Fsbuild-2 Flight Planner

I purchased FSBuild yesterday. I have spent the day playing with it, did a tutorial and read the User Guide, and I have questions for which I did not find any anwers. Hopefully you can help me.


1. When I try to delete a flight from the “User Saved Routes” category, I get a message stating “Subscript out of range”.

2. If there is already a flight plan showing, and I want to create a new one from scratch, how do I get rid of the existing one? I can clear the map by pushing the X button, but the Route waypoints table remains. So far the only I can get rid of it is by shutting down FSBuild altogether. There should be a “Close” or a “New” command in the File menu.

3. I wish to add the Captain Sim Lockheed C-130X Hercules. In another post, it refers to a ".prf file". Where can I get this file?

4. Comment: no help file or users guide shows up shows up in the Start Programs list; found it by accident in the actual program file. There should be a shortcut to it in the Start menu.

Gaétan

I don't know, I never encountered that error.

But Only the User Saved routes can be deleted, so make sure that is the current active category when you try to do a delete.



Enter a new Dep/Dest airport, and delete the route in the Flight Plan box (backspace or select text and delete).

Once the route is cleared in the Flight Plan box, you effectively have a new route.



See the Data Files 2 document in the User Guides subfolder.

You'll need some C-130 performance data though to create a .prf file.

Regards.
Ernie.

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DELETING
Here is exactly what I did (for this test, I first created 3 different flight plans):
1. I selected the Flight Plans Folder, then the Categories tab.
2. In the list of categories, I selected “User Saved Routes” (ID 4)
3. I selected the third flight (KPHX-KABI – your tutorial 2)
4. In the File menu, I clicked on “Delete Flight Plan”.
5. A small window opened up stating “Subscript out of range” and showing an OK button.
6. I clicked on the OK button. The small window closed and a new small window opened called “Route Delete”; in the middle of it is a smaller window containing the Title KPHX-KABI, with a Delete button underneath.
7. I clicked on the Delete button and the first small window came back (“Subscript out of range” ).
8. Then I closed this window by clicking the X in the upper corner. The flight was still listed in the “User Saved Routes”.
9. I then double-clicked on the “Logged Routes” row (ID5), then I clicked back on the “User Saved Routes” row, and lo-and-behold, all THREE (3) flights were gone! However I did find them back in the Logged Routes category. This is a real mystery to me. The Users’ Guide does not even contain the word “Logged”, let alone explain what is the purpose of this category and how it works.
10. So, bottom line, I still don’t know how to delete a flight plan, plus I have a Logged Routes category that interacts with the “User Saved Routes” for whatever reason.
11. Would appreciate complete information.

GETTING RID OF AN EXISTING FLIGHT PLAN
Works as you described, however, in addition to clearing in the Flight Plan box, I still need to manually remove all the lines in the route waypoint table.

Logged routes are autosaved every time you generate any route. They are not deletable.

Getting rid of an existing plan works as Ernie described - change either or both the arrival or departure and hit autogenerate and a new plan is generated. Delete the route line and enter a new arrival and or departure and hit autogenerate and the same thing is true; delete the route line and enter a new arrival and/or departure and enter waypoints manually and press build and a new plan is generated. In no case should you have to delete entries in the grid.

DJ

You have to 'Set' the category, a single click, highlights it, but does not change the category.

You must either Double click on the category or press the 'Set Category' button' to change to a new category.

Then the table/grid will update with the routes in the newly set category.



Still not able to re-create this error.

Only thing I can think of is the User Saved Routes category is not the active category.

If you were to try and delete a route in the logged routes category, you might get this error since the
logged category can get very large.



They are in the logged category because 'Every' route you build is logged.



Logged routes allow you to retrieve previously created routes. They are displayed in order or Last created/Built first.

So really you do not need to save any routes, since every route you build is logged. Just open the
Logged category and retrieve it from there.

You can even search the category by Departure/Destination.

The Saved Routes category is there because the logged category can get quite large after while, and it may be easier to keep a small number of routes in your own user category.



You can also simply open the category file with a text editor, and remove the line of the route you wish to delete.



You don't need to do that.

Every time you press 'Build' or 'Autogen' a route the route waypoint table is cleared and populated with the newly built route.

