No problem, Tim, take your time! It's not urgent anyways... I'll stick to current beta for now.

Thank you for consideration!!!

Tim,

I've been using PlanG for ages, literally... :) So, as a veteran user - my hats off!!!

Dunno if it's the right place to ask, please move as necessary, but I'm kindly requesting a (new?) feature which is actually present in PlanG but doesn't work as it should similar to other GE KMZ files I'm used to view in PlanG.
I know that PlanG doesn't support Google Maps for reasons explained earlier in the forums but I wonder if such a regularly updated KMZ file (see: attached), which downloads and overlays a set of georeferenced images of VFR sectionals, will open in PlanG? I tried several times... to no avail yet!

That will be of tremendous help for VFR pilots like me, if this works. What do you think?

Update v2 beta b09042015

# added aircraft profile with a separate W&B page for Antonov An-2 by SibWings;
# added options for copying, pasting, selecting and deleting text upon clicking on right mouse button on SkyVector import module's "Route" box;
# fixed a small bug which would include the departure or destination airport to the "Nearby Airports" list;
# improved calculations for WCA, magnetic variance, ground speed, NM/gal, start-up and taxi fuel;
# improved W&B calculations for all aircraft types;
# added W&B sheets protection;
# added a comment informing users about user-cells;
# small UI improvements.

A complete list of changes from v1.0 will be published upon stable release.

Now yo can get almost all information necessary for a successful sim-flight and convert your flight plans generated by FSX/P3D or Plan-G (in PLN format) to Google Earth KML and/or SkyVector format. The reversed conversion between flight plan formats is also possible. Before you ask, to make a navlog using SkyVector:

1. Goto SkyVector.com and make your flight plan.
2. When finished, click on the "Link" button at the top right corner of the screen and copy/paste the provided URL (in full) to skyLOGX's "SkyVector Import Module".
3. Hit "Load" to create a log.

I've tested skyLOGX in Excel 2007 / 2010 for 32-bit Windows platforms but I hope it will also work on higher versions of MS Excel. To avoid potential runtime errors, however, I highly recommend (!) getting all necessary updates from Microsoft's Office Update.

MORE INFO



Thanks!

Hi there,

New stable version 1.0.0 is ready for download with the following changelog:

Version 1.0.0 b28012015

++ added full support for A2A Cessna 182T Skylane including calculation of TAS, climb/cruise fuel consumption, as well as a separate weight and balance model
++ magnetic declination tables updated to IGRF12 Model (2015-2019)
++ small performance improvements and clean-up of the code

Version 0.9.3 b04012015

++ improved climb and trip fuel calculation depending on varying flight altitudes and OAT, according to POH
++ improved validation of cells containing date (Y7), time (P7), and BHP % (N9) values
++ users can now set desired Zulu (UTC/GMT) or sunrise/sunset times by changing values of cells P7 and Y7 without reloading the flight plan
++ improved flight plan validation
++ fixed weather data representation and associated runtime errors

Version 0.9.2 b28122014

++ improved cell formatting
++ improved sunrise/sunset calculations now fully compatible with NOAA Solar Calculator (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/solcalc/)
++ improved TAS calculation based on varying aircraft weight
++ improved GMT/UTC time calculations
++ added ability to fetch weather data from the nearest METAR station, if no station available at departure and/or destination locations
++ added ability to use flight plans starting and ending at the same location
++ added section showing total number of way-points, average ground speed, and landing weight
++ added new expandable data file "mtr.xlsm" containing global METAR stations
++ added legend for flight categories
++ fixed rounding errors
++ fixed GC distance and GC course calculation for flights starting and ending at the same location
++ fixed depiction of weather data relevant to departure and destination locations on the FlightPlan sheet
++ fixed printing of the log document
++ fixed calculation of departure/arrival times

Prerequisites:
* Microsoft Excel 2007 or higher
* MSXML parser 4.0 SP3 or higher
* Enabled macros
* FSX/P3D flight plan (in XML format). See a sample flight plan dispatched with the archive
* Stable Internet connection
* Free Time Zone API key from World Weather Online. This is basically required to ensure correct time calculations. You'll be requested to enter you API key upon the first launch of application.



DOWNLOAD v1.0.0

This is for those of you who love to hop in "bush wilderness" aboard A2A Simulations' amazing Cessna 172R Training and using PlanG as your primary flight planning tool.

We are not always satisfied with what we're being offered. So am I! As an avid virtual bush flyer, I've tried many navigation logs (especially, getting my PLN file done in PlanG) so far but each of them lacked this or that feature. So, I've decided to make my own. Here is the result of this challenge - it took me quite a while to get what I want but I hope you'll like it too.

skyLOGX [skaɪ lɒdʒɪks] is a VBA-based Excel spreadsheet application to ease your pre-flight workload with A2A C172R although with slight modification in programming routine, the logic can be applied to any fixed-pitch propeller aircraft. Actually, I'm planning to release similar apps for Piper Cherokee 180 and the recently released Cessna 182 Skylane, both from A2A. Stay tuned!

I've tried to keep user interaction as simple as possible - you essentially need to load your FSX/P3D flight plan made in PlanG and skyLOGX will do the rest for you.

There is no user manual currently (the user interface is quite intuitive, actually) and some improvements must be done before I release the stable version but I'm planning to further develop the app, if I can see a reasonable interest from the user community and spare some time from my real-world obligations, of course... :)

A couple of notes on user interaction although I've tried to make UI as friendly as possible:

• you can enter data to any of the "user cells" with green font colour.
• hovering over cells with red triangle at upper right corner will reveal some useful tips.
• you're absolutely free to add, edit or delete data to/from the files inside "data" folder provided that the format and location of files are kept intact. Think of these files as freely expandable user database.
• currently skyLOGX is NOT compatible with the freeware Open Office Calc / Libre Office Calc due to their poor support for VBA-macros. But I'll check the feasibility of Calc version in future...

