FS9 CTD during EK9991 from DUBAI-AMSTERDAM

[Ken S]

Please be advised I had a CTD 401nm from EHAM. I believe this occured when Windows Automatic updates loaded up?? I thought I had turned them off previously? Who knows! I have since turned them back off and will have to re-fly this flight.

Sorry about that,

Ken

[khelm]

Ouch, that bites. If you were using GCP, you could just reload the save points. (Justin, you owe me $5000 for advertising )

[Ken S]

Ouch, that bites. If you were using GCP, you could just reload the save points. (Justin, you owe me $5000 for advertising )

Unfortunately I wasn't FSACARS instead Try again next week I'm currently doing the PO183 KLAX-VHHH flight, hopefully without incident.

Ken

[yoni63]

Ken, I know you have probably read all the posts about FSacars, and some guys can run it with no problem, but I will tell you, GCP is far easier in every conceivable way. No hassles at all. I have seen guys wrestle with FSacars for a long time, I have known a couple to get so discouraged, it took all the fun out of their flying.

You might want to give it a thought, its just so much easier to use and best part is, its free.

[Ken S]

Ken, I know you have probably read all the posts about FSacars, and some guys can run it with no problem, but I will tell you, GCP is far easier in every conceivable way. No hassles at all. I have seen guys wrestle with FSacars for a long time, I have known a couple to get so discouraged, it took all the fun out of their flying.

You might want to give it a thought, its just so much easier to use and best part is, its free.

OK, I successfully completed the 2 PO183 legs without a CTD. This time I was on the S Cargo apron and turning to park and shut down after arriving in EHAM when I had the CTD. This time FS9 logged the error. I recently installed the NL2000 v3 scenery on a new seperate HD. I'm thinking this is the root of my problems. Anyways here are my flight details, if I could get someone to please manually input my PIREP that would be kindly appreciated.

Date: 02-06-08
Time:12:09z
Callsign:GTI9991
Origin:OMDB
Destination:EHAM
Registration: N493MC
Block time: 7:48
Block fuel:167,000
Distance:2855

Back to the drawing board.

Thanks,

Ken

[eek]

Ken, I know you have probably read all the posts about FSacars, and some guys can run it with no problem, but I will tell you, GCP is far easier in every conceivable way. No hassles at all. I have seen guys wrestle with FSacars for a long time, I have known a couple to get so discouraged, it took all the fun out of their flying.

The problem isn't the FSAcars program. It's the instructions from GC that make it seem much more complicated than it is. All that stuff with the email addresses is totally unnecessary. All you have to do is point it to the url to submit the pirep, and put in your pilot number. What could be simpler?

You could post generic config files to download with the correct urls and just instruct people to put their pilot numbers in. That would probably eliminate 90% of the confusion.

The KISS principle applies here. Just my $.02.

[nwadc10]

Ken, I know you have probably read all the posts about FSacars, and some guys can run it with no problem, but I will tell you, GCP is far easier in every conceivable way. No hassles at all. I have seen guys wrestle with FSacars for a long time, I have known a couple to get so discouraged, it took all the fun out of their flying.

The problem isn't the FSAcars program. It's the instructions from GC that make it seem much more complicated than it is. All that stuff with the email addresses is totally unnecessary. All you have to do is point it to the url to submit the pirep, and put in your pilot number. What could be simpler?

You could post generic config files to download with the correct urls and just instruct people to put their pilot numbers in. That would probably eliminate 90% of the confusion.

The KISS principle applies here. Just my $.02.

Our instructions came from FSACARS instructions. True, the email doesn't need to be filled in but this wasn't discovered until we had been operating it for a while and back then the feature was widely used. Besides, our instructions had been tested succesfully many times and people still have trouble with it. FSACARS is not a stable platform for using VA-wide when 50% of the people can't get it to work consistantly. There are other issues that cause it to fail besides the email function and it often fails at the worst time with no way to salvage the flight.

Once GCP is operating flawlessly for everyone, support for FSACARS will be discontinued at Globe Cargo. It appears that day is drawing nearer but for now FSACARS can still be used.

[eek]

Ken, I know you have probably read all the posts about FSacars, and some guys can run it with no problem, but I will tell you, GCP is far easier in every conceivable way. No hassles at all. I have seen guys wrestle with FSacars for a long time, I have known a couple to get so discouraged, it took all the fun out of their flying.

The problem isn't the FSAcars program. It's the instructions from GC that make it seem much more complicated than it is. All that stuff with the email addresses is totally unnecessary. All you have to do is point it to the url to submit the pirep, and put in your pilot number. What could be simpler?

You could post generic config files to download with the correct urls and just instruct people to put their pilot numbers in. That would probably eliminate 90% of the confusion.

The KISS principle applies here. Just my $.02.

