In the quest for that extra few fps I tried adding a second SSD but it all ended in disaster. After having loaded Windows and all the various programs to make it stable and usable I have started the long process of re-installing FSX and it’s add-ons again. Seeing a bare FSX for the first time in years also made me aware of just how much we rely on the add-ons to improve our collective flightsim experience.  I even came across a couple of long forgotten half-complete painted models so at least some good came from all of this.  In the meantime I have also had a chance to try Prepar3D v2.  My first impressions of it I found it were very good, particularly the visuals are a big step up from the default FSX, I became very jealous of the 3D clouds (volumetric clouds) and the shadows they cast as they move across the sky. P3Dv2 has moved on to Direct X11 which has allowed them to take the load off the CPU and shift it to the GPU (graphics card) which has resulted in faster frame rates as well as an improved appearance. Flightsim.com interviewed Wesley Bard, software manager at Lockheed Martin about Prepar3dV2, click this to read more. Potentially the sim to take over from FSX?

I'm sure everyone must have heard about the missing Malaysia B777 and it's the focus of real news section. I'm not going to speculate here but I'm sure I speak for all of us when offering our sympathies to those affected.

In this issue of Directions you will find more on UKDirect Air Taxi, an exciting new development for UKDirect and is headed up by John May UKD182 and his glamorous assistant Simon Pal UKD102.

It wouldn’t be a proper edition of Directions without more pearls of wisdom from Simon, this time our hapless hero tries his hand at setting up a multi-monitor display.

Newshound aka Mark UKD171

“The bad news is time flies.
The good news is you’re the pilot.”

    -- Michael Altshuler
 

UKDirect Embraer ERJ-145XR  G-UKDL ”Glasgow Gold” is a new addition to the UKD stable. She carries the logo of the 2014 Commonwealth Games held this year in Glasgow and hence the name

Do you have a screen shot you are proud of? Please send it in and share it with us.
To enter in the next e-magazine send your entries to Newshound: mark[at]planecrazy.me.uk 

Don't worry about editing pictures, sending them as a full size bmp is best and I’ll edit them for Directions

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The Boeing 777 family has been totally covered now with the final two variants - not counting any obscure one-offs! Both are updated V.2 Project Opensky models with virtual  cockpits, feature packed 2D panels, extra camera views and a very good  pdf file - only tested in FSX but I would expect they work in FS2004.
When I was re-installing FSX recently I found a half-finished project that I had completely forgot about!
Another two models from Project Opensky which have been updated by past and new members to be compatible with FSX and including a passable virtual cockpit. It includes sound and panel files and is compatible in both FS2004 and FSX. The virtual cockpit looks great but presently the autopilot cannot be operated from this view.
Both models use the same textures so will have the same registration - G-UKDL Glasgow Gold, a reference to the Commonwealth Games to be held there this summer. Documentation covers all the Ref speeds you should ever need plus a potted history of the type along with full installation instructions.

As always go to the Fleet page to download them and if you experience any problems or have any questions please let me know. I have been including individual documentation with the planes and in many cases this takes longer to write than the paint job, I hope you enjoy them!

UKDirect Boeing 777-300ER G-UKIH Golden Jubilee

UKDirect Embraer ERJ-145XR by Project Opensky.

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19 APR 2014  Airbus A380-842  Singapore Airlines   9B-SKB    C/n: 005   First flight: 2002

An Airbus A380 operated by Singapore Airlines was damaged in a landing incident at Singapore-Changi International Airport (SIN).
Flight SQ-322 took off from runway 02C of Changi Airport at 02:23 hours local time. The airplane climbed to an altitude of about 10,100 feet when the flight reportedly developed problems with two air conditioning packs. The climb was arrested at 02:30 and the flight descended, while turning east.
The A380 circled for about 13 minutes east of Singapore, at an altitude of 8,100 feet before commencing the descent to towards Changi Airport. The airplane landed on runway 02C at 03:03, suffering several blown tyres.
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Airbus A380-watch

The Sunday Times (UK) said that there were at least two other incidents involving Singapore Airlines Airbus A-380’s this year.

In February, Flight SQ 25 from New York to Singapore via Frankfurt landed at Changi after a 23-hour delay. The plane was inspected by engineers in Frankfurt for scratches on its body and later cleared for take-off.

In January, Singapore-bound Flight SQ317 made an emergency landing in Azerbaijan about 10 hours after leaving London. The plane had lost cabin pressure, apparently due to a leak in one of its  doors. The door was replaced before the aircraft could return to  Singapore.

