greggerm

As designed and provided by Honeywell on some carriers 787 - they are not standard issue.

Goes to show you the differences of perception. Having watched the videos, I don't see a fireball with the initial crash - just a massive cloud of that brown dust kicked up from the airplane cartwheeling and slamming down in the dirt. Something in/near the remaining engine ignited and it spread slow enough for the passengers to evacuate. The black smoke from the fire is visible in the video footage, emerging from the dust cloud almost immediately after the final slam into the ground. This is consistent with that still-running engine and fuel tank sustaining damage from that phase of the crash. The now famous (*first) passenger evacuation photo speaks to the fire as well, with a moderate plume of black smoke coming from behind the airplane on the #2 engine side of the fuselage. A later passenger photo shows that black plume extinguished by the ARFF as passengers continue to evacuate and mill around, prior to the cabin getting heavily involved. Ultimately, over the history of aviation more experienced pilots have made more egregious mistakes causing far more tragic results. People, like machines, are certainly not infallible and crash after crash have shown how a chain of single, simple mistakes or omissions can end up in a serious incident. I'll be curious to read the reports on the CVR about how the cockpit was being managed during approach. -Greg

The picture continues to trend towards cockpit management/crew errors. Now we're getting word that this flight was the PNF's first flight as a trainer/senior pilot (Link). While this still doesn't solidify what occurred on Sunday in the slightest, the news continues to lend itself towards the classic "chain of errors" which often precede an accident such as this.

The cockpit voice recorder and data recorders will be very important to this investigation. It'll help the investigators determine if the crew discussed anything amiss, the flight parameters along the glidepath, and any mechanical issues which may have cropped up on the approach. The CVR will also help demonstrate if the PNF did any verbal coaching along the glidepath, or if he let the PF take it all the way in. I believe the data recorder will also log the control inputs provided on either control column, as well as the throttles, giving investigators insight into who took what action, and when, in coordination with any mechanical anomalies, should they exist. If you haven't yet, watch the amateur video taken from the shore which catches the last quarter mile or so of the airplane's approach - it looks all too much like some of the approaches I've flown in a flight simulator - plowing through the air at very low altitudes just feeling for the runway with my main landing gear after coming up short on my descent. And to see the fuselage bounce, pitch up and roll, and get flung around like a sheet of cardboard only to pancake on the ground hard... and to have 99.4% of those onboard survive? Despite what may have caused the incident, I think amazing luck joined forces with amazing engineering over in San Francisco the other day. Wow.

Holy cow, you're not far from it... Article link...

Oh yeah... Not all aircraft available in the simulation world are actually available to fly in FSEconomy. To see a list of the aircraft which are usable in FSE, visit "Home > Aircraft Configs"... this will give you a list of all the aircraft types which are actually in FSEconomy. (The Jetstream 41 is available, but the 32 is not) You can also use the "Airports" page's "Airports which have this aircraft" search option. From the pulldown list, you can select an airframe type and it will pop up a list of airports which have that airplane onsite... even better, check off the "rentable" checkbox before you search to only return results of actual rentable airplanes. -Greg

I'm more of an independent operator out in FSEconomy (*and not looking for group membership) but I've been an FSE'er for years and years. "Hub" flying is often a good way to make some money - finding an airport with jobs which regularly replenish themselves and filling your airplane up for a good efficient flight. Often times, "hub" flying helps support less economical trips, like a sightseeing trip around the world... A year or two ago I took a Pilatus PC-12 on an around-the-world flight via FSEconomy... and to spice it up I went the polar route... From the equator flying north up through North America, over the north pole and then south through Asia down to Australia, over Antarctica and back up via Cape Horn in South America to find the same airport I started at. Not your standard east-west/west-east around the world flight! (*All done within the confines of FSEconomy!) Predominantly flying my Dash-8 Q400 via FSX, and just recently acquired the DC-3 via X-Plane out of Providence, Rhode Island KPVD (USA). The Dash-8 fits my flying style perfectly, but I was not using X-Plane 10 at ALL so I bought my first and only payware aircraft and I'm using it for short jaunts in the New England area on occasion. If you ever make it up that way, stop in and say hi. And be sure to frequent the FSEconomy user forums - LOTS of great users fostering a good community. -Greg

And in case anyone was looking to check in, the FSEconomy servers are back up and operational after an oddball extended outage. http://www.fseconomy.com -Greg

I highly recommend FSEconomy as a great in-between to virtual airlines where you might feel a little stuffy, and apps like Air Hauler which are "single player" tools. FSEconomy blends the community aspects of a VA in with the man-on-a-mission aspects of Air Hauler into one unified experience which is hard to beat. I do essentially ALL my simulation flying with FSEconomy. Despite X-Plane and FSE being compatible in most respects, aspects of my flying style and personal preferences don't lend themselves well to X-Plane just yet. That is one of the key reasons I have not been able to make the switch to flying more with X-Plane. I've done a few FSE flights in X-Plane but still find myself returning to "old faithful". That's not to say YOU wouldn't like it - there are many FSEconomy pilots using X-Plane and loving every moment. FSEconomy doesn't inherently enhance or detract from one platform or another really - if you like X-Plane flying, you'll love X-Plane flying with FSEconomy! Give it a shot! -Greg

I've seen it as a US Navy and US Air Force punch list, but it's funny no matter what.