When you press 'Build' it creates a flight plan route route from the codes in the Flight Plan box.

To create a new route all you need to do it enter a new route into the Flight Plan box (with dep/dest airport) and press Build.

Example:

KPHX PXR J92 LMT KSEA

Paste that exact line into the Flight Plan box.

Notice how the Departure and Destination airport boxes filled in automatically ?

All you have to do from here is press Build.

Now try and different route. See how quickly its happening ?

You built a new route in seconds.

Regards
Ernie.

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Thanks Ernie, now I understand both issues. I thought that each flight plan was saved in a file of its own similar to what is done in the FSX Flight Planner and other flight planning S/W. Now I understand that all the information for a given category is saved in one text file, which I can edit if need be.

I also tried the example you indicated on “getting rid of a plan” and I now see how it works. It’s just that it is a somewhat different approach compared to what I see in other S/W.

I think your User’s Guide could use a bit of updating to clarify these issues – and it would save you time answering posts such as mine. Not much text is required – just step-by-step instructions.

In the meantime, I have run into another issue. I developed the following plan using the manual method described in Tutorial 1:

OPKC DANG2B DANGI A791 JJS.JATEN VECC

Departing RWY was 25L; arrival RWY was 19L.

When I inserted the JJS.JATEN STAR, it showed the following points in the path (both on the map and in the waypoints table):

JJS CC101 JATEN CC319 CC306 CC335 VECC

However, after I pressed the BUILD button, al the CCXXX points disappeared and I was left with:

JJS JATEN VECC

Why did this happen? I don’t think this reflects the real STAR, however I am not sure because there is no JJS.JATEN STAR in the Navigraph charts (which is up to date – as is my AIRAC cycle 1202).

Gaétan

Because most Sid/Stars have version numbers. This one does not, and there also happens to be a Navaid in the database with the exact same identifier, that creates an ambiguous situation.

JJS JATEN

Does that mean Is that JJS VOR direct to JATEN intersetion ?, or JJS transition for the JATEN STAR ?.

Both are valid routes, Fsbuild does not know which one you want, so it defaults to the first one
JJS direct JATEN.

To clear up the Ambiguity for STAR's with no version number, insert the text 'STAR' after the JATEN.

OPKC DANG2B DANGI A791 JJS.JATEN STAR VECC

Now it knows you mean JATEN STAR and not JATEN intersection.

Putting a bogus number would work as well, as it will no longer be a match for the JATEN intersection, Fsbuild automatically selects the version number of a SID/STAR in the database when the version number in the flight plan does not match.

OPKC DANG2B DANGI A791 JJS.JATEN1 VECC



It's still in my 1202 cycle database.

JATEN is the STAR, JJS is the transition.

Regards.
Ernie.

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Ernie

Thanks, that explains it, although it was not obvious to guess at.

In the meantime I had created a different version of the route using the BAMUR STAR instead of JATEN. It had resulted again in losing the CC points. However, after inserting “STAR” after BAMUR it worked – I recuperated all the lost waypoints.

You mention that “JATEN is the STAR, JJS is the transition”, however in the STARS list on the right, it is listed as JJR.JATEN. Hence the confusion.

When I said that “there is no JJS.JATEN STAR in the Navigraph charts”, I meant it is not in the Charts even though it is in the database; however that is Navigraph’s problem, not yours.

I have a suggestion for your next version of FSBuild. Currently, when we click on Build, it exports the plan to FSX and PMDG (or whatever was selected) and automatically assigns a name in the format OPKCVECC.PLN or OPKCVECC.RTE. If I then create a different version of the plan, using a different route or SID/STAR, or a different aircraft, it saves it under the same name, thus overwriting the original file, which I might have wanted to keep. Having noticed this, I work around the issue by immediately going into Windows Explorer and adding 001 or whatever after the original name, e.g. OPKCVECC001.RTE. My suggestion is for FSBuild to automatically add such as suffix number if it sees that a plan already exists between the same two airports. An alternate would be to request the user to assign a file name of his choice.

At any rate, thanks for your support. In spite of all my questions, as I use FSBuild, I find I like it more and more. It certainly will save me time over tweaking routes built in FSX and making them fit in the PMDG FMC.

Gaétan