RoutPlan by John Howe

[Davidsee]

Does any member please have the original download or the present address for this old basic Route  Planner, I have changed my computer and have lost the download. The Add Ons in 744 will not connect and issues a "Not available " message.

[Swiso]

Hi !
I have the file. ( NavData archive file too )
It is a 1.15MB file

send me and email : aris  at  ticino  dot  com

[speedbird965]

Hi to you all!

Can anyone of you please be so kind to help me out with this nice piece of software too? (my emailadress is: debianiteATgmailDOTcom).

I once was very active in this forum (more than 10 years ago now). As I read somewhere, that Hardy still hasn't retired and is working on a new project (thank God for that   ), I installed PS 1.3 and had to start from scratch again  :oops: .

Is there any other flightplanning-software you can recommend me (in connection with PS13)?

Many thanks in advance for all your help!!!

Peter

[Richard McDonald Woods]

Peter,

One of the best flight planning packages at present is from Christian Grill at http://www.flightsimsoft.com/pfpx/

Cheers, Richard

[speedbird965]

Richard,

wow I'm very impressed - thank you so much!

Never heard of it before, but it looks great!

Again many thanks for your help and

cheers,

Peter

[speedbird965]

Many thanks to Aris, who has already sent me the RoutPlan tool!!!

Cheers,

Peter

[Jeroen D]

Peter,

One of the best flight planning packages at present is from Christian Grill at http://www.flightsimsoft.com/pfpx/

Cheers, Richard

Had a look at this and it does look pretty impressive! Now I understand, based on some other threads that PSX uses real life weather that it plucks somewhere from the Internet. as discussed/explained here: http://aerowinx.com/forum/topic.php?id=1509

So how do you get the same "weather' PSX is using into your flight planning program?

Jeroen

[Richard McDonald Woods]

Hi Jeroen,

PFPX supports both current and historical weather usage. It also uses real-world weather forecasts to show the weather to be expected when overflying your waypoints and for diversion airports.

I guess that both PFPX and PSX will be getting real world weather data from the same authoritative sources, so there should be no worries.

I also use Active Sky Next to inject real weather and turbulence into FSX, again from an authoritative source.

This set-up then gives me a real-world ability to plan my flights and to then encounter actual weather en route. Very realistic, I believe!

I hope this helps,

[Jeroen D]

Thanks Richard,
I've never used real world weather yet. Let alone understand how it works with PSX. So I guess we'll just wait until PSX gets released and all will be revealed. Can't wait!

Jeroen

[Hardy Heinlin]

I can reveal this already now: METARs are usually in sync in both programs as both programs download the same data. Aside from airport winds and temps, PSX uses METARs -- multiple METARs -- also to compose enroute radar images (as METARs contain cloud information). E.g. when certain METARs include thunderstorms, you will see them in cruise on the radar (and, of course, if you fly into a thunderstorm, you'll have to bear various consequences). Unfortunately, enroute winds and temps are not downloaded by PSX. It was planned to allow the possibility to load enroute winds and temps from the respective PFPX file, but this plan is still just a plan. Maybe in a later update ... This means, PSX users will have to enter enroute winds and temps manually. There are two ways to do this in PSX: Either by drawing a jet stream constellation with the mouse, or by setting globally constant data. These enroute winds and temps affect only high altitudes; winds and temps in the lower atmosphere can be controlled by METARs, as described above.


|-|ardy

[skin]

hardy,
what do you mean by globally constant data ... same as in ps 1.3 - flight is splitted in 3 flight phases and each gets a constant temperature and wind component ?

peter

[Hardy Heinlin]

In PSX the planet model is completely different from PS1. In PSX ...

... there are 7 local weather zones around the aircraft within a radius of max. 600 nm. These zones make -- among other things -- the winds, temps, pressures at ground level; and the clouds between ground level and 50000 ft. These 7 zones can be manually set, or set by a historic file, or by live downloads from the Internet (or by network injections from add-ons).

... there is a variable planetary troposphere model. This model makes the winds and temps at high altitudes. This troposphere model is vertically interpolated with the afore-mentioned 7 local weather zones; that is, the winds and temps are interpolated on the vertical axis from the ground up to 50000 ft. This planetary troposphere model provides tropopause altitudes and tropopause temperatures that vary from latitude to latitude and by time of the year; and the model also provides the 4 typical jet streams of the earth which vary by time of the year as well: Depending on the seasons, the jet streams vary their wind speeds and their north/south drift. The jet stream geometry and wind speeds may be manually set, or by pushing the randomizer button which takes the current season into account. The global winds between the jet streams are interpolated in a rather complicated way; e.g. this takes the wind direction change at the equator into account (jet streams always blast to the east, in PSX and on the real planet), and the interpolation is not linear.

... alternatively, there is also a constant planetary troposphere model. That is, the tropopause altitude, temperature, or wind, may also be set to a fixed value. This may be useful to create certain airwork training scenarios, or to set flight planner aloft forecast data exactly to the current conditions (although forecast data are never really so precise); in the latter case, the user should manually adjust the data every few hours.

For long range flights I recommend to use the variable planetary troposphere model. It may not perfectly agree with aloft forecast winds/temps, but it's more realistic. In real life aviation, the data won't perfectly agree either. For this reason, the real FMC (and PSX's FMC) uses a specific mixing algorithm to interpolate the current detected temps/winds with the forecasted temps/winds to predict fuel remaining and ETAs.

The PSX manual will have the details about the weather model, especially the jet stream model. E.g. the jet streams may generate Clear Air Turbulence at certain 3D positions, based on an empirical physical model.


Cheers,

|-|ardy

[J D ADAM]

Hi John,  You may like to look at the thread in September last year.

Cheers
Derek


http://aerowinx.com/forum/topic.php?id=1408