The great Citation X

Posted on February 7, 2012 by jeff

For the last few days I have been primarily flying the Citation X in FSX. It’s a dream to fly and out of all the hours I’ve flown it, I’ve only crashed it twice. Both attributed to pilot failure. The first was due to an incorrect altitude correction setting and low airspeed near Wilkes-Barre Intl (KAVP) which is surrounded by mountainous terrain. The second caused by an overly-aggressive landing attempt where I pancaked the fuselage.

Since Friday, I’ve been fighting with learning how to navigate via the FMS and configuring ILS approaches. Either the company who designed the autopilot was smoking crack or I simply don’t know what I’m doing. Although I believe I figured most of it out last night.

I took off from Pittsburgh Intl (KPIT) heading east, cleared about 18k feet and started playing with the autopilot. Keep these points in mind:
  • The ALT (Altitude) button is only holds current altitude regardless of how the AP is set.
  • The VS (Vertical Speed) button works the same way. The thumb wheel adjusts the pitch if the VS light is lit.
Now that we’ve figured that part out, now onto the FLC (Flight Level Change) function. The FLC changes the altitude of the plane as well as setting the airspeed (need to verify this). Note the following:
  • When the FLC is set, the autopilot will pursue the altitude set by the altitude setting knob on the FMS console (above). 
  • Once the assigned altitude is met, the FLC light will shut off and the ALT light will be lit.
  • The VNAV button will not set if the autopilot is not following the FMS flight plan. The PFD will show weather the autopilot is following the FMS (LNAV node) or via heading (HDG) as shown below.
Let’s now talk about the FMS. The assumption is that you already know how to program the FMS. If you don’t, check out the YouTube video or FMS Quick start manual. The FMS follows the flight plan between intersections and VOR beacons. I’m still learning about STARS and SIDS so I won’t get into those.
When the autopilot is on with NAV set, the AP will follow the HDG regardless if it’s set to navigate via the FMS. This was the tricky part for me. Note the following:
  • The BRG knobs only display the VOR/ADF or FMS headings on the PFD.
  • The PRE button cycles through navigation previews before you change the navigation method with the NAV or FMS buttons.
  • When FMS is set for navigation, the autopilot will follow the heading bug until the flight path is intercepted. This is especially important! Items were almost thrown about until I figured this out. View the MFD panel to show the indicated flight path (see below). The autopilot will flip to LNAV mode and begin following the set flight plan.
  • Once the LNAV is tracking, VNAV can then be enabled.

I hope that helps. As I learn more, I’ll post it here.

–jeff

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New planes

Posted on February 4, 2012 by jeff

I ordered the Cessna Citation X 2.0 and Cirrus SR22 from Eaglesoft yesterday.

The Cirrus is a little bit of a frame pig. Most likely the glass cockpit the cause. It handles nicely in the air and is a good performer. I especially like the engine management glass display. Once I upgrade to a faster processor I’m thinking this frame issues will go away.

The Citation was a little intimidating at first. It’s a pretty slick plane and very smooth in flight. It took me over 20 minutes to get the engines to fire. Reading the manual is a must! The autopilot seems to be a little unconventional or at least different from what I’m used to.

Navigation centers around the FMS (Flight Management System) which is how you program a flight plan into the sim. The FMS is so complicated, a Citation X pilot created a YouTube video explaining how to program it. Check out his other videos as well. Very informative.

From what I’ve read so far, Eaglesoft’s Citation X 2.0 plane is one of the most accurate and close-to-real simulations in Microsoft Flight Simulator yet.

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TV from space.

Posted on February 4, 2012 by jeff

In and effort of getting rid of Comcast for TV, DirecTV was here today installing a dish, whole home HD DVR and two other receivers. I was a DirecTV subscriber a number of years ago and had always liked their service, so to go back to them and stick it to Comcast was a treat. Not that Comcast really cares but it made me feel all warm fuzzy.

The DirecTV hardware has drastically changed from 5 years ago. Instead of 4 coax lines coming in from the dish and two going to each DVR, there is now one cable coming in from the dish to a power module to power the LNB. This then feeds an ethernet injector which provides internet access to all of the receivers over the coax. From there the signal splits for all of the receivers. No more phone lines needed for the “ET phone home” function. Guide data is also apparently coming in via the internet now as well.

The new Whole-home HD DVR is pretty awesome. One coax line feeds it’s five internal tuners. Menu browsing is a little laggy and I’m hoping this is corrected in future software upgrades, but it’s not too painful. I’ll take this for the level of functionality any day. From what I had read, this receiver just came out and is a brand new product for them. Shows stored in the DVR can be viewed on my other HD receiver, although not on my standard def box. I need to get that one swapped out.