I read about, and subsequently did by accident, place a taxiway polygon over the end of a runway which in turn suppressed runway approach light stanchions. Although I see that the runway above is engineered with a displaced threshold, if the original poster can accept not having the big white arrows (or a concrete/asphalt patch), perhaps placing a small taxiway polygon over that transmitter will suppress it visually as well?

That would be a localizer antenna... most likely dropped in there due to the fact a nearby runway has an ILS associated with it. How to REMOVE it is another question... perhaps a small exclude box to remove objects?

It's in a folder called "Extra Aircraft" \ "Aircraft from Previous Versions" \ "Mega-Planes!" This probably indicates it might not be as accurate, detailed, or functional in the newer version, but it looks like they left it in. -Greg

In order of average use these days... Euro Truck Sim 2 FSX+FSEconomy Battlefield 3 Train Simulator 2013 X-Plane 10 Sim City (New) Occasional long-term forays into Minecraft and EVE Online are not out of the question once a year or so.

Noted. Thanks!

Now that they are in OSM as seen on the map link, the islands should appear when the scenery is rebuilt for that area in the coming months.

Can you look in www.openstreetmap.org to see if the roads still terminate in the lake you're referencing? If they do, let me know the lake name/area so I can jump in and repair it. As Alpilotx points out, there would likely be thousands of potential conflicts like the ones you're talking about... as well as conflicts where a continuous road seems to jut out into a lake and then return to land - due to either an inaccurate shoreline OR an inaccurate road following the shoreline. Since there's no real rhyme and reason to which of these data errors it might be, it's probably best to try and fix them at the source in OSM rather than have the X-Plane scenery logic try to interpret what is going on and fix it there. Frankly, I'm surprised I haven't received more tips for missing water in OSM. In the meantime, I'm trying to smooth out some jagged PGS coastlines in New England... that's a lot of work in and of itself. -Greg

Larry, I'm disappointed in you... Evil grin. Utah Lake is indeed in OSM already and if the re-cut is performed in that area, it should show up! Thanks for the tip on a possible work area though! Cheers! -Greg

You want to know what's funny? I added most of Dale Hollow Lake into OSM on FRIDAY. (*My wife lived for a while down in Tennessee, and I had some FSEconomy FBO's down there too - I was following the Cumberland River upstream out of Nashville, and came up towards that area and noticed that Dale Hollow was missing. Traced it in Friday... believe it or not.)

Yeah, the PGS coasts are, shall we say, lacking. I think OSM lost some coastline fidelity when they had to change licensing models. Those are a bit tough to work on because often times, the nodes are shared with other objects. It's very easy to delete the entire coastline segment and then re-trace it, but if you have shared nodes, it all goes to heck... I have a new method for water though - created an export script at "Overpass" to only pull water elements I want to see - feed it into JOSM - then overlay an aerial image. Instantly able to see what lakes/ponds are missing, and which are there in the area pulled. Not good for HUGE areas, but good enough to get more work done.

Indeed - I've done extensive reading on the subject, as cartography has always been a little hobby of mine in addition to flight simming. There are a few ways XP10 translates OpenStreetMap data into water, and I'm well versed in at least the map-side tagging needed for all. In addition, they've updated how they'll be getting their water data for the new scenery recuts, so in most cases, if the water is present in OSM, it'll end up present in one form or another in XP10. If there's missing water in the OSM map, I'd like to know where so I can draw it in with the hopes that it gets into the sim at some point.

Hiya, After adding thousands of square miles of water to OpenStreetMaps in my local region and in other areas, I'd like to do more targeted work on getting water which may be missing in X-Plane 10 into the OSM database so that when and if the scenery is re-worked, water will be there. If you know of a local lake, pond, or river of substance which is missing in the UNITED STATES in X-Plane 10, follow these steps: STEP ONE: Visit www.openstreetmap.org and LOOK to see if the water you are missing is on the map - zoom in close to be sure. If it IS there, great! No work is needed, and if the scenery is recut, the water should show up. If it is NOT there, move on to step two. (I will be very disappointed if you do not perform step one. Save us all the time and effort and make sure that the data is actually missing from the OSM map before making your request.) STEP TWO: Post a message with the city/state of the water, and the general location of the missing water (eg: 2 miles southwest of town center). I'll do my best to get it worked into OSM, but keep in mind it does depend on how many requests I get and how complex the water bodies are. I would like to avoid requests for your aunt's backyard fish pond or the stream at the end of the neighborhood street... if it's clearly visible from the air and clearly a loss to not have it in the sim, let me know! -Greg (PS : Posted to general discussion because while this work does lead to better scenery, it's not really a "scenery design" post/comment and I need as many "regular" users to see this as possible.)

Cool. Thanks for the info.

Can someone confirm this for me? I am looking more for an airplane I can jump in, punch a quick GPS destination, a quick vertical speed/altitude hold, and get under way without the need for any full on FMC programming. I'd imagine that for the price, it does contain some semblance of an FMC, but I don't want to assume.

Rated PG-13 for language, but rated awesome for the content. Well, well done.