Category: Prepar3D V1-4 - Utilities
FS Flight Builder

Images related to this file:

• FS_Flight_Builder_1.jpg
• FS_Flight_Builder_2.jpg
• FS_Flight_Builder_3.jpg
• FS_Flight_Builder_4.jpg

File Description: New version: Updated installer and auto-update functionality along with chart downloaded changes to support browser updated security measures. FS Flight Builder is a utility for general aviation flying that will build flight files for FSX (flt), FSX Steam Edition (flt), and Prepar3D (fxml) based on waypoints and other data either entered manually or imported from SkyVector using the Plain Text Link information. Among other things, you can select your starting position, aircraft, and VFR or IFR flight plan. One of the most interesting features of the application is that it will include a Briefing file, added to the aircraft's built-in kneedboard, that will include departure and destination airport information (runways, frequencies, weather, and charts) as well as navigation frequencies along the route. Have you ever started up flight simulator and wondered “where do I want to go today”? The new Destination Chooser functionality can help to solve that problem. The screen allows you to enter your departure airport and choose various parameters for your destination (like min and max distance, tower availability, ILS availability, runway length requirements, etc.). How to install: *************** Run Setup.exe and simply follow the installation wizard. When you run the application for the first time (make sure your flight simulator is not running), it will build the database from your flight sim data. Be patient. It could take a few minutes. It will attempt to locate your flight sim folder and flight plan folders automatically. If it can't find them, however, you'll need to select them from the options menu. IMPORTANT! Because FS Flight Builder saves to your Flight Sim directories, it MUST be run in Administrator mode. To do this, right-click on the desktop icon, select the Compatibility tab, and check the Run as administrator checkbox. IMPORTANT! The airport and navaid databases for FS Flight Builder are built using Peter Dowson's excellent Make Runway utility and the equally excellent BGL2XML utility from ScruffyDuck Software. The links to these utilities are below. They must be added to the main FSX or Prepar3D folder. Peter Dowson's website: http://www.schiratti.com/dowson.html ScruffyDick Software website: http://www.scruffyduck.org/bgl2xml/4584282773 It's also important to note that Version 1.7 of BGL2XML is required for Prepar3D V3 and higher. Author: ******* Tom Arduini The latest installer can always be found at http://www.arduiniwebdevelopment.com/fsflightbuilder/fsflightbuilder.zip

Filename:	FS_Flight_Builder.zip
License:	Freeware
Added:	24th December 2018, 02:41:36
Downloads:	408
Author:	Tom Arduini
Size:	69.56 MB

Category: X-Plane - Original Aircraft
Spruce Goose for X-Plane 6.4/6.51 (hk-1/H-4 Hercules)

File Description:
Spruce Goose v1.0 for X-Plane copyright (c) by Robert App, January 2003. History of the "Goose" - Officially designated the HK-1 (this project started out as a join venture between Hughes Aircraft and Kaiser) and later designated the H-4 Hercules after Kaiser was unable to work with Howard. It was and still remains the largest (physical dimensions wingspan and length) aircraft ever built, with the largest radial engines ever built by the West (28 cylinder, 3000 HP). The plane had to be constructed mainly of wood due to the shortage of strategic metals caused by WWII. The plane became known as the "Spruce Goose" or "Flying Lumberyard" despite the fact that the wood frame and skin were constructed mainly of laminated poplar; it also involved "sandwich" construction. The plane was flown briefly on a trial taxiing run but Hughes never allowed the plane to be flown again. Speculation has always been rampant that the design was flawed and the plane could not have met the original specification requirements. The X-Plane model is as accurate as is possible with limited plans available to me. The main wing is an X-Plane standard symmetrical high lift airfoil as opposed to the high lift asymmetrical foil section used in the actual plane. The main wing angle of attack has been adjusted to emulate the asymmetrical foil as closely as possible. Flight Testing the Goose - I have spent many hours testing the plane on X-Plane which with few exceptions provides a very accurate flight model. The published landing speed (79 mph) pretty well verifies the takeoff speed of 52 to 55 knots (k/hr x 1.15 (approx.) = mph). In straight flight the plane is difficult to stall since the nose quickly drops and increases speed if a stall develops with a significant loss of altitude. The plane has a range on 14000 gallons of fuel and takeoff weight of 350,000 Lbs of well over 3000 nautical miles. San Diego to Wake Island via Midway Attol is a piece of cake with lots of fuel to spare at 350,000 lb GW. The plane is flyable at a GW of over 410,000 lb but climb rate is very sluggish (max 400-600 fpm) and loss of speed due to excessive side slip can cause a fatal stall, in straight flight the plane is difficult to stall. So far my conclusion is that with todays materials and jet engines (which may be a future project) this aircraft could probably be competitive in performance with todays planes. With aluminum alloys that were available during its construction its performance would probably have exceeded the initial requirements.