On-demand works a little different from what I’m used to. Simply pick the show you want to watch, click record and wait a minute. The show is stored in the local DVR and can be viewed as it’s downloading. The DirecTV iPhone and iPad apps are pretty slick too.

Now if only I could get Verizon to deliver FIOS to me.

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The Snowball Effect

Posted on February 2, 2012 by jeff

After building my friend’s new computer and testing out his much desired Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX), I found myself getting hooked on “flight” once again; Something that I was fairly proficient at a number of years ago, including some stick time in a real Piper Cadet.

It started off simple enough with the purchase of Microsoft FSX, headset and a Logitech joystick. This was fine for the first couple days. By the end of the week the first box arrived, the Saitek Pro Flight Yoke. This was great except when taxiing or steering down the runway at speed. Auto rudder wouldn’t be enough to control the plane. Needless to say, earlier this week the Saitek Pro Flight Rudder Pedals showed up.

Now that I could properly taxi and fly a plane I needed to now work on optimizing the system. I upgraded video cards from my three week old PNY GT-520 to an EVGA GTX-550Ti. This made a drastic difference in frame rate and detail rendering. I was now 3D video benchmarking close to my friend’s new computer. I also followed the FSX tuning according to Jesus and Nick documentation. This provided a few more additional frames per second.

When I purchased the rudder pedals, I also bid on the Saitek radio and switch panels on eBay. They should arrive next week.

See what happens when you have some level of OCD and help friends out? It’s a god-damn sickness I tell you.

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The Latest and Greatest

Posted on January 27, 2012 by jeff

I’m not one to require to have the latest and greatest and most of my computers are used and somewhat outdated. I tend to ride the line between used and obsolete.

Back in 2006 a close friend of mine needed the advice in purchasing a new computer. Back then Pentium D processors were king, SATA drives and gigabit ethernet had just become the standard and CRT monitors were pretty much gone. He was stuck on the Sony VAIO which I thought was “pretty” but fairly overpriced. He pulled the trigger on the purchase and over the next week or so, proceeded to tell me how fast it was.

I believe I was running a Mac G5 at the time, which best suited my waning music interest. It wasn’t long until before the music equipment was sold as well as the G5 (due to legal marital complications) and I was in the market for a PC. I’ve always been a PC user and “switched” for a short period of time. I would find myself buying a Dell XPS 400 with a very similar configuration to my friend’s VAIO for almost $400-$500 less.

Fast forward to the fall of 2011. The Dell XPS-400 was definitely showing signs of it’s age (now 5 years) and running my typical ham radio applications was getting worse and worse. I ended up building myself a quad-core AMD (Phenom II x4 840) with 4GB of RAM as well as an identically configured system for my girlfriend’s graphic design requirements.

A month ago I receive a call from my friend with the VAIO. “The computer is dead, can you take a look at it?”, “Sure thing, bring it on down.” It was officially scrap. The on-board SATA controller was cooked, the network would drop connection and it would randomly reboot. Most likely a bad motherboard.

It was time for a new system. He wanted something that would be respectable and fulfill his needs for the next 5-6 years like the previous system had but within a 50% smaller budget than the previous purchase in ’06.

I spec’d out an eight-core AMD (FX-8120) with 8GB RAM and an EVGA GTX-550Ti video card with 1GB DDR5 memory. Going from a Pentium D to an eight-core AMD was going to be a dramatic difference in performance. The foundation of the system (CPU and motherboard) was the biggest concern to start. Additional memory and video card upgrades are expected over time.

On a Monday evening and after arriving back from Microcenter with a car full of components, we built the system. The build went smoothly without incident. The new eight-core smoked my quad in CPU and 3D video performance. It benchmarked somewhere around 1750.

He should be able to play Flight Simulator now.

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Back-posting

Posted on January 7, 2012 by jeff

To back-post or not…

What’s the etiquette to do such things? Such a thing does exist. I googled it and everything.

I know after-published editing is frowned upon but I still do it anyways. Hey it’s my world and my website. :)

How about back-posting important life events..

Hello World - 09/01/1975

Born today. Crapped myself. What’s up.

–jeff

Stephen Lynch wrote a funny song that could be applied to this subject. Dear Diary 1-4 and Dear Diary MJ.

Author’s Note: This post was back-posted from 2/7/2012. That’s some future paradox shit ain’t it?

Additional Author’s Note: This post was also post-published edited too.

Yet Another Author’s Note: Added the Stephen Lynch link

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