 

Time to get that grey matter working!. Email answers to mark “at” planecrazy.me.uk or use the message facility on FS Airlines.  Answers will be posted in the next Directions but if you email me your guesses I will reply straight away (in confidence - so no need to worry about embarrassment.

1> What is a transponder for?
 
a)        reports your position to other aircraft for TCAS
b)        Inputs heading information to the autopilot
c)        Transmit a code to ATC for identification
d)        Reports and displays weather ahead to the pilot


2> What information would you expect to receive in the 108-117.95MHz range?

a)       VOR radial
b)       Glideslope approach
c)       Air Traffic Control
d)       NDB navigation aids


3> At what distance from the runway would you find the Inner Marker?

a)   Threshold of the runway
b)   1 mile
c)   2 miles
d)   5 miles


 

Answers to last Directions quiz:

1. Which is the worlds busiest airport?
   d)      Atlanta handles nearly 89 million passengers. Heathrow is top of the list for International passengers with just over 60 million.
2. What flight controls are controlled by the plane's yoke?
   c)      Ailerons and elevator.    The ailerons and elevator direct the plane's pitch and roll.
3. The four main forces acting on an air plane are: lift, drag, thrust and ...?
   a)    Weight.  The counter force to lift, which keeps our feet on the floor. Before Gravity had been invented life was much more difficult (but fun)!

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UKDirect Air Taxi

Founded in March 2014, this small outfit was created to give virtual pilots the opportunity to actually see the ground when flying as opposed to monitoring computers at great heights after taking off and before landing.

The Air Taxi ethos is that all flights must be flown to Visual Flight Rules (VFR) without the use of autopilot.  Learn how to trim your aircraft properly and it can be extremely satisfying.

The Air Taxi Division is based at two airfields in the United Kingdom:  Kidlington (EGTK) serving southern UK Destinations and Sywell (Northampton)(EGBK) serving northern UK destinations.

Each base currently operates Beech Baron (BE58), Piper Arrow/Archer/Cherokee/Warrior (PA28 range) and Piper Seneca (PA34) aircraft.

More details can be found on the Air Taxi webpage under the Crew Resources menu, including timetables of scheduled flights which you can also fly with FSAirlines.
As if that wasn’t enough to whet your appetite there are links for free flight planning software, a VFR flying guide and downloads for Edit Voicepack to add the Air Taxi callsign to your FSX/FS2004 ATC.


 

Simon's Guide To Hardware Add-Ons

Hello and welcome to my little article in which I will try to show you the merits (and sometimes pitfalls) of some very exciting bits of hardware. These wonderful add-ons can greatly enhance your entire flying experience. As if it can't get any better being a member of UKDirect.
Much like everybody, once I managed to get a semi decent PC to run FSX with some degree of fluidity the must have piece of kit was naturally a decent joystick. The picture below shows you the model I had which was a Thrustmaster Pro.

So below is the picture of my Saitek Cessna Yoke, these can be picked up for a good price on eBay or sim enthusiasts websites. In most cases they do come with the separate throttle quadrant. Some do also come with small levers attached to the top of the box, so it depends if your tight for space, those may well be a more suitable option.

As you can see the construction is very good with a metal shaft and a very smooth rotation action and as for banking its an utter pleasure.
You'll notice that on the left of the control stick there is a hat button as well as a four way switch. These I use to give me the views out of the left and right windows and ahead as pilot in command and finally a view of the crucial flight instruments. On the right there is two rocker switches which are used for flaps up and down, push back and parking brake.
The whole unit is secured to my desk with a decent screw clamp. Now lets have a look at the throttle quadrant.

Whilst I was in the loft doing the hubby thing of tidying it up I came across an old PC monitor trembling in the corner from lack of use. After talking it down with a cup of tea and a biscuit I had the brilliant idea of hooking it up to FSX.

This was another world of joy to be opened up and enjoyed. Here is how mine looks.

Now as you can see they don’t match in screen size so having an extended cockpit view was not a good idea although I didn’t want that really. What I use it for is an instrument panel so at a glance I can have all the important displays I need at my finger tips whilst still enjoying the view outside. This again I found to be amazingly easy to set up. Once its connected to the PC its again a case of plug in and play. Moving the panels to the 2nd monitor was a dream. Just press ALT whilst in your cockpit view to have the FSX header bar at the top of the screen then just select the panel you want and drag it over to the other screen. The following pics shows how I selected the panels I wanted and moved them to how I wanted to see them.