Filename:	Spruce_Goose_for_XPlane_64651_hk1H4_Hercules.zip
License:	Freeware, limited distribution
Added:	31st January 2003, 05:19:19
Downloads:	1,739
Author:	Robert App
Size:	1.69 MB

Category: Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) - Utilities
Flightplan Visualizer 1.18

Images related to this file:

• Flightplan_Visualizer_118_1.jpg

File Description:
Flightplan Visualizer (FV) version 1.18.0. Copyright 2018-2020 by Pelle F. S. Liljendal ([email protected]), all rights reserved. FV comes with 787 pre-imported Commercial AI flightplans (+380 BizJet flightplans are available as a separate download). However you are able to import additional (AI) flightplans yourself. Once imported these (AI) flightplans can be visualized on a map-view, and the user will be able to search accross all these. Hence you can use the program as inspiration as to which routes to fly. E.g. you can search across all imported flightplans to find all flights in an A321 flying into/out from LDDU, or simply to look for all flights in a Boeing 747-8F. Simply run the included installer to install the software. The program will be installed into "C:\Program Files (x86)\Flightplan Visualizer" and all datafiles will be installed into: "C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Roaming\FlightplanVisualizer". The program comes with a full manual explaining everything, and a 3 page quick manual to get you started. The first 3 times you run the program the quick manual will automatically open. The forum is hosted here: https://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/forum/919-flightplan-visualizer/ Version 1.18 Contains the following changes: - GREATLY improved the search-legs feature (by a factor of +50). - In the past the application was forced to 32 bit. This is no longer the case, hence if needed its able to allocate more memory than before. I have never heard of anyone getting an "out of memory" exception, buy anyway. - In the settings form, the field for entering the path to where to look for the Make Runways -files, have been replaced with a (MRU) combo-box, remembering the last 5 paths entered. So now you don't need to remember these paths each time you want to change it (e.g. if you switch between a set of files generated for P3D and another generated for MSFS). Remark that when this path is changed, FV will automatically restart when saving the settings, as the MkRwy-data are only loaded at startup. - Added new command-line argument /MkRwy="G:\FS\MakeRunways". If this argument is set, FV will try to locate the files generated by Pete Dowson's MakeRunway in the specified folder, no matter the value of the MkRwy-path set in the settings-form. - Added new command-line argument /FilePrefix=XXX. If this prefix is set (in the short-cut starting FV) it will look for files in the UserData-folder using this prefix and an underscore (e.g. open "XXX_UserAirportInfo.xml" in stead of "UserAirportInfo.xml"). If FV is started with this argument it will be displayed in the caption of the main-form to notify the user "which prefix is in use". - Added new command-line argument /ForceReprocessFlightplans which forces all flightplans to be reprocessed on startup (e.g. process all airport redirections according to loaded redirection file). - Added new command-line argument /? or /help. Using either of these, or having specified a wrong command-line argument will show a small example of the correct way to use these arguments. - Added a new "Auto-activation prefixes" entry field to the "Edit owned aircraft" form where you can now enter a comma separated list of prefixes for which each aircraft should set to active. If entered, the aircraft will automatically be set active when FV have been started with the /FilePrefix argument set to the entered value (e.g. P3D). If one or more prefixes