Problem using "Week" option in TTools

[Guest Captain Barfbag]

I entered a flightplan set using the WEEK option, with a separate plan for each day. It seemed to work as intended originally, with the plane only showing up at its destinations on the intended days. (This was for Air Force 1, giving George a ride to a different city and home again each day of the week.) I happened to be poking around the "home field" for these flights on a different mission, and I discovered a whole row of idle Air Force 1's. It looks like the planes only FLY on the specified day, but they PARK the other six days. Is this the way it works?

[Guest]

What I think you did is:AC#xxx,WEEK,day0AC#xxx,WEEK,day1AC#xxx,WEEK,day2etc.If you did that than all those idle planes are your own fault;) All those planes are flying only one day a week and resting the remaining days.What you should have done is making the whole week in one line, thus:AC#xxx,WEEK,day0,day1,day2 etc.Then you have one plane flying the whole week.Remember that every line in flightplans.txt is a new plane, even if the have the same ac#xxx-number.WEEK means that you are going to define what the plane should do during a whole week. And if that is one flight: so be it.Norbert

[Guest waltch]

Hi NorbertIf you look at the flightplans available from various sources you see many plans like your first example, which is of course completely wrong.I never understood, why so many developers of flightplans did not understand the working and logic of Ttools for weekly plans. I wonder whether they ever read the manual. And then they go and complain that so many aircraft are sitting around at the gates for most of the week....You would expect that in the meantime word has gotten around that those flightplans according to your first example are absolutely useless, but you still see uploaded a lot of plans like that at many sites.WalterPAI beta tester

[Guest]

Indeed. And when I find such a plan I almost immediately discard it. I am not even going to try to improve it because that means a hell of a job. Somtimes you can see the weekly schedule, but than it appears that the whole bunch of plans is actually about 1.5 week. Then I drop it. As an example for instance the JMC-plans. Horrible.But it does not really matter. Then we do not use that one. There are plenty of good plans around. It only means that (when you can not or want not create the plans yourself) that you leave some out.Norbert

[Guest josh0571]

Hi guysYou've all hit the nail on the head. That's one of the main issues with the bulk/automatic installation of flight plans: you often get anomilies. I'm no expert and I'm not having a go at anyone, so don't get me wrong, but I reckon that you'll have less drama if you manually create and compile flightplans yourself using TTools.I've never had any probs that I haven't been able to sort but obviously it can be so damn time consuming. (I haven't flown for a month mainly because I want the airways around my favourite airports to be busy!)Anyway, seems to me like the only way to get rid of idle craft occupying valuable gates is to make fictitious plans - i.e. send them to a port that you wouldn't visit and have them return in time for their scheduled departure. Wouldn't it be nice if Lee Swordy could add a function to TTools that could make planes just taxi from gate to gate e.g. from terminal gate to remote/maintenance parking areas? Then no more fictitious plans to free up gates! (Surely someone has suggested this to him?!)Cheers Josh

[Guest Captain Barfbag]

Well, I started this mess, and I'll have to admit that the multiple planes were entirely my own fault. Putting them all on the same line made George Dubya's extra Air Force Ones all go away.I did read the manual (one of the best ever - free or pay, commercial or military, work or play) but I didn't associate the all-on-one-line requirement for a "single aircraft" with the format for WEEK. I guess I assumed that FS2002 would ignore lines in which the current day didn't match, but it doesn't.We need to hold ourselves to different standards when we distribute our products than when we just play with them at home. The only airport that my mistake affected was KADW on the other side of my own flight yoke, and I STILL feel silly about it, if only because somebody had to take the time to point out a mistake that a careful reading of the manual would likely have prevented. I'd hope that people who upload flight plans will take a look around their airports to make sure that they don't have a dozen copies of one AI plane all sitting at the gate, just like AFCAD uploaders need to make sure that the noses of 747's don't end up inside the terminals.

[Guest]

I am glad you were able to scrap all those superfluous AF1 planes.Norbert