GPS from main screen to 2nd monitor just click and drag.

Radio Stack moved over.

Outside view moved, then the completed 2nd monitor view.

For me I like to see the GPS, radio stack and a view of the aircraft as its flying. I will issue a word of warning at this stage. Don't panic I'm not going to say this will crash and burn your PC. But I did find on some occasions (and this is the fault of FSX not my PC) having so many additional panels open and running at the same time has caused a few issues of sticking or doing the usual FSX-possessed things to annoy us simmers. It really depends on how hard your CPU is working and depending which plane you fly or how detailed the graphics gets. In the main it works brilliantly, but just be aware you may have to streamline your 2nd monitor views.

Obviously you can put near enough anything onto the second screen, and having it really does place you into the thick of all the fabulous detail and instrumentation.

So there you have my humble set up. This is by no means finished or even top spec, but it keeps me happy. Things that I will aim for in the future would be a separate Trim Wheel as when flying the new fabulous UKDirect Air Taxi service, doing it fully manual and VFR would help out a bit.

Simon Pal UKD102

The quirkiest aviation facts and questions!

I trawled the internet to find the strangest facts relating to aviation, I also came across some interesting questions and statements on forums, here is a selection below:

1. It takes less than 1 second to suck a 100 ft roll of toilet paper into an B767 toilet. - Wow. Now that is impressive!
   With 3 sheets to the foot that's more than 300 sheets at a speed of in excess 18,000 sph (sheets per hour). Isn't that faster than Concorde or something? 
   
   100ft of paper in 1 sec, that's 6,000 ft in 1 minute or 36,0000 ft in 1 hour.
   So that's approximately 68 mph, or 109 km/h.
   Although it's still impressive, it's very far from being faster than Concorde
    
2. On an A320, once you flush the toilet, it will inhibit the flush in all lavatories of the aircraft during 7 seconds
    
3. I'm told that the Wright brothers' first flight could have been done entirely within the fuselage of a C-5 Galaxy.
   My impression is that the Wright brothers' first flight was before the C-5 was built. Wilbur died soon after that first flight - 1912 I believe, although Orville lived a lot longer, dying in 1948 at the age of 77. So I'm pretty certain that choosing Kitty Hawk rather than waiting for the C-5, despite the protection it would have given them from adverse air currents, was a good one.
    
4. All supersonic aircraft have to have some system of slowing the air entering the engine to subsonic speed, not just the Concorde. Jet engines can not function if supersonic air get to the compressor section.
    
5. When will Air France wash their planes?
    
6. The Boeing 767 sucks in enough air during take-off in both of its engines to fill the Goodyear Glimpse in 7 seconds.
    
7. If a snowman was built on the ramp, and sucked into a turbofan, would anything happen?
   You end up with some water and a shredded carrot - more fun than a food processor!
   
   And a trashed turbofan. They can eat snow without problem, until it is clumped together into a tightly packed snowball. The compression of the snow melts slightly and refreezes into ice. The blades don't like ice very much and you will damage them when ingesting that amount of ice.
    
8. You can fit 45 mid size automobiles on only one wing of a Boeing 747-400.
   I expect it would tip over if you tried it though.
    
9. Elvis Presley only ever set foot once on UK soil and that was at EGPK/PIK in 1960 when the aircraft he was traveling on stopped to refuel.
   He was en route to Germany for his military service.
   So that wasn't him in the chip shop in Brighton then??
    
10. Concorde was painted in Pepsi colours (Blue) at one point and it also could only be permitted to fly subsonic. The reason is that a colour other than white, would result in the airframe exceeding it's temperature threshold due to friction.
     
11. The fuselage of the Concorde is about 12 inches longer during supersonic cruise.
     
12. When an SR-71 is fueled and on the ground, fuel leaks out since the fuel tanks don't "seal" properly until the aircraft is in the air. Heat created by the friction of air passing over the skin of the aircraft seals the fuel tanks.
     
13. A C-130 Hercules landed on an aircraft carrier in the 60's, without using arresting cables or a tail-hook. (it also took off!!)
     
14. The windows in the control tower are tilted at 15 degrees out to minimize reflections
     
15. Charles A. Lindbergh never took off from Lindbergh Field. His plane first took off from the Ryan Airport at Dutch Flats and later North Island. Lindbergh Field opened a year later in AUG 1928.
     
