dave2013

The P3Dv5/v6 flight planner is just plain awful - clunky, unwieldy, and full of bugs. Shermank is right - use Little Nav Map. Dave

I know a lot of people like to use AIG's manager for their AI traffic as it saves time and effort, but IMO it just complicates things. I've always just downloaded the traffic files and planes separately, added the aircraft.cfg titles to the aircraft AI text file, and then used AI Flight Planner to compile the files into traffic BGLs. It's more work, but if there's a problem, you know what you did and can usually figure out what's wrong, plus you get the satisfaction of customizing your own AI traffic. Sometimes I don't use parts of flightplans that I don't think are realistic or that are redundant, so I edit the flightplan text file and remove the planes that flight plan uses. Dave

Your house must be pretty old if it has lead pipes. I've read a few debates between those who think old houses are better and those who think newer ones are better. Some claim that because there are 100 year old houses still around this means they must have been built better, but others point out that those houses are simply the very well built ones that survived, plus many old houses were demolished or had major repair work done at some point. Some advantages with newer houses is that they use the PEX plumbing water lines which are less susceptible to bursting if they freeze, and they use more metal wood connectors which are stronger than nails. The downside to newer houses is that they use cheaper and weaker wood, and many are built very fast to maximize profits, leading to defects and flaws. Dave

With houses in the U.S. it's pretty hit and miss as far as quality in my experience. Most houses in the U.S. are wood frame with either a full concrete slab or concrete footer foundation, the footer being only a perimeter foundation with wood floor joists spanning the empty space in the middle and then 5/8" subfloor boards installed over those. Our previous house was a new build with a concrete slab that had big cracks and was not level, so the vinyl plank flooring on top moved and made noise. Our current recently built house with a footer foundation has a floor that, while quite solid and well-supported, makes a little noise when you walk on it, so likely the subfloor boards and/or joists aren't perfectly level across their full spans. Interior walls on houses built from the 1950s on are 1/2" drywall/sheetrock gypsum panels, and I've seen really shoddy installation of those with nail heads exposed and cracks. The exterior walls of most houses are 1/2" wood sheathing with a waterproof barrier and either wood siding, vinyl siding, or brick/stone facade(a single-layer brick and mortar wall that is not self-supporting and isn't part of the actual house structure). My mother's house was built in the 50s. The foundation wasn't adequate, so she's got cracks in the basement wall concrete blocks and water seeping in when it rains. Her wood floor makes a lot of noise when you walk and in some places even sinks a bit. Her house has had these problems for the past 30 years, BTW. This house was built in a time when workmanship was supposedly much better than nowadays, but you wouldn't know it in this case. We had a house for about 10 years that was built in the late 70s. At the time it was 30 years old and was clearly built very well. The slab foundation was smooth and level with no cracks, the exterior brick had no cracks, and the interior drywall had no cracks or flaws. It was even insualted extremely well because we had temps one winter get down to -15-17F for two nights in a row and the water pipes didn't freeze. I've had to fix some shoddy work on our current house, like door latches not lining up, hinges not tight or missing screws, deck stairs not level so had to lift up a side and add a support, but nothing major so far. We paid a pretty penny for the house and part of the reason for that was that it looks like it was built pretty well and uses higher quality fixtures. Houses are just like many other things in that you get what you pay for; not in every case, but most of the time. Houses in the U.S are basically designed to be built quickly and to last about 50-75 years. There are some older houses that are 100+ years old, but most of them required major work at some point which is why they've survived. I've read contractor forums where many builders say that newer houses are better in that they're safer, more energy efficient, and conform to more modern building codes, and I've come across some who think that older houses are better because the wood was stronger and overall workmanship was better. It really depends on the particular house. IMO there have always been home builders who rip people off by using poor quality materials, rushing the job and not checking that things are done right, and ignoring building codes and requirements to save time and money and hope they don't get caught. I think this happens a lot more nowadays simply because there are a lot more houses being built with massive developments and such. When you're buying a house, I strongly recommend that you have a qualified home inspector check it out before you sign the purchase contract. We were about to buy a house a couple years ago, but after having it inspected and finding some problems, we decided to cancel the purchase. Dave

As long as we're stuck using volatile, inflammable, and unstable chemicals for combustion just to get off the ground, we'll have to deal with these occasional explosions. I'm disappointed in the lack of advancements in space propulsion over the past 80 years. We've got computers on a handheld smartphone that used to require mainframes that took up entire rooms, yet we're still igniting fire like primitive cavemen in order to fly. It just shows you where humanity's priorites lie, and it's not in space exploration. All this talk recently about a moon base is pure hype and pie in the sky. Yeah, I'm becoming cynical about all this. Dave

For the younger people, the second part of the title refers to a TV ad from the 80s about the fidelity of Memorex cassette tapes. Check this out: At first I thought it was real, but then realized that it was entirely done using CGI/AI. We don't even need real people or props to make movies any more. Amazing, and at the same time troubling. Dave

Just read a news article about a Chinese company that's producing a lot of RAM now. Corsair just started using their chips. I predict that RAM prices will come down over the next year. How much is unclear. Dave

You probably wouldn't like the weather where I'm at. Humidity here is almost always over 50% and usually around 65-80%. We're at 1,000ft(305m) altitude here and adjacent to the Cumberland plateau, which helps to keep the temps a little lower than areas further west like Nashville. Doesn't help with the humidity, though. The air conditioning keeps the humidity lower in the house, but step outside and it hits you. Not nearly so bad as where we used to live in southern Alabama, though. Really hot and humid down there. Dave

The base models are here: https://www.ai-aardvark.com/aiaircraft/repaints/md_8x/md_8x.html The P3Dv4 conversions are available in the AVSIM library. Just search for "AI Conversion Team". Dave

I'm sure that greed does play a role in a lot of the price increases we're experiencing, but I don't think that's the main factor where RAM is concerned. The mad dash to build data centers has caused demand for chips to skyrocket in a short time and production hasn't caught up yet. I just hope the chip manufacturers don't decide to become like OPEC and keep supply tight to keep prices up for more profit. Dave

I had to hold off building a new system as RAM prices are so outrageous right now. I'm hoping that the memory chips companies will ramp up production so prices will come down. Micron is expanding their plants here in the U.S. and I'm sure other companies are doing the same, so hopefull more supply is coming. I'm not too optimistic, though, as data center construction is through the roof, and more being planned all the time. Dave

We've been in the mid-high 70s(24-26C) here for a while now. Low 80s(27-29C) is pretty normal for this area in late May and early June, so a bit cooler than usual. Our relatives in Italy are in a heat wave as well right now, with a high of 92F(33C) in northern and central Italy today and high 80s(30C) for the next week or so. Of course, we all have air conditioning here in the States, whereas many Europeans don't have it, making these high temps more uncomfortable, especially for the Brits who aren't used to the heat. Dave

I reinstalled TerraFlora last night and did some comparisons with and without it. I went back to ORBX HD Trees which look more realistic IMO. Dave

You can use it with P3Dv6, but you have to install it for P3Dv5 and then change the addon path to your v6 addons. Dave

I just use the ORBX HD trees, and they are much better than the stock ones IMO. Dave