have been entered into this field, and FV have been started with another prefix, those aircraft will be set to not-active. - Added new setting to reprocess all loaded flightplans on startup if FV was started with another /FilePrefix argument than used the previous time FV was started (e.g. if you switch between two different simulators). - Improved how pseudo-airports tries to look-up airport data from the bundled airport-database. So there is now a higher chance that: name, country/state, and time-zone will be populated with useful data for the pseudo airports. - In previous versions when opening the airport-info form, the checkbox "Exclude small/grass/dirt" (runways) was always checked, meaning you had to uncheck this checkbox before being able to see any runway-information for small airports. In this version a new setting have been added where you can chose if this checkbox should default to being: Checked, Unchecked or (default) Automatic. if choosing "Automatic", this checkbox will default to un-checked for airports only having few/small runways. - Redesigned the settings-form so things are less "cluttered", and it will be more easy for me to add additional items in the future. - The Search Airport form now contains fields that lets you specify min/max criteria for rwy-length and airport elevation, and min/max distance to a specified airport (e.g. find all airports within 20-50 Nm of XXXX). Also you can specify required rwy-type (e.g. "All Hard", "Have Soft" ...). - Added an "Edit" menu-item to the context menu in the Search Airport form, which opens the Airport Info form, and returns back to the Search Airport form (e.g. see details for a few found airports before chooing one of them). - If Transition Altitude (TA) is not known for a particular airport, the program will now try to estimate TA based on nearby airports in the same country, where those nearby are weighted more than those further away (its not perfect, but "better" than 0). An estimated TA will be postfixed by a asterisk to mark that it is estimated. - Minor (internal) changes to the automatic version-check. - Fixed: Issue importing some AigFP flightplans where airports were being redirected (e.g. "AIG_AviaTrafficCompany_Winter_2019-2020v2"). - Fixed: Using the context menu in the list-view showing all owned aircraft, the changes were sometimes not saved. - Fixed: In the conversion-form when converting weight/volume into US-Gal, the calcuation was wrong (converting from US-Gal was not an issue). - Fixed: In the leg-info report the value of Transition Altitude was in some cases used in stead of the length of the longest runway. - Fixed: Leg-info report only contained taxi-out time for all airports. Now it only contains the taxi-out time for the departure airport, but both departure- and destination airports contains a taxi-in time. - Fixed: In some cases an airport that was currently being edited, could be edited in another window at the same time (opening multiple Airport Info forms). - Data: The bundled airport-database had a MAJOR face-lift. Various data were corrected, and it have more than doubled in number of airports/helipads contained within the database. - Data: Improved detection of aircraft-type "IAI 1126 Galaxy" (as "Gulfstream G200"). Thanks to Bruce Nicholson for notifying me of the issue when importing a particular AIG flight-plan. - Flightplans: All new/updated flightplans have been added to the installer, and all obsolete/defunct have been marked/removed. A total of 787 active flightplans are bundled with the installer. Pelle

Filename:	Flightplan_Visualizer_118.zip
License:	Freeware, limited distribution
Added:	9th November 2020, 20:09:24
Downloads:	479
Author:	Pelle Liljendal
Size:	34.48 MB

Category: Prepar3D V1-4 - Aircraft Repaints, Textures and Modifications
Cessna 421 advanced physics

