Archivo Mensual de abril, 2011

Buscando VORs… ¡Avión en vuelo en Google Earth!

Me he encontrado con esta curiosa imagen en Google Earth, justo al noreste de Santo Domingo de la Calzada:


No lo he encontrado completamente de casualidad… Estaba buscando VORs (antenas de radiolocalización que definen en gran medida las rutas de los aviones). Para los pilotos son algo tan conocido como para nosotros el súper de abajo (aunque ellos no los ven, solo los usan desde el cielo). Al lado de Santo Domingo está el VOR Domingo (DGO) que se puede ver en la siguiente imagen

Este VOR es un nudo de aerovías muy importante del norte de España. Si has volado entre Galicia y Barcelona, a buen seguro has pasado por encima. Muy resumidamente: los aviones sintonizan su señal y se dirigen a ellos. Es muy probable que si vives cerca de uno de estos, en los días en los que los aviones dejen estelas, puedas verlos cruzarse por encima. En Galicia es muy habitual ver estelas de aviones cruzándose y virando, estés donde estés mirando al cielo en dirección Santiago, que es otro punto de gran tráfico aéreo (VOR STG). Aquí va una foto del cielo sobre VOR STG:


Y sí, hay gente que hace Turismo de VOR a VOR, pero ¡por tierra!. Confieso que tengo más de una foto al lado de VORs :) y sería un viaje alucinante irse a Stornoway o a Gander solo a visitar esos míticos faros de aviones que son los VOR :D

abril 5, 2011

Best blogging service? 10 reasons why WordPress rocks

Okay so you’re trying to decide where to sign up for your new blog. I’m going to be straightforward: go for wordpress.com. It just rocks.

I can also give you a few reasons for that statement:

  1. Good record of uptime: this means your blog will be always online and reachable
  2. Great SEO: your blog will be found by search engines if you wish, and so people will be able to read your posts
  3. Built on free software (wordpress.org) which means it’s developed and mantained by lots of people around the world, and therefore, it is always getting better
  4. Huge choice of themes
  5. It is clean (no annoying ads) and fast enough
  6. It is very easy to use and its interface is translated to several languages
  7. You can start with a simple blog and then, if you want to have your own domain, you can set it up directly on their service. All with no technicalities, just with a few mouse clicks
  8. But best of all: it is not a lock-in platform. If you want to move your blog to a hosting of your own, or migrate it to another place, or monetize it, you’re free to do so because they give you the possibility of exporting the whole contents and download it to your hard drive. The best of the cloud without the lock-ins of other services
  9. As if giving you the freedom to go away from their service wