Military AI Works

John Young wrote:...the phenomenon that really puzzles me is why it appears on the ground if the situation is started mid display. There isn't a parking spot big enough to accommodate it and with a conventional AI aircraft and an undersized spot, it wouldn't appear at all...

John,

That is very puzzling. I can understand why Mark had the problem since his AFX file for YMES has three 44 meter parking spots and all the welded AI formations that I have used are 41 meters or less, but if your welded formation is larger than any parking spot at the airport that you are having your welded formation flying the IFR missed approach into, how can your welded formation ever park there?

Have you tried creating a dummy airport with just a 500 by 1 foot runway ~140 feet below the elevation of your actual airport to fly your IFR missed approach to? That should eliminate the problem entirely since there will be no physical connection to the visible airport.

Update on this afternoon's test:

Putting the formation below the datum line doesn't work with smoke added, as I feared. The smoke plume is still visible along the runway when departing:



Reverting to the model on the datum line and adding the smoke, the result looks good. My thanks to Ray for the smoke:



So the test for tomorrow is to do as Mike suggests and use a dummy AFCAD for the airfield below ground level for use with the formation only. Question for Mike first though - the elevation of Matsushima the home airfield is only 7ft. Will FS9 recognise an AFCAD with a minus elevation, say -50ft?

John Y.

your welcome John do you want me to do the other colours mate ?

John Young wrote:So the test for tomorrow is to do as Mike suggests and use a dummy AFCAD for the airfield below ground level for use with the formation only. Question for Mike first though - the elevation of Matsushima the home airfield is only 7ft. Will FS9 recognise an AFCAD with a minus elevation, say -50ft?

John Y.

John,

I believe dummy AFCADs with dummy runways with both having negative elevations will work at Matsushima or at least they do over the ocean for very low missed IFR approaches to aircraft carriers. I just sent you a PM with some additional information.

I've just PM'd you Mike with a fuller explanation, but creating a dummy buried AFCAD for the formation, just created a 150ft chasm in the ground, irrespective of the file being in the Matsushima scenery folder or in a separate area below it in the scenery library.

However, I re-examined the parking spots in Click's scenery and he has 3 with a radius of 100ft. That's just a tad bigger than the formation that I measured this time around - I thought it was much larger than it actually was. One of the spots was clearly hosting the formation and having removed them as a test, the problem goes away. The AI rules do hold true after all.

I'd still like to work further on Mike's methodology because it has the capability to have the formation perform the missed approach at a lower altitude. Let's see what we can do...

Ray, many thanks for the offer of the additional smoke colours. I've just done a test change and it's very simple, so I don't really need to bother you with that. I'll change the name of the files I create to still reflect your ownership, but with a slight variation to avoid any conflict.

John Y.

All solved. Just a bit of refining to do tomorrow and I'll show the finished product.

John Y.

John Young wrote:All solved. Just a bit of refining to do tomorrow and I'll show the finished product.

John Y.

John,

I'm delighted that you now have the missed very low IFR approaches working. Personally I love to watch both AI and real life very low approaches. My old VT ANG squadron does not fly any actual TNG's with their F-16C's, but they do frequently fly very low approaches. Typically a pair will fly a straight in 2 ship formation IFR approach with one actually landing and one going around after a very low approach.

mikewmac wrote:

John Young wrote:All solved. Just a bit of refining to do tomorrow and I'll show the finished product.

John Y.

John,

I'm delighted that you now have the missed very low IFR approaches working. Personally I love to watch both AI and real life very low approaches. My old VT ANG squadron does not fly any actual TNG's with their F-16C's, but they do frequently fly very low approaches. Typically a pair will fly a straight in 2 ship formation IFR approach with one actually landing and one going around after a very low approach.

The VTANG did provide some really nice airshows as viewed from the Harris-Millis dorm common area on the UVM campus.

Mike's suggestion to use a buried dummy AFCAD for the formation does indeed work very well. I was making the mistake of including a taxiway and a parking spot which a) isn't needed and b) causes the chasm. With just a 1ft wide runway 100ft below the ground, it means I can vary how low the pull up occurs and how far along the runway it happens. I hope this looks about right:





The absence of any parking spots in the dummy AFCAD means that if you do happen to enter the sim during the display time, you won't now see a gear-less formation on the ground.

I've looked at 10 or so videos of the team, all shot over the past 12 months and in all cases only white smoke seems to be in use, so I've stuck with that.

The only slight problem I'm left with is that when the wind direction is as in the screen shots, the overshoots work perfectly and the formation goes around several times over a 40 minutes period. However, with the wind in the opposite direction and the reciprocal runway in use, the formation just does one overshoot and just climbs out steadily ahead for several minutes. Not sure why that is - I've tried changing the runway length and the aircraft empty weight, but still it does it. I'll live with that I think unless anyone has an obvious solution. Is it just a quirk of the IFR routing in the sim?

The formation will be part of the Kawasaki T-4 package that Click has been working on with 195 paint examples. I'll send him the formation next to have a play with and then we can work towards getting it out.

John Y.