File Description:
C421C advanced physics Modification for the Alabeo C421 C Golden Eagle Version: tested for P3DV4; should work also with P3DV5 (and probably FSX) 1. Why I developed the advanced physics version I was asked via this forum, via PMs and also by e-mails to provide a modified version of the Alabeo C421C which can be used for serious multi-engine training. It should have accurate type specific performance for both AEO (all engine operative) and OEI (one engine inoperative), the latter for either a windmilling prop at various speeds and for a feathered engine. Feathering should work as realistic as possible. Thus, I developed an advanced physics version of the Alabeo C421C. It shows realistic physics for negative thrust (prop drives engine). This is necessary for OEI training and more realistic idle power simulation. 2. Modified files Modification includes “c421.air” and “aircraft.cfg” files. Data is based on real world Cessna 421C, N100L, 421C-0313. Aircraft data, equipment list, checklist and other documents for N100L, as well as some images of C421C, registration N100L, can be found here, too. Unfortunately, due to copyrights, I can’t upload the full files and can’t provide the AFM and other copyright protected documents. 3. How to install To update “c421.air”: - Copy the original Alabeo C421 to another aircraft folder, e.g. “C421C advanced physics”. - Use AirEd (freeware) and open the original “c421.air”. Open AirEd a second time and open “modifications advanced physics c421.air”. Copy the modified tables 511 and 512 to the original .air file (right click in modification file -> copy -> right click on original file -> replace from clipboard) To update “aircraft.cfg”: Just copy the modifications to the corresponding position in the original file. 4. Legend of modifications Modifications in aircraft.cfg: - Basic Empty Mass (actual mass for N100L 5,154 lbs inserted; most C421C are more heavy, ours is on diet) - correct basic data for engines + props - engine friction included (necessary for all negative thrust scenarios) - flaps lift + drag scalar adjusted (split flaps) - 2 vacuum pumps - VMO = 151 KIAS; VNE= 240 KIAS - cabin: max. differential pressure: 5.0 psi Modifications in c421.air: - implemented negative thrust scenarios in prop thrust and efficiency curves (tables 511 + 512); adjusted thrust curves for high TAS at high ALT 5. Side effects of modifications: - more realistic engine starting: starting the engine needs the throttle to be 2 cm above idle (see checklist) for the first 15 seconds - if you start the engine and don’t retard the prop to medium RPMs immediately, you will overstress engine and prop. So be careful when doing an air start, you might lose the prop and the aircraft. (In the real aircraft, these effects are less severe, but you have to avoid high RPMs until the engine is warmed up and have to avoid rapid change of RPM.) 6. Additional Notes: - Basic aircraft data as published by the manufacturer, like range and service ceilings, especially OEI, are based on MTOM. - The use of high payloads close to MTOM and higher ambient temperatures are making for a more challenging OEI training. - In the sim, climb power is too low compared to full power (about 65 % instead of 75 %). I have to find a way to adjust that. - I have buttons for engine failure under the mixture (see images) - Seat Position is, like in many Aircraft, higher than as per Default by the sim. For the C421C and me being 5 ft 7 in, that's about 7 clicks arrow up.

Filename:	Cessna_421_advanced_physics.zip
License:	Freeware
Added:	20th March 2021, 01:09:34
Downloads:	189
Author:	Andreas Kunzi
Size:	18.06 KB

Category: Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) - Utilities
Flightplan Visualizer 1.22

Images related to this file:

