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Post by Col7777 on Dec 28, 2008 5:36:16 GMT -5
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Post by capflyer on Dec 28, 2008 9:30:18 GMT -5
Just FYI, www.cap.gov will be taken offline in a few weeks. Our "official" webiste is now www.gocivilairpatrol.comAs for flightplans, Good Luck. I'm not sure how you're going to do it, but we don't fly regularly nor do I think we fly anything that FS could necessarily handle.  If you do figure out a way to get the AI planes to fly a search grid or expanding square (we do practice these regularly when we do fly), that would be great. Otherwise, it'll all just have to be currency flights (hitting the pattern of one or more airports and flying practice approaches) or transport flights (flying A-B or A-B-C, with the cargo between B-C). It would be interesting if FS ever incorporated ELTs and you could setup that if an AI or user aircraft had a hard landing it'd set off the ELT and with the AI there would be a random chance of it not being turned off during the shutdown checks and then the CAP plane being generated from another location to go find the ELT. Abacus's "CAP Pilot" software does that to some excent via missions, but it's not random. |
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Post by Col7777 on Dec 28, 2008 12:00:21 GMT -5
If you mean fly to a way-point then to another then that can be done.
I have a few aircraft doing that already, plus I have started some CAP flight plans flying from your airport KRBD to start with.
As for the aircraft you fly I'm not sure what you mean FS can't handle, what models are they?
Col.
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Post by dutch11 on Dec 28, 2008 17:12:02 GMT -5
Our favorite aircraft when I was in was the O-1 Birddog. It was a much better mountain plane than the Skyhawks that replaced it. One of our pilots ground-looped our O-1 up at Libby, MT (of the movie Always fame). We had just got it fixed up again when they took it away. It was one of those serio-comic situations; after the airplane came to a stop, there was avgas quickly forming a pool around the airplane so the pilot, who was over sixty, and a very overweight sheriff's deputy, who had never flown in his life before, were trying to exit the aircraft as quickly as possible. Not at all funny at the time, but the memory of that is.
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Post by capflyer on Dec 28, 2008 18:01:26 GMT -5
Col - Actually, we don't have a plane at Red Bird. The nearest aircraft are at Grand Prairie (a C-182), Dallas Love (a C-172), and Mesquite (another C-182). As for our flights, normally, we fly out to the south of Dallas, somewhere northwest of Midlothian Midway (KJWY, ex-4T6), and fly our practice search patterns off of a grid there. The grids typically start at a degree or half degree and are anchored there. The expanding square is a series of squares that expands as you fly until you fill the full grid (~10 miles by 10 miles). The other typical pattern is the Parallel Search which is a line 10 miles long and about 2 miles apart. The turns at either end must stay within the box though, so the actual level portion is typically about 9-9.5 miles depending on the wind. These types of patterns I don't believe are capable of being replicated by AI. So your flights would have to "replicate" currency or transport flights where we're flying normal aviation maneuvers. The other option is to have it fly a "route search" for a supposed downed aircraft somewhere following along another airplane's track until over it's supposed destination then returning to origin. |
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Post by Col7777 on Dec 28, 2008 20:20:04 GMT -5
Ah! That has changed things a bit.
I will alter the takeoff airport but the pattens you describe would take an awful lot of way-points, what is best is the last option where it looks like a search, or may be a training flight.
You may know already but for those who don't, what happens when they fly to a way-point is, the aircraft goes through a dummy landing at an invisible airport in the sky, then it can't land so does a a go around. You can time the go-arounds by doing a TNG in the flight plan then have it go to another way-point or return to base.
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