This program's main purpose is to provide landing performance information. It polls FSX every 100 milliseconds and if it detects that the aircraft has landed a number of flight characteristics are displayed in the FS Landing Info screen. By Steven White.
I have wanted a program to check my landings for some time and while there are a few program around that do it they only provide basic information. I had a skeleton SimConnect program laying around from a little tool I wrote to randomly create failures so I converted that the FS Landing Info.
Lord of the Landing V1.7: Landing Training Environment for FSX. A SimConnect application to help repeated landing training in various weather conditions, and analyze and evaluate your landing data.
The software and source code it provided 'as-is' and if you use any of it you do so at your own risk. As the source code is trivial the source code is released without restriction EXCEPT copies of this program and source code must remain freeware.
.NET v2 is required to run this program and a C# compiler is required to recompile the source code.
FSX Connection Panel - This panel connects and disconnects FS Landing Info to FSX.
Landings Panel - This panel is updated each time the aircraft lands so if you land five times there will be five landing summaries. If you bounce down the runway there may be more than one landing summary for that landing.
When the Show in Sim check-box is checked then a landing summary will also be provided in the simulator window at the top of the screen. The Show For number represents the number of seconds that the landing summary will be displayed.
Realtime Panel - This panel is updated continuously during flight. The available values are:
- Angle of Attack: The angle of the wings chord line to the relative airflow. When this gets near 16 then you are about to stall.
- Pitch: The angle of the aircraft nose relative to the horizon.
- Roll: The aircrafts bank angle.
- Yaw: The amount of side-slip.
- Heading: The aircrafts magnetic heading.
- Track: The track of the aircraft relative to the ground. (Take wind into account)
- Drift: The difference between heading and track.
- Vertical Speed: The aircraft decent rate.
- On the Ground: Whether FSX thinks the aircraft is on-the-ground.
Installation/Use:
- Start FSX and start a flight.
- Start FS Landing Info.
- Press the connect button.
- That's it, enjoy!
- Calculate the starting point of the descent. Normally, the descent rate would define the point at which the descent must be started. Descent rates are usually chosen to be between 333 feet (102 m) per minute and 500 feet (153 m) per minute to give an effective descent without discomforting the passengers due to rising air pressure as the aircraft descends. The descent is left short of the landing field to give room for the aircraft to line up for final approach. For example, an aircraft is at a ground speed of 300 MPH (480 KPH) and an altitude of 35,000 feet (10675 m). The aircraft needs to complete the descent at 2,500 feet (763 m) altitude and 10 miles (16 km) short of the landing field to allow time for the aircraft to line up for final approach. At a chosen descent rate of 500 feet (153 m) per minute, the aircraft will take 32,500 divided by 500, or 65 minutes, to complete the descent. The aircraft will fly 325 miles (520 km) in 65 minutes. To allow 10 more miles (16 km) to the runway for final approach, the descent must be started 335 miles (536 km) from the landing field.
- Back calculate descent rate. By knowing the time taken to execute the descent and the amount of the descent, the descent rate can be back calculated. The aircraft of the example descending 32,500 feet (9913 m) in 65 minutes is using a descent rate of 32,500 divided by 65, or 500 feet (153 m) per minute.