Keeping short, please try skyLOGX and, most importantly, SHARE your thoughts, wishes, complaints, etc! I'm always open to constructive discussion. Currently, all discussion goes on relevant A2A Forum, so make sure to check that link once in a while.

Prerequisites:

* Microsoft Excel 2007 or higher
* Enabled macros
* FSX/P3D flight plan (in XML format). See a sample flight plan inside the ZIP archive
* Stable Internet connection
* Free Time Zone API key from World Weather Online. This is basically required to ensure correct time calculations. You'll be requested to enter you API key upon the first launch of application.

                   

DOWNLOAD

Vüqar Quliyev
vquliyev [at] gmail [dot] com

You can download it from here.

Hope this helps!

Vous pouvez télécharger v2.0.5 ici et installer les deux versions sur la même machine. Au lieu de Google Maps (v3.0), vous pouvez utiliser OpenCycleMap (File -> Options -> General -> Map Provider) avec les caractéristiques du terrain.

Well, if I understood you correctly, it depends on the software... When I add those tags and open up the flightplan in PlanG, nothing seems changed - PlanG shows up the same waypoints as before, so everything looks OK. When I open the same FP without <ICAO> section around user waypoints in Active Sky however, it shows only departure and destination airports, no user waypoints.

I apologise if it's been discussed before but I couldn't find a reference to this issue neither here, nor at Active Sky forums. FSX SDK also keeps silence about it...

Anyway, when PlanG saves (exports) a flightplan in PLN format (both in previous version and v3), depending on type of a way-point (airport, user, intersection, etc.) it adds a couple of extra lines around the particular way-point. Eg.: if a way-point along the route is an airport (navaid or intersection), it is saved as:

Quote
        <ATCWaypoint id="NZQN">
            <ATCWaypointType>Airport</ATCWaypointType>
            <WorldPosition>S45° 1' 16.00",E168° 44' 21.00",+001135.00</WorldPosition>
            <ICAO>
                <ICAOIdent>NZQN</ICAOIdent>
            </ICAO>
        </ATCWaypoint>

However, if a waypoint is a custom checkpoint inserted by a user, i.e. a user waypoint, it is saved as:

Quote
        <ATCWaypoint id="UserWaypoint">
            <ATCWaypointType>User</ATCWaypointType>
            <WorldPosition>S45° 50' 52.56",E168° 20' 16.85",+000758.00</WorldPosition>
            <Descr>A custom user waypoint</Descr>
        </ATCWaypoint>

Putting it simple, PlanG completely ignores the <ICAO> section, if a waypoint is of type "User". Guesstimating that PlanG's PLN export module was developed in compliance with FSX SDK's "waypoint naming convention" (?) , I thought it might be better to refer to FSX SDK first, or ask this question directly at Active Sky forums but both of them are silent about it...

Now, when you import the flightplan into Active Sky the latter doesn't show user way-points along the route unless they're embraced with <ICAO> and <ICAOIdent> tags. Only departure and arrival airports are visible. This is annoying when one wants to know say winds-aloft en-route. It's not a serious issue actually since I can add the missing section of the flightplan by hand but I'm just curious - is it possible (without breaking the rules?) to modify the PlanG code in a way that it considers a user waypoint as an ICAO-type waypoint?!? For the sake of Active Sky... :D

Just my 2 cents since I had similar issues both during install and runtime...

Before you run the installer, download and install SQL Server Compact 3.5 with SP2 (x86-x64). I am running W7 on a x64-machine and I guess that was the reason PlanG installer upon its first run wanted to download and install the 64-bit version of SSC while Microsoft recommends the following:

Quote
To ensure proper functionality of all the applications that are dependent on SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2 on
the Computer install SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2 as given below:

Installing SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2 on a 32-bit Computer (x86):
1. Install the 32-bit version of SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2 by running the SSCERuntime-ENU-x86.msi

Installing SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2 on a 64-bit computer (x64 or AMD64):
1. Install the 32-bit version of SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2 by running the SSCERuntime-ENU-x86.msi
2. Than install the 64-bit version of SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2 by running the SSCERuntime-ENU-x64.msi

When I ran PlanG after this step, I encountered another problem - it requested installation of .NET 4 Framework although I had the Client Profile installed already. The runtime problem was solved after installing .NET 4 Framework Full Profile.

Maybe in future releases Tim updates the readme file with such notifications for first-time users...

Hope this helps!

Hello everybody!

Just two questions before I jump into my cockpit... :)

1) How can I make PlanG to remember selected options (Airports, Airspace, User Waypoints, etc.) under "Map" menu of the ribbon so that when I zoom in/out I wouldn't need to select them manually every time?
2) When I insert this KMZ file for New Zealand through "Bookmarks -> KML -> Show..." and hit OK, PlanG shows me the NW of USA with tons of Google Earth objects (airports, etc.). Or, it gives up and does nothing at all just letting me stare at the blank territory (with no GE objects at all, as I would expect). My guess was PlanG was reading its internal/pre-loaded KMZ data (high priority?) but unticking "Include Orbx / OZX links" didn't help either. Any suggestion?

Thank you and all the best from UBBB!

Rustam Alhas

Unfortunately, I receive the exact same message... :(

I first downloaded and installed .Net Framework 4 Client Profile. Then, launched PlanG setup... after a while the above error message pops up and PlanG falls back to "Installation Incomplete" page.

Any help is highly appreciated!!!

Rustam