skyLOGX: Push Button Flying...

[bina]

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

[bina]

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

[bina]

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!