Advice please

[William Raymond]

First of all thanks for this nifty training aid. A couple suggestions if I may and also one problem

 

1) Is it possible to have default settings for file locations so as not to go back and forth between ACSim and asrc or where ever folks keep sector files? It seems to only remember the last setting.

 

2) Anyway to use FIXES/VORS etc for aircraft location instead of lat/long? Quite time consuming tracking these down and entering them. At least to be able to do this while connected on the fly. If ACSim can read navaids from the sector file this may very well be possible. Taking this to the next level situation files could be created by loading sector files and then entering positions from the navaids and then doing a save. Hope I explained this ok

 

Had a problem with ILS at an airport with runway number 7...Did all the different approaches and kept the angle well within 30 degrees and the target would not intercept. The docomeentation said something about the airport name popping up and I also did not see this. Entering GS had no effect and returned a 'no loc' message. The target was well within 15 miles of the airport and I tried different formats; 7 and 07.

 

Thanks again for this program. It will certainly make training more accessible

[Christopher Serio 823884]

William,

 

I should state that the ACSim was written about 5 years ago. I had every intention to add a ton of features and expansions to it but i got roped into writting the AVC and voice library and then began other projects so it never got done. I agree there are many many things that can make this easier to use.

 

I only included the "Add Aircraft" feature for completeness. I find it very difficult to use and therefore i never use it. I make my situation files and i load those on the fly when i want to add new types of aircraft. For instance, if a student is doing well, i'll open my VFR situation file and add a few VFR's that way. Or maybe i'll open a departures situation file and add another 10 departures to the rwy. The point is, make good building blocks out of your situation files once and then you'll never have to do it again. You'll be able to build different scenarios based on the which blocks you open and when.

[William Raymond]

Thanks Chris I understand the work involved.

 

Any comment or recommendation on the ILS problem?

[Dan Everette]

Bill,

 

Can you post a link to the sector file you're using, as well as the ICAO of the airport?

[William Raymond]

Dan its MKJS and I dont have a link but I could copy and paste it if it would help

[Dan Everette]

Bill,

 

Can you e-mail it to me? My e-mail address is on:

 

http://www.bostonartcc.net/staff/

[Christopher Serio 823884]

Does the sector file that you used have a ILS information for that runway? Can you see the extended centerlines for the rwy? If not, the ACSim won't know about the approach either.

 

Also GS won't work unless you enter a localizer first. And the ACSim hasn't accepted your localizer entry unless it displays the airport ICAO above the box.

[Dan Everette]

Does the sector file that you used have a ILS information for that runway? Can you see the extended centerlines for the rwy? If not, the ACSim won't know about the approach either.

 

Also GS won't work unless you enter a localizer first. And the ACSim hasn't accepted your localizer entry unless it displays the airport ICAO above the box.

 

What he said

 

Change the following entry in your sector file:

 

[RUNWAY]

; MKJS

07 25 000 000 N018.29.55.399...

 

replace the 000 entries with the magnetic runway heading for runways 07 and 25 respectfully. Just tried it out and works here.

 

Cheers,

[William Raymond]

Thanks Dan and Chris.

 

If any problems will get back to you

 

Cheers

[Mike Nowinski 811269]

Great works guys.

 

The main obstacle is the obtaining and converting of the lat/lon coordinates. Quite a job. Is there an easier way, such as using the sector files or perhaps the method that Groundmaker or AFCAD use to do this through FSUIPC?

 

What are your recommendations to set up departure scenarios? After setting up two a/c for departure, I realized that they will both be on the runway at the same time at startup.

 

After reading a few of the other posts to the forum, I [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ume that ACSim is not for Ground/Tower training.

 

Cheers,

 

Mike Nowinski

VATCAR Training Director

[Ross Carlson]

Great works guys.

 

The main obstacle is the obtaining and converting of the lat/lon coordinates. Quite a job. Is there an easier way, such as using the sector files or perhaps the method that Groundmaker or AFCAD use to do this through FSUIPC?

 

Once VRC is released, you'll be able to use it to get the lat/lon for any point on the scope. It has a debug command that shows the mouse cursor's lat/lon in a little window. I also have a small program that uses FSUIPC to get the aircraft's current location in order to build the airport files needed by TWRTrainer (see below) which I'll also make available for download once TWRTrainer is released.

 

After reading a few of the other posts to the forum, I [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ume that ACSim is not for Ground/Tower training.

 

We (ZBW) have been using a program I put together called TWRTrainer for TWR/GND/DEL training. It's very similar to ACSim, but intended for the local airport environment, and not for vectoring training. It uses airport description files (which you must create once for any airport you want to train at) which include the lat/lon for taxiways and runways and their intersections, as well as aircraft files similar to ACSim's. You control the aircraft through text commands in ASRC/VRC on a special frequency. You can tell them to taxi, position and hold, takeoff, fly the pattern, land, track an ILS, climb/descend, turn, etc.

 

TWRTrainer needs an update before it will connect to the new public sweatbox server, but I won't get to that until after VRC is released.

[Michael Catalfamo 875749]

In the mean time, check out this simple VB application that was posted here:

 

http://forums.vatsim.net/viewtopic.php?t=6790&highlight=sector+file+editor

 

Using this, you can load any sector file and then extract a coordinate from any point on the screen by double clicking. I haven't used it for this purpose yet, however it seems to be perfectly feasible.