Our instructions came from FSACARS instructions. True, the email doesn't need to be filled in but this wasn't discovered until we had been operating it for a while and back then the feature was widely used. Besides, our instructions had been tested succesfully many times and people still have trouble with it. FSACARS is not a stable platform for using VA-wide when 50% of the people can't get it to work consistantly. There are other issues that cause it to fail besides the email function and it often fails at the worst time with no way to salvage the flight.

Once GCP is operating flawlessly for everyone, support for FSACARS will be discontinued at Globe Cargo. It appears that day is drawing nearer but for now FSACARS can still be used.

Regardless of where the instructions came from, the program is much simpler than it appears, in the instructions. If you test the instructions, of course it will work perfectly, since you know what the instructions are saying in advance. To someone new, who hasn't used the program, they are overly complicated. I wasn't able to get it working following the instructions. I got it working with trial and error (after some searching of the forums).

As to the stability, it's clear nothing is more stable than FSAcars. From what I see on the flight maps and the forums, it's the most popular program with the fewest issues. I'd bet my bottom dollar that much fewer than 50% of people are having issues. The ones who are, either have unstable systems, or are simply doing something wrong. Judging by the number of POs and 5Ys I see flying around, I'd bet the majority are the latter.

A lot of us use FSAcars because it's free, resource friendly and rock stable, once you get it up and running. You're not going to get any program working flawlessly. We've got guys flying around as PO or 5Y. We've got guys who fly for hours showing they're climbing until they land. It can't get much simpler than putting your flight number and initial cruise altitude in the boxes. But, many fail to do so. Configuring an unfamiliar program is a much more complicated issue. There will always be issues getting any program working for noobs.

You management guys really need to get over your hatred of FSAcars. Your pilots love it. (Many of us).

[nwadc10]

Regardless of where the instructions came from, the program is much simpler than it appears, in the instructions. If you test the instructions, of course it will work perfectly, since you know what the instructions are saying in advance. To someone new, who hasn't used the program, they are overly complicated. I wasn't able to get it working following the instructions. I got it working with trial and error (after some searching of the forums).

As to the stability, it's clear nothing is more stable than FSAcars. From what I see on the flight maps and the forums, it's the most popular program with the fewest issues. I'd bet my bottom dollar that much fewer than 50% of people are having issues. The ones who are, either have unstable systems, or are simply doing something wrong. Judging by the number of POs and 5Ys I see flying around, I'd bet the majority are the latter.

A lot of us use FSAcars because it's free, resource friendly and rock stable, once you get it up and running. You're not going to get any program working flawlessly. We've got guys flying around as PO or 5Y. We've got guys who fly for hours showing they're climbing until they land. It can't get much simpler than putting your flight number and initial cruise altitude in the boxes. But, many fail to do so. Configuring an unfamiliar program is a much more complicated issue. There will always be issues getting any program working for noobs.

You management guys really need to get over your hatred of FSAcars. Your pilots love it. (Many of us).

The problem may be that FSACARS actually works for you. Because it works for you, you may think it works for everyone. I have been thru FSACARS many times and when it works, it works well. But on more than one occasion it will quit working for no apparent reason causing a complete uninstall of the program and going thru the lengthy and confusing setup procedure. To say that FSACARS is rock stable means that you must have been lucky with yours because almost everyone that I've talked to has had problems with it. There's only 1 guy in management that hasn't had issues with FSACARS and he claims the secret is to not connect it to the online flight map/live acars.

The only reason we added support for FSFK was because of the wide-spread instability of FSACARS. The problem with making FSFK required is that it is payware and management didn't feel we should require someone to pay for a program to report their flights which left FSACARS still an available option because it is free. But that meant many new pilots were going to have trouble setting up FSACARS, getting frustrated and quiting before they could complete a flight. Hence, GCP was born which will always be free, simple yet feature rich that no other product can do with our specific VA, and stable. Not to mention personal support if something just isn't working. You can ask a number of people here who contacted me directly about a problem and I helped them thru it or we found a problem in the code and corrected it for everyone. You can't get that with FSACARS, if they even have support anymore. Many times I've looked at the FSACARS/GCP flight map and seen 6 out of 7 flights using GCP. The GCP flight map is the same as the FSACARS flight map, both combined on the one map, and to tell which program is being used is the AC Type column. If the AC type and registration is shown then GCP is being used and if no AC Type shown FSACARS is being used.

So our dislike of FSACARS stems from several years of struggling with it and not just trying it once and giving up. Also keep in mind that we look at these programs from a different angle than most users. We don't want pilots to get frustrated trying to complete their flight. FSACARS/GCP/FSFK/Flight Sim can all shutdown with no warning and when that happens some pilots will completely loose all their flight information and have to restart the flight. It isn't much fun when we are operating 12+ hour flights to have to start over. If we can provide programs that allow the pilot to continue from where the flight failed we will...and we have with FSFK and GCP.

With all that said, FSACARS is still in use at GC and we don't have a deadline for when our official support will cease.