16. The air inside the cabin of a 747 weighs over one ton.
     
17. The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of pax only. There is no parking in the red zone.
     
18. The wing of a 747 can be bent upwards 29 feet before snapping.
     
19. A TWA 707 was lost the entire outer portion of one wing, from the outer engine outward, in a mid-air collision with an Eastern Airlines constellation in 1965. The 707 landed safely.
    Afterwards, TWA mechanics (probably Joe Patroni) scribbled out that a 707 could be dispatched with the outer wings missing. It could possibly be the incident that gave Arthur Haley one of his inspirations for "Airport".
     
20. There are various rules which are imposed by different airlines. However, there is one rule which is common to the vast majority of them. It is the rule that pilots must be fed the same multi-course meal given to those in the first and business class whilst the co-pilots are encouraged to eat different entrees to guard against cases of food poisoning
     
21. The Lockheed TriStar contains nearly a mile of hydraulic tubing, the electrical systems contained enough wire to stretch 100 miles (160 km) and are able to generate enough electricity to serve the needs of 170 single family homes.
     
22. A Boeing 747 is made up of six million parts
     
23. The lifespan of an airliner is not truly measured in time. Instead, it is counted based on pressurization cycles. Each time an aircraft is pressurized during a flight its fuselage is subjected to stress. The "lifespan" of an aircraft is reached when there are certain  metal fatigues and cracks which may pose danger. The "service life of 20 years" is generally expressed by approximate figures of 51,000 flight hours and 75,000 pressurization cycles for most aircraft. If an aircraft is used on long haul routes it experiences relatively few pressurization cycles in its "life" and can remain airworthy far beyond 20 years.
     
24. Stewardess is the longest word in the English language typed with just the left hand on a desktop keyboard?
    You just tried it didn't you!?
     
25. Air pressure conditions in planes reduce our ability to taste properly. Salt and sugar all taste weaker when in the air while our smell and taste detection thresholds are higher under lower pressure on the ground. The findings helped Lufthansa improve their in-flight meal offerings.
     
26. KLM stands for Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij NV (Royal Aviation Company) to be exact. It also happens to be the worlds’ oldest airline, established in 1919,  with its maiden voyage taking flight in 1920 between Amsterdam and London. As for the second oldest? It's Qantas (Originally an acronym for Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services), which was formed in 1920 and has the best safety record with no fatal crashes in their history.
     
27. United hired the first female flight attendant in 1930. Ellen Church, a 25-year-old registered nurse made history and in turn started a trend of female nurses working on airplanes -  completely replacing men by 1936. Requirements for the job back then included weighing no more than 115 pounds (52kg), being a nurse and unmarried. Interestingly enough, Heinrich Kubis was Germany's and the world’s first flight attendant, in 1912
     
28. The Wing-span of the A380 is longer than the aircraft itself. Wingspan: 80m, Length: 72.7m. While a Boeing 747s wing-span is longer than the Wright Brothers first flight (120ft).
     
29. A mile-high operation
    What do you do if you crash your motorcycle on the way to the airport? If you’re Paula Dixon, you board the plane.  This is exactly what happened back in 1995.  Once on the airplane she started complaining of chest pains. Angus Wallace, Britain’s most respected orthopaedic surgeon at the time, assessed Dixon and determined that she was most likely suffering from tension pneumothorax, meaning her rib had punctured the membrane around her lung, breaking the airtight seal in her chest cavity. Wallace decided to operate on Dixon 35 000 feet in the air. He used part of a coat hanger sterilized with brandy to insert a tube into her chest cavity.  Dixon quickly recovered as the procedure allowed air to escape and decompress her chest. As for the brandy? Wallace said he drank it after the operation.
     
30. Ban that reclining seat
    75% of all in flight arguments between grown adults are a result of economy passengers reclining their seats.  A recent survey shows most passengers could not be bother if the person behind them happens to be pregnant, old or frail. In fact nine out of 10 passenger want the reclining seat banned.
     
31. Hijacking alert?
    Can you believe that hijacking of aircraft was not officially outlawed until 1961?
     
32. To the moon and back
    The Boeing 747 (all versions) has traveled an estimated 35 billion statute miles that is the equivalent of 75 000 trips to the moon and back - 75 000 also happens to be the number of engineer drawings it took to build the first Boeing 747-100.
     
33. You can fit 6 million golf balls inside of a Boeing 757 freighter.