How Get Windshear?

[sab12 6]

After all the struggle in FS2004 to mitigate unpredictable strong windshifts, I'm having trouble getting a windshear for take-off and landing practice.I'm using FS9.1, User Defined Weather, All Stations, Advanced Weather, FSUIPC 3.47 with wind smoothing UNCHECKED, ActiveWeather 2004.5 NOT STARTED, and FS9 realism setting HIGH.I'm flying North, I set up several wind layers of 1000' thickness, layers alternate 90 deg and 270 deg and strength of 10mph to 50 mph. I have Sharp shear set for all the layers.FS takes the settings but, when I'm flying, the wind speed and direction never changes.Would appreciate any suggestions as to what I need to do differently.Thanks,

[rstough 528]

Hi Steve -Let me see if I can help.>>>I'm using FS9.1, User Defined Weather, All Stations, Advanced >>>Weather, FSUIPC 3.47 with wind smoothing UNCHECKED, ActiveWeather >>>2004.5 NOT STARTED, and FS9 realism setting HIGH.>>>I'm flying North, I set up several wind layers of 1000' >>>thickness, layers alternate 90 deg and 270 deg and strength of >>>10mph to 50 mph. I have Sharp shear set for all the layers.You might want to look at the FSUIPC setting file. Look to see if the Wind Shear Sharp is set to no or yes. Even though you might not have an external weather program running, FSUIPC can effect you weather settings.I hope that helps.Reed

[rcbarend 37]

Hi Steve,When creating my GPWS gauge (which includes a Windshear warning), I did some testing as well with windlayers.Note that I'm using FS9.0 (without the patch) and NO FSUIPC.First of all, I don't think Windshear as a result of Microbursts is (or can be) very well modelled in FS. But of course you can simulate it by layers with opposite wind directions, like you did.One thing I noticed with setting "Windshear" to "sharp", is that the windchanges do NOT occur at the set layer limits.Example:I have set limits at 100, 400, 500 and 700 ft (with wind from resp. 0, 180, 270, 90 degrees)However, when I fly with these setting (from sealevel) I only get wind direction changes at 500 and 700 ft.But that doesn't explain why you don't see ANY windspeed/direction changes; try to SLEW-UP and see if you get any changes.Secondly,if you want to test Windshear, the way you do it now won't work. Windshear, as far as I know, is defined as a sudden change in airspeed (due to instantanous windspeed/direction changes) or sudden increase in descent rate (due to downwinds). Now, if, as you state, you fly North and have windlayers with wind direction from 90 and 270 degrees alternating, you won't see any changes in airspeed, since the longitudinal windcomponent doesn't change (in fact remains 0) Hence no windshear :-)Rob Barendregt

[sab12 6]

Rob,Actually, I'm trying to test the RALT check modification that you sent me on Friday to the windshear mode 7 of your GPWS gauge.I had only seen the higher altitude Active Weather induced changes which your GPWS with modification should (and apparently now does) ignore.I was curious about the intended low-altitude functionality too. Is your gauge testing change in magnitude of windspeed or abrupt change in airspeed?At any rate, I'm not getting any changes in windspeed, direction, gusts, or shear from FS9.1 to test with.Thanks,

[sab12 6]

Reed,Thanks for your response. The FSUIPC.ini WindShearSharp setting you mentioned was in fact set to NO.However, setting it to YES didn't make any difference. I have subsequently even tried removed the FSUIPC.dll completely with no effect.Note the post from rcbarend and my response to it above - that's what I'm trying to do.At the moment, the only wind setting that FS9.1 seems to be recognizing is the one for ground level and the settings for winds at any altitude above are being ignored. I have the feeling I've inadvertently enabled or disabled something but I have no idea what.Thanks again,

[rcbarend 37]

Ohh.. You are THAT Steve :-)In fact, I'm using an FS variable called "AIRCRAFT WIND Z".Which gives the environment wind in the longitudinal direction.(which is, in fact, TAS minus groundspeed at leveled flight).If you don't succeed in getting ANY wind direction/speed changes, I guess something must be wrong with your FS installation (unless MS goofed up with the 9.1 update, which I can't imagine because that would have led to a lot of posts here :-) ).Have you tried it without FSUIPC installed ? (by temporarily removing the FSUIPC.dll from the Modules folder)Because even with one windlayer, with Windshear "Sharp" and "gusts to" set at eg. 50 (with windspeed set to 10) and flying into the winddirection my gauge will give "windshear" warnings regularly on my PC.Rob

[sab12 6]

Rob,I just tried your test flying into the wind direction with single-layer wind set for 10 gusting to 50 and sharp shear. I was getting windshear indications on the ground and all the way up to the RALT Upper Limit setting. Above that - nothing. Your fix definitely works!I believe that non-longitudinal wind gusts should trigger an alarm if their longitudinal component exceeds the gauges tolerance parameter. Even if I had gotten them to work, lateral winds (which is what I was trying to do) shouldn't trigger an alarm.I'm going to read my FSUIPC and Active Weather manuals again very carefully as I suspect something I'm doing with them is causing my problem with wind layers near the ground. I tried not starting Active Weather and removing FSUIPC as you suggested and still had a problem but they may be setting .ini parameters that don't get automatically reset when they aren't running and/or present. I was successfully setting variable strength and direction upper altitude wind fields while I was learning how to fly the Virgin GlobalFlyer sim.Thanks again for the GPWS gauge and an opportunity to learn more about flying and simming.