• Flightplan_Visualizer_122_1.jpg

File Description:
Flightplan Visualizer (FV) version 1.22. Copyright 2018-2022 by Pelle F. S. Liljendal ([email protected]), all rights reserved. FV comes with 1599 pre-imported AI flightplans (of which +726 are BizJet flightplans, the rest are commercial, government and military). However you are able to import additional (AI) flightplans yourself. Once imported these (AI) flightplans can be visualized on a map-view, and the user will be able to search accross all these. Hence you can use the program as inspiration as to which routes to fly. E.g. you can search across all imported flightplans to find all flights in an A321 flying into/out from LDDU, or simply to look for all flights in a Boeing 747-8F. Simply run the included installer to install the software. The program will be installed into "C:\Program Files (x86)\Flightplan Visualizer" and all datafiles will be installed into: "C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Roaming\FlightplanVisualizer". The program comes with a full manual explaining everything, and a 3 page quick manual to get you started. The first 3 times you run the program the quick manual will automatically open. The forum is hosted here: https://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/forum/919-flightplan-visualizer/ Version 1.22 Contains the following changes: - I had initially added a feature to download AIG airline-logos, however a later change in AIG's server setup rendered this feature useless. In stead you can now specify the local folder holding AIG's airline logo's (if/when you are using AIG AIM on your computer for AI-traffic). If specified, airline-logo's will be obtained from this folder. - On the same note, I had to remove the menu-item to download AIG flightplans, as this program no longer have directly access to the AIG servers. For the same reason the menu-item to access the index with flightplans (up to summer 2021) was re-enabled. - In the past when opening the Airport-Info form it defaulted to show in-/out-going traffic for the selected flightplan or active leg-search only. Now there is a new setting where you can set it up to in stead default to showing all traffic in/out of the airport (the Airport-info form still contains a combobox where you maually can choose what to see). - "Owned aircraft" was renamed into "Simulator-aircraft", as these are the (flyable) aircraft you have available within your simulator of choise. - When choosing to use calculated flight-times in a leg-search, you can now specify a percentage-difference (between leg-time and calculated-time). Only when the difference between leg-time and calculated-time exceeds this specified value will the calculated time be used during leg-search (e.g. "only use calc-times if diff. exceeds 50%, otherwise use leg-times"). - Began using (aircraft) short-names many places where the program in the past used IATA/ICAO-code (e.g. when hovering the mouse over a route, or list of aircraft servicing specific airports when editing flightplans). Also added short-name columns to aircraft browser and when choosing favorites (these stil contains columns for IATA/ICAO-codes). - Pressing the "Usage" button when editing/viewing an aircraft-type or right-clicking an aircraft-type in the browser and choosing "View usage-report..." from the context menu, you will be shown a report that inform you how that aircraft-type is used: which simulator-aircraft are based on that type, which owned aircraft that have been marked as substitute for that type, which airlines are using that type (as carrier/operator), and finally in which (active) flightplans that type is used. - Items in airline-browser are now by default sorted by (airline) name, and the usage-column shows the size of the airline if its in use. If available a logo for the selected airline is displayed in the upper/right corner. - Improved performance when searching for ICAO-codes in the airport-browser. Also improved priority of the default selected item, in cases when an airport had a 3 letter ICAO-code, and another was using the same 3 leters for its IATA code. - When searching for ICAO/IATA-codes in the airline-browser, it will now prioritize non-defunct airlines, if multiple airlines share the same ICAO/IATA-code. - When enabling/disabling flightplans, you can now select all BizJet flightplans (those prefixed with "Bz_"), all Military (prefixed with "Ml_") or all Goverment (prefixed with "Gv_"). - Individual FP sub-folders can now be setup to leave (not move) defunct- and/or obsolete FP, even if the settings to automatic move these to the disabled folder is set. - Performing "Search legs" you can now filter on aircrafts you are allowed to fly via type-ratings ("Must be type-rated"). - Performing a substitute of a user-airline, that airline will remain selected (previously the list scrolled to the top, and selected the 1st item). - Added new check-box to "Search legs" that can exclude round-trips (legs taking-off and landing at same airport). - Airline/Aircraft-repaint -filter can now filter on size of airline (e.g. "size=major"). Size is determined from usage as carrier/operator in active flightplans. Airlines not in use by active flightplans are listed with a size of "unknown"). - Added GPS-conversion (deg deg,min,sec) to the conversion-form, as requested by a colleague. You can either manually enter lat/lon or