Ten for Ten Part 3: USMC Ospreys

[jimrodger]

With light traffic I watched/listened to 2xF18 and 1xV22 startup/taxi takeoff.
1xV22 on visual 24L was OK until on runway, a/c was asked to take next turning 3 times whilst still on runway. A/c took first available on 24L and stopped, ground asked to take next taxiway when it was stopped no further comms until a/c van

This may be because its reacting to 24R traffic. The two runways are really close to each other, so I think this is why the traffic is acting oddly. I watched a aircraft land on 24L then stop completely ON THE RUNWAY. It only continued when the F-18 at the end of 24R took off. I've seen similar behavior at SFO. There may need to be a "hold-point free runway crossing" there.

Just seen similar situation.
Arrival on 24L sat on runway at turnoff (3 aircraft waiting for takeoff - 1 on approach at 17nm), once they'd cleared a/c moved onto taxiway, changed freq to ground for taxi clearance, cleared, and moved to parking. Comms still saying general aviation parking for all parkings?

[Firebird]

I have looked at the MAIW afcad again. The runway 10-28 extends onto runway 24L.
The runway link (black line) does not have a runway hold.
Would anything change if the runway 10-28 was moved away from runway 24 and a hold short installed?

Your are quite right, John and as I said above that removing that runway was one of the changes I made.

[Firebird]

Just seen similar situation.
Arrival on 24L sat on runway at turnoff (3 aircraft waiting for takeoff - 1 on approach at 17nm), once they'd cleared a/c moved onto taxiway, changed freq to ground for taxi clearance, cleared, and moved to parking. Comms still saying general aviation parking for all parkings?

Yeah that is the scenario that I see at a lot of civvie airports. KDFW and KLAS I seem to remember being the worst for me.

The only things that can help here are to reduce the amount of traffic or possibly close 24L/06R and leave it for real traffic only. However that will have the drawback of increasing the amount of go-arounds unless traffic is well thought out.

I might check out closing the runway to see the outcome.

[Firebird]

Comms still saying general aviation parking for all parkings?

I don't get that, I never do. I get directions for West parking. I will have to look where it is but I have a feeling that there is a parm in EVP rather than FS9 to change that. I will try to find it and let you know.

[jimrodger]

Comms still saying general aviation parking for all parkings?

I don't get that, I never do. I get directions for West parking. I will have to look where it is but I have a feeling that there is a parm in EVP rather than FS9 to change that. I will try to find it and let you know.

It's weird the arrival a/c asks for Western/NorthEastern parking, but ATC always says general aviation parking.
Same thing if arriving on 06L/R

jim

[John Young]

Thanks for all the good work and apologies for not participating in the diagnostics up till now, but I've been busy with jobs around the house and garden. I spent a while this morning trying to replicate the ATC and the hold freeze on landing problems. I used the previously reported problem time of 16:15 local for my tests with the AFCAD and V-22 FDE from the published zip.

The first thing to report is that I had comms throughout - ground clearance and tower take-off:



I had no problems with landing aircraft, but at 16:38 local, something interesting happened:



3 V-22s are holding for 23R.

1 V-22 has cleared the 23R exit and continues onwards to park.

1 V-22 has landed in parallel on 23L. That one times out at the exit hold because of the 3 V-22s waiting at 23R and the landing V-22 on 24R. This one also lands successfully, clears the exit hold and continues to parking.

The time out of the V-22 exiting 23L was legitimate because of the volume of traffic. A little while later I observed a second V-22 landing on that runway and it cleared the exit and the 24R exit and returned to park.

Just a couple of thoughts at this stage:

- Is it possible that people observing the hold and comms problem have the MAIW Miramar top Gun scenery live as well? That would certainly cause a problem.

- I must have observed 30-40 landings of the V-22s with the long-roll FDE. That's over 3 airfields (Miramar, Yuma and Mildenhall) because all the Ospreys use the same FDE. I have never seen one not land successfully.

The only thing I didn't observe was any traffic coming down the taxiway from the Osprey parking while a V-22 was trying to exit 24R. If someone could give me a time to observe what happens, I'll carry on with some more testing.

John

[bismarck]

John Y., 16:15 of which day? Mine tests start on Friday at 16:15

Top Gun: I had it but delete all after experiencing first problems. What is not completely clear, is where to install your Miramar scenery. Points 5; 6 and 7 say to move the scenery from your package, to "your downloaded MAIW MCAS Miramar folder."
Desmond's scenery went under Addon Scenery\scenery folder. By the way, I installed all in MAIW MCAS Miramar dir coming from your package, on my "full setup" PC, and under Addon Scenery\scenery folder on my "clean setup" PC.
Nothing change, for sure the problem is not where I installed the scenery. I can say to have some experience in that

My thought is that there is something with comms frequencies, but I don't know how to verify this.

Giorgio

[Firebird]

I decide this morning to try and narrow down the comms issues.
The first thing I did was to start from scratch with the scenery.
Installed the Topgun scenery.
Then had to remove it as part of the MCAS Miramar package.
Then added John's files.

This did not make any difference with the comms. So next thing to check was is it a V-22 model issue? Went to EGUN and the comms were fine, so not a V-22 issue.
Annoying my tests this morning I had a USCG jayhawk overflying Miramar and those comms were fine, I heard traffic from SOCAL.
Tried John T's WIP afcad and that has the same comms issues so there is a common fault here. Now rattling my brain as to what it might be.