[yoni63]

Ewing, I can only echo what Justin said. I bought FSFK prior to the birth of GCP. I used FSacars for many of my initial flights here at GCVA. My issue was all the sudden without warning things would just lock up and quit working. I might make a successful flight or two in between failures, but then without warning, I lose everything. I felt the small investment was well worth the frustration I was having with a flawed system. I changed nothing but kept seeing failures randomly.

GCP has not given me one problem since I began using it. It's free, alot of our guys that come on new might have expenses with buying PMDG and other add-ons simply to meet minimum criteria, therefore GCP is a huge blessing for these guys that are on limited budgets. They don't have to go out and buy FSFK now and can simply get GCP and go flying.

Finally as an administrator here at GCVA, I can't tell you how many guys I have had to manually enter pireps for due to FSacars failing. On top of that to add misery to the story, I can also show you more than a few that have susequently quit the VA due to FSacars becoming such a headache for them they soon lost interest and just faded out.

It's nothing personal against FSacars, it just doesn't consistently work for most. Consistency is the key, nobody has time to diddle with software not working when they are in the middle of an already complex process (if they fly properly) of planning and executing a simulated flight in a heavy from point to point.

[PetriSuni]

Hi guys!

I do not mean to offend anyone, but I (like Ewing) have been running FSACARS from day one of Globe VA and have NEVER had an issue with it. True, I do not use the flight map, but still. I do not want to be a pain in the butt, but my point is just that there are us happy FSACARS users out here and we'd appreciate it very much if you would not ban/shut down this way of reporting flights. It cannot require much work letting one PHP script exist on the web server to accept FSACARS flight logs. If you want, you can stop the service of entering flight reports manually...

GCP is a good program, please do not get me wrong! It's just that having very limited flying-time these days, I'd hate to tear down a working setup (with FSACARS) and start installing another flight-reporting program, just because someone else can't get FSACARS to run.

[eek]

I always send data to the flight map, and have never had a problem (sans the previous webhost). Just checking the maps, there's one guy flying... using FSAcars (I've been aware of the difference between the GCP and FSAcars on the flight map). I'm not saying it works for everyone, but for at least some of us, it does work consistently and we like it.

I understand you guys have lives and would rather not spend a lot of time handholding and manually entering pireps. But, I'd like to echo what Petri said, that there are a number of us who use it and are quite happy with it. All we are asking is that you continue to allow FSAcars to be used for pireps. If you want to discontinue technical support of the program, then I completely understand. But, I see no reason to force the rest of us to discontinue using a program that works flawlessly.

At the same time, the rest of us have lives also. I really don't want to spend my time beta testing a new program, when I have one that does the job already. I'd rather fly, than reinvent the wheel.

GCP looks promising, but I see a substantial number of posts from people with issues. I'm a firm believer in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

[esurfman]

Now Ewing, some of us joined in 2004 and I can tell you that at that time FSACARS was the only thing we had and we used it for quite a while. If we decided to try something else it is because a lot of pilots had problems. The administrators just don't hate the program (if we did we would not allow it's usage), we just wanted to have other options.

[nwadc10]

I always send data to the flight map, and have never had a problem (sans the previous webhost). Just checking the maps, there's one guy flying... using FSAcars (I've been aware of the difference between the GCP and FSAcars on the flight map). I'm not saying it works for everyone, but for at least some of us, it does work consistently and we like it.

I understand you guys have lives and would rather not spend a lot of time handholding and manually entering pireps. But, I'd like to echo what Petri said, that there are a number of us who use it and are quite happy with it. All we are asking is that you continue to allow FSAcars to be used for pireps. If you want to discontinue technical support of the program, then I completely understand. But, I see no reason to force the rest of us to discontinue using a program that works flawlessly.

At the same time, the rest of us have lives also. I really don't want to spend my time beta testing a new program, when I have one that does the job already. I'd rather fly, than reinvent the wheel.

GCP looks promising, but I see a substantial number of posts from people with issues. I'm a firm believer in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

When FSACARS is discontinued it will come in the form of no more support on the forum which will be locked but still viewable because there's good information there that users can help themselves. Region Managers will no longer support the manual entry of FSACARS reports when something has failed. If FSACARS continues to work flawlessly then you have nothing to worry about as the site will continue to take automated reports.

Just to clarify, this day has not come yet nor is it scheduled. Ops normal for FSACARS users at this time.

[yoni63]

GCP has been beta tested already believe me.. Justin and I (as well as a few others) in it's baby stages spent alot of time testing the download and install phase as well as the flight phases. These issues you see now are really not "issues" as most of us have experienced in the FS world. Once you get things installed GCP works very well and is a very simple hands off program. The nicest part of GCP is the VA friendly features such as MX not to forget a few other items. It's not like anyone is going to have to spend any money and the time invested has already been spent testing so there should not be any time spent other than install and set up which is minimal.

The installer exists that works, if it didn't I would not have a working model.