look-up an airport to get it. There is both a primary lat/lon and a secondary, and the form will show the (GC)distance between these and the initial/final course. - Added new "Max airport-distance" for airport-redirections. At the same time added new feature when importing/editing airports to permanent change an airport. If used, it is not saved/handled as a redirection (can't be restored) but rather as a perpament change. - Reordered- and renamed some of the tab-pages in the Airport-info form. - Reordered the length/distance-fields in the unit-conversion form. - The Wind-calculator have been removed from the main-menu, in stead wind-calcuations can now be performed using the unit-conversion form. Also now the speed of the wind is always displayed as a positive value, and in stead the label will either say "Head-wind" or "Tail-wind". - Added new "Country list" menu-item in the misc-menu. Will list all countries twice (sorted by names, and sorted by ISO3-codes). - Showing airport-marker tool-tips on the main-map is now prioritized over showing route tool-tips. - Added "Min take-off fuel ("MTFL") field to user-aircraft weight-fields. As of now its not set for any aircraft in the database, however it can be estimated as 60 minutes of flight at cruise. - Moved several group-boxes of the settings-form to the 2nd tab-page, and added new fields for defalt simulator/logging-environment based on the File-prefix used when starting the program. - Also now the header-names that was previous fixed to "Rank" and "Traffic-density" can be changed, so the selectable 6 values can be used for something entirely different, if anyone have the need for this. If/when changed, these new names are shown when editing an airport, or when performing a leg-search (as the leg-search can filter on these fields). - MakeRunways (MkRwy) by Pete Dowson is challenged handling unicode in the scenery it scans/writes to XML. E.g. the Icelandic airport (BIFL) "Flúðir Airport" is exported by MkRwy as "Flúðir Airport". In this version FV will try to identify when this happens, and then it will fall back using the airport/city-names from the databases bundled with FV. This is not a perfect solution, but at least it improves the result. - Various minor changes and tweaks to multiple forms (e.g. Unit conversion form can now be closed with ESC, renamed log-archives and so on). - Fixed: If the main-form had an active flightplan filter when using the search-legs feature the flightplan combo-box still only contained the filtered context. Pressing the Clear button did not resolve the issue. - Fixed: Since adding support for the AIGFP file-format, there could be flights departing from- and arriving at the same airport (e.g. helicopter flights). In previous versions the calculated flights-time would only consist of taxi-out/in times. In this version the flightplan leg-time will now also be uses for the calculated time, when the same airport is used both for departure and destination. - Fixed: In some cases re-processing flightplans (resetting and performing redirection) could corrupt the flightplans and remove airport-data from the flightplans. This version will also try to add any missing airport-data to flightplans when re-processing them. - Fixed: Selecting "only show favorites" in the Search aircraft-type form would filter out all aircraft (including those marked as favories). - Fixed: In the leg-info form the fields to show times (Out, Off, On, In) were too narrow for multi-week flights, when showing the week-number (e.g. "TH7/14:37"). - Fixed: Issues when estimating cruise/taxi fuel-burn for user-aircraft, where in some cases some fields were not saved, and wrong calcuation if setup to show weight in Kg. - Fixed: In some cases wrong TimeZone was used when calculating local time for OUT, OFF, ON, IN-times. - Data: The airport redirection file ("UserAirportRedirect.xml") in the UserData folder have been updated to match the latest MSFS world update. However this new file is only installed by the installer if it does not already exists (in case you made your own changes), hence you need to delete this file manually prior to running the version 1.22 installer. - Data: Quite a few airports in the airport-database were updated (had wrong names due to issues with unicode-letters). Also some additional airports were added. - Data: The installer comes bundled with +300 airline-logos (optional install), and a separat package of +1400 airline-logos are avilable for download from AVSIM (in both cases these are encoded into a propriotary format using the ".CAL" extension). - Data: Added the P2F (Passenger-to-Freighter) versions of the Airbus A320, A321 and A330. Also added the package freighter versions of CRJ100 and CRJ200. - Data: Improved detection of Boeing 737-700/800 BCF/BDSF when importing flightplans utilizing these (passenger aircraft converted into freighters). Also improved a few other freighter detections. - Data: Changed a few (aircraft) short-names to either shorten them a bit, or make them "more readable". - Flightplans: All new/updated flightplans have been added to the installer, and all obsolete/defunct have been marked/removed. A total of 1599 active flightplans are bundled with the installer.

Filename:	Flightplan_Visualizer_122.zip
License:	Freeware, limited distribution
Added:	18th October 2022, 23:31:28
Downloads:	390
Author:	Pelle Liljendal
Size:	45.57 MB