve
I've been flightimming for years now, but
still have that suspenseful problem of final line-up without the visual
cues of real-life landings. And then I saw your solution on
Flightsim, and thought, wow, brilliant.
It's a really great
solution, but with the number of panels on modern planes since your
publication in 2005, and trying to find an unused hotkey
combination, the only way you can allocate a specific hotkey is to use
FSUIPC, but it's still difficult to find a solution that will apply
universally to any aircraft, so I was wondering whether you had any
ideas? I found the following:
1. It is one heck of a
job to find a hotkey allocation that is not used for a specific
aircraft. Somehow they don't all show up in the control
assignments and you get all sorts of windows popping up after allocating
with FSUIPC that you can't locate. Strange but
true.
2. I eventually got it to work with my Piper
Archer. You have to specify a specific ident and I used an ident
of 24, which was the Window number, and the Control-R key combination,
and got no reaction. I then changed the ident to 124 and it
worked, and I just had to move the line up to the top of the screen.
4. I then tried the same settings on my Beech Baron and
couldn't get any reaction. Not a darn thing. I tried various
idents and various keystrokes, but nothing happened.
5. I
think its a good idea and would be great if you could get the some
hotkey combination for all your aircraft otherwise you would have to
remember specific combinations for each aircraft, and that's not
on. Also the postion settings will probably have to be modified
for every plane - not a big deal since I only have a few that I
concentrate on (Piper Archer, Beechcraft Baron, and DH Beaver- but each
of the last-name's million combinations of course has its own
panel.cfg). The two problems are the ident number and finding a
vacant hotkey combination.
If there's a simple solution to
all this, your idea would really be MOST useful, and I'd certainly like
to apply it. Are you still using it by the way?
Cheers
Stan Shear
(Vancouver)
Hi Steve
Since my email I did some
further investigation and succeeded in getting it working. What
you have to do is to allocate in the [Window Titles] section,
WindowNN=10001, where NN is the next available window, and 10001 is a
number between 10000 and 19999 according to the literature, which says
that if you allocate a non standard ident to the window, it should be
between these two numbers.
Under [WindowNN] your code is
the same except that ident=10001.
I also found that I had to
change the vertical position of the line to position it correctly.
The horizontal position was fine.
THEN you have to use Peter
Dowson's FSUIPC to allocate a free hotkey combination. I have used
Control-R, which I allocate to the Panel_ID-Toggle event, and this so
far works fine for all my aircraft.
That's it. It's a very
useful utility - much better than Ms's little triangle aid, so thanks
for that.
Here's the final code, just
for convenience.
Add to [Window
Titles]
WindowNN=10001
where NN is the next Window in sequence and 10001 corresponds to
the ident number which should be between 10000 and
19999
Then add the code
for –WindowNN}
[WindowNN]
//VERTICAL BLUE
LINE
Background
color=41,200,253
size_mm=512
window_size_ratio=1.00
position=0
visible=0
ident = 10001 //from [Window Titles
allocation]
window_size=0.003,0.407
window_pos=0.505,0.01//Position left, Postion
Up-Down (this is the only number
I changed).
//Increase this
Number '0.505' line goes RIGHT, Lower this number '0.01' line goes
up.
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Then use FSUIPC to allocate the activation key to the
Panel_ID_Toggle event. I
use Control-R
Regards
Stan
If you have any comments or questions, Stan can be
contacted directly at:
stanshear@gmail.com
|
|