John Young wrote:The only slight problem I'm left with is that when the wind direction is as in the screen shots, the overshoots work perfectly and the formation goes around several times over a 40 minutes period. However, with the wind in the opposite direction and the reciprocal runway in use, the formation just does one overshoot and just climbs out steadily ahead for several minutes. Not sure why that is - I've tried changing the runway length and the aircraft empty weight, but still it does it. I'll live with that I think unless anyone has an obvious solution. Is it just a quirk of the IFR routing in the sim?

John,

Wow! Very nice screenshots.

Am I correct in assuming that your IFR welded formation flights are always originating from the same virtual waypoint regardless of wind direction and that your missed approaches that are repeating a few times as planned are flown to end of the runway closest to that waypoint and those that don't repeat are flown a much greater distance to the reciprocal end of the runway?

If so, you may simply have an IFR TNG timing problem in that the latter missed approach requires a long enough flight distance and therefore enough additional time that the welded formation only flies one missed approach before the flight plan sends it back to the virtual waypoint where it originated.

If my assumption is correct, I would suggest that you lengthen the duration of your IFR TNG's and see if you can get at least one repeat missed approach to the reciprocal end of the runway.

Yes that's right Mike - the formation spawns from the same virtual waypoint approximately 102 nm at right angles to the line of the runway. My intention was to make the transit distances equidistant for either end of the runway:



Is the suggestion to move the way point further out or nearer in? Alternatively, can the flight plan be changed to even out the approaches. Flight plans are not my strong point and I used Mark's as the template for Matsushimi. This is the text:

AC#1,A23 012,10%,WEEK,IFR,1/00:02:07,TNG1/01:22:05,048,F,0000,RJS2,1/01:27:01,1/01:57:53,027,F,0000,RJS1,3/00:02:38,TNG3/01:23:51,048,F,0000,RJS2,3/01:26:19,3/01:57:11,027,F,0000,RJS1

RJS1 is the waypoint and RJS2 is the airfield.


John

John Young wrote:Yes that's right Mike - the formation spawns from the same virtual waypoint approximately 102 nm at right angles to the line of the runway. My intention was to make the transit distances equidistant for either end of the runway:



Is the suggestion to move the way point further out or nearer in? Alternatively, can the flight plan be changed to even out the approaches.

Flight plans are not my strong point and I used Mark's as the template for Matsushimi. This is the text:

AC#1,A23 012,10%,WEEK,IFR,1/00:02:07,TNG1/01:22:05,048,F,0000,RJS2,1/01:27:01,1/01:57:53,027,F,0000,RJS1,3/00:02:38,TNG3/01:23:51,048,F,0000,RJS2,3/01:26:19,3/01:57:11,027,F,0000,RJS1

RJS1 is the waypoint and RJS2 is the airfield.

John

No John, my assumption was incorrect, but regardless of that you shouldn't move the virtual waypoint. It needs to stay right where it is. I didn't realize that your virtual waypoint was out over water in a direction perpendicular to the line of the runway 07/25. My guess now is that the IFR approach pattern to one end of the runway from your virtual waypoint is significantly longer than to the other end.

What I meant by "lengthen the duration of your IFR TNG's" was to increse the TNG time in your flight plan in order to have the missed approaches last for a longer time.

In other words try something like this:

AC#1,A23 012,10%,WEEK,IFR,1/00:02:07,TNG1/01:35:00,048,F,0000,RJS2,1/01:36:00,1/01:57:53,027,F,0000,RJS1,3/00:02:38,TNG3/01:35:00,048,F,0000,RJS2,3/01:36:00,3/01:57:11,027,F,0000,RJS1

I have to go for a walk in the snow with my wife right now, but when I return I will see if I can determine exactly what is going on at Matsushima Aero for you.

Alas, the revised flight plan didn't work Mike. Approaches from the NE continue to climb ahead on the overshoot and just keep going upwards in a straight line. Approaches from the SW are still fine.

John

Deleted

John,

One quick and easy way to fix your problem is to close the appropriate end of your buried runway for both takeoffs and landings to force your welded formation to always fly to the runway end that has consistently given you your desired series of missed approaches.

I've sent John a fix that takes care of the up up and away problem on the 25 approach.

Now I'm too busy watching them to do the work I'm supposed to be doing:

Problem solved. The 07 approach worked fine without having to mark the runway closed for take-off and landing. The 25 approach wouldn't play ball until I did close that end for take-off and landing. I don't understand the logic, but both runway ends are now closed for take-off and landing and the formation is now behaving properly with a series of overshoots and circuits in both directions.

Now to finish the manual......

John

All done and sent to the Download Hangar - my models plus 195 Kawasaki T-4 paints from Click. For use with 5 of Clicks, Japanese Bases scenery (links to the files in the Download Centre are in the manual):



These are all FS9. I could convert the models to FSX native code, but the scenery that goes with them is not frame rate friendly in FSX.

Hi John... I am sure people would love a fsx p3d version of the model if possible, would love it in my sim for sure!

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Make that two, Barry! If it is not too much to ask please generate the aircraft in FSX as well, John.

Sent from mobile hence short