Hi,

Approaching EDDL I had to restart FSX. I relaunched the tracker but could not satisfy all three areas, the location would not agree. As I was on line I continues to land  as ATC was active. I tried several times to close flight with tracker, no success. Then, when I checked out the map in the tracker, I see I had been beamed to off the coast of Africa-see attached. Clearly I was never going to recover that flight!  All very disappointing, in truth, as that was a two hour flight from LOWW down the pan.  Can I ask that this is looked at as it is likely to be a problem for others, too.

Best,

Keith

Sadly it gets worse.

See the attached pictures. They show my flight concluded, yet still on blocks showing. Then a completed flight after I pressed on blocks so no flight recorded. Lastly, a full flight with all three factors satisfied but unable to close off. I am losing confidence in the tracker. I will send them separately.

Keith

Second.

Third (maybe not in order).

Sorry Keith, the screenshots are too small to see, it might be easier to e-mail them to us? If you can give me details of the missing flights I'll get them added to your logbook.

I would recommend you use manual off/on blocks for now until we can resolve this issue, we're not sure what's causing it at the moment as no one else has issues with the J41 or flight resume (any issues so far revolve around the pesky Majestic!), please give me a few days to do some testing with IVAP so we can rule that out as a cause. We need to see what's unique about your setup to try and pinpoint a cause and then attempt a fix; my theory is there is something on your PC that is interfering with the variables ACARS needs to read from FS UIPC, I just don't know what it is yet.

Would you mind if we sent you a special version of ACARS with diagnostics?

Hi CHRIS,


Thanks as always for reply. I have sent five pictures to the VA Email.  I think I did try to use the manual off blocks but on one occasion, the tracker started anyway. It was not until later that I saw the off blocks check was needed but you will see from the pictures the flight was fully recorded but could not be closed. You will also see my flight off the coast of Africa. Never knew these J41s were so powerful!!


Please send me anything that may help to solve the issues.  It may just be me of course, but I have been able to put in a high number of flights so thus have been able to give the tracker a 'good kicking!!!'  Looking forward to helping resolve the issues. I will email you the flight IVAO logs tomorrow. Thanks for offering to log them.


Regards,


Keith

Hi Keith


I am currently downloading the screenshots as I type this however think I know the answer to the problem!!


Firstly I have recovered your flight including all of the map and height chart data.


http://viaintercity.com/pirep.php?pirepid=833


Secondly, the aircraft showing up in Africa is a bug within flight sim, it seems that when flight sim crashes or ACARS looses its connection the latitude and longitude get set to 0 creating a point somewhere off the coast of Africa (if you enter this into google earth you'll find the 0,0 point). I did however put a line of code in to combat this however put it in the wrong place so I have fixed this now for future flights.


Please don't loose faith in the tracker, we have had (at time of writing) 786 flights filed with ACARS!! As the ACARS has been written by myself it is not a piece of commercial software and so hasnt gone through the same amount of testing as a piece of commercial software has, we have only a small team and so cannot test every eventuality therefore we will find minor bugs such as these along the way. We can however with feedback from the pilots, such as your very detailed feedback above fix these minor issues to get ACARS to work flawlessly.


I have amended the code for the 0,0 waypoints so that in future if FS crashes these wont show up in the flight resume, and I am going to look into some sort of selection system so that maybe you could select from the last 3 available position reports when resuming a flight to ensure this doesn't happen again.


We can of course, if all else fails file flights manually if ACARS does completely cock up. We can also import data from VATAWARE if you fly on VATSIM and 9/10 (as in your case) recover lost data from the server.


Could I also ask on a side note are you having issues with the PMDG JS41 and ACARS automatically recognising Off/On Blocks? Is that why you are using the manual buttons?

Well done Chris. Faith restored!! I just completed a manual blocks on/off flight ensuring I press off blocks despite the tracker already sounding and showing me off blocks. It worked just fine with a manually on blocks by me at end. The only reason I tried manual is as you say because of the problems.

I will try some without manual selection today and see how I get on. Thanks again.

Keith

Just had a quick thought Keith, are you definitely loaded on the ground at your departure airport with your engines off before you click "begin flight" in our ACARS?

Hi Chris,

Most definitely, but I have just found out something interesting!  I have Aerosoft Mega Dusseldorf. When I was parked on the V gates (112 and 114), I simply could not get the tracker to work. When I tried it without manual, all was off, brakes on etc. The bottom of the screen was telling me to put brakes on and engines off-they were honestly. Move to another V gate and tried manual start. Same warning. BUT as soon as I moved to B11, (Gate departure), I was able to do both a non manual and a manual start! So clearly, the position of the aircraft seemed to be affecting to tracker process. (I tried to start up on the runway directly rather than the gate and had the same warnings as above-clearly because I was not at a gate). This may explain all my difficulties, as I have been departing mostly from EDDL. Arriving there is never a problem. No problems at Billund, Vienna, Birmingham on the gates I have used to date.

Hope this is of use,

Keith

Ah right, now we're getting somewhere! There must be something in Mega Airport Dusseldorf upsetting our ACARS. I'll have a look in to this further.

Yep, and not just EDDL. Just tried to start from Stand 33 at LFSB using the excellent freeware by Harry Urban. Same warning about engines off etc. Moved to G22 all good. 33 is shown as GA Ramp although it is not. Maybe this is also an indicator to what tracker is not reading ie ramps and parking? Although having said that V112 and 114 at EDDL are shown as Gates.

Keith

Hi keith


This is very strange indeed! What Im going to do (if its ok with you) is send you a little program that shows some of the variables we monitor so you can report back your findings so we can see whats causing this problem

Yes, please. That is fine and some fun!!

Keith

Chris,

I think I have cracked the problem-it was getting personal!! I also suspect it is J41 specific but have not tried this on the Dash, yet. I thought the problem was linked to specific gates, I now think it is linked in some way to the EGT levels. I have tried this several times. Set up ACARS as instructed. Shutdown engines and hit the OK button. I was then getting the warning to shut down engines etc. Once the EGT levels come down to between 370 and 270 the ACARS switched to boarding. Thus, when I moved to the Gate at B11, by the time the aircraft moved there, the EGT levels were already down so it was not Gate specific. The reason I found this out was arriving at Hannover, using the NON manual ACARS start/finish, I parked at a remote stand and switched all off.  ACARS showed the flight still taxing, not on blocks. EGT levels dropped to 297, bing bong on blocks!! (  I suspect this will be the same for manual blocks settings). It may also explain why some pilots had problems with ACARS?

Not being a boff, I do not know if this is something that you can fix, or its just a simple case of informing pilots that they need to wait for the levels to drop, check ACARS and then boarding begins.  I simply kept the ACARS window open in the FSX cockpit view and waited for it to change.

If it is not the EGT levels, then it linked to time as it takes maybe thirty seconds sometimes for ACARS to show on blocks once the J41 engines are shut down.

Lastly, if a pilot has been unable to start with Auto Acars, and tries to resume the flight (having closed ACARS) from either Auto or then Manual, the flight will board as the time it takes to do this will mean the engines/EGT will be ready.    Job done!!

Keith


Foot note: This is definitely the issue and the solve. I positioned my J41 on the stand at my departure airport, then shut it down. Did this today at Hannover. Set flight up with ACARS and waited for the Parking brakes etc warning to go. It took a full four minutes (as EGT temp dropped) and then boarding was shown. Upon start up, off blocks sounded. Obviously, if you have a saved flight with everything off, then this will make the ACARS start showing boarding from the off.