[Firebird]

- I must have observed 30-40 landings of the V-22s with the long-roll FDE. That's over 3 airfields (Miramar, Yuma and Mildenhall) because all the Ospreys use the same FDE. I have never seen one not land successfully.

John, I had not seem any either until i started investigating this 24R malarky. The sightings were infrequent but there.

[Firebird]

SITREP
I have made some progress with the comms. I have now got them. What I am now trying to do is work out exactly what caused the issue and will supply a second afcad mod once testing has completed.

[bismarck]

I used the "Load stock Data" from ADE.
Here the result. Hope this helps.
Please notice that the SOCAL freq 124.350 that I hear following the Osprey coming from Yuma and landing on 24L, is related to many airport in the nearby.
Giorgio

[John Young]

I tested on Friday from 16:15 Giorgio.

Just for people to cross-check, this is the content of my MAIW MCAS Miramar/scenery folder:



My MAIW Miramar NAS Top Gun folder is disabled.

John

[Firebird]

OK attached is the afcad that works for comms.
So this version you should have comms throughout plus you should not have any issues with V-22s failing to receive clearance for parking when exiting 24R.

It is very important that we receive feedback here to ensure that the issues are fixed so please if you had an issue with either one please state what issue(s) you had and whether or not it has been fixed.

What I did was to wipe out all comms for Miramar and just add a default tower comms and it all worked perfectly! So I then set the tower freq to the original setting and then the tower was silent but I did get Socal comms when airbourne.
By trying various settings it seems that the top limit might be 129.995. This is a guess as 129.2 worked and 130.2 didn't.
I decided to set the freq to 125.2, the real freq minus 10. I then added the Miramar Ground freq as it was originally and that worked.
I then added Miramar Clearance with its original freq and that worked. I then decided to leave out the SOCAL freqs, as they worked without being specified (the KISS principle).

One last thing I did was alter the Mildenhall tower freq up by 10 to 132.55 to see if I would lose those comms and it didn't!?

So it would appear that the issue we hit was not an FS9 limit but something else so I believe that it is fixed but the underlying cause is still unknown.

[bismarck]

IT WORKS!!!
Great work Steve! Happy I was trying the same...
I can't test extensively (I'm in the office... ), but it works.
May be I've found a solution also for the vanishing Osprey when landing.
I watch more or less, 12-15 landings with only one crash, even with speed at 4x.

I've modified :
lift_scalar = 1.375 as per Steve suggestion
and in the [contact_points] section:

point.0= 1, 18.460, 0.000, -5.20, 1181, 0, 1.184, 60.0, 0.82, 1.10, 1.500, 5.800, 5.800, 0
point.1= 1, -3.410,-6.780, -4.90, 1574, 1, 0.830, 0.0, 0.57, 1.09, 1.500, 5.800, 5.800, 2
point.2= 1, -3.410, 6.780, -4.90, 1574, 2, 0.830, 0.0, 0.57, 1.09, 1.500, 5.800, 5.800, 3
They were respectively: 0.72; 0.47; 0.47. This parameter determines the stiffness of the landing gear.
Please test it and report back.

Giorgio

[Firebird]

Thanks for your confirmation.

[jimrodger]

The only thing I didn't observe was any traffic coming down the taxiway from the Osprey parking while a V-22 was trying to exit 24R. If someone could give me a time to observe what happens, I'll carry on with some more testing.

John

Sim time Fri 1710Z

With the latest scenery installed I've had this situation and everything worked as advertised. seems to have solved this one as well.
With modded FDE, still getting occasional crashes...

Jim

[John Young]

Jim, what frame rate are you experiencing at Miramar when the crashes occur? It was Giorgio, I think, some years back spotted a similar problem at Duxford. In that case, his frame rate was quite low compared to mine. If the frame rate is high it tends to smooth out any oscillations in the approach. If it's low it might be that a crash sometimes occurs on an accentuated low point of any oscillation.

John

[jimrodger]

Jim, what frame rate are you experiencing at Miramar when the crashes occur? It was Giorgio, I think, some years back spotted a similar problem at Duxford. In that case, his frame rate was quite low compared to mine. If the frame rate is high it tends to smooth out any oscillations in the approach. If it's low it might be that a crash sometimes occurs on an accentuated low point of any oscillation.

John

I'll give it a check and get back to you.

Jim

[TheFoufure]

It could be fun if someone can make some FP for the scenery of LHA Tarawa and other LHA.

There is a file ( tarawapk.zip ) on flightsim.com with several LHA around the world.

Some FP with USMC CV-22 and AV-8B would be a great stuff.

[Firebird]

I spoke to BJ who was having the worst V-22 issues.
He has tried the 2 fde patches and he then got 3 good out of 4 landings.
He then checked the framerate and found that it was at 20 fps. He made a change and was able to get the framerate to 30 fps. What followed was 16 straight good landings.

So it would appear that the original fde was on the edge but OK. The two patches made it more resilient but the biggest factor in issues seems to be the fps as John thought was possible.

---===O===---

So I think we need to draw a line under the issues here if we can.
1. We believe that 24R exit issues are fixed.
2. We believe that the comms issues are fixed.
3. We believe that the fde issues are now understood and can be managed quite well.

Does everybody agree with the 3 statements?
Are there any other issues that we have not addressed?

Speak now or we will assume that we have smoothed out all the issues.

I will have a chat with JY once all the current workload is over and see if there are any other tweaks we can make to make the fde even more robust to take into account that not everybody can afford the top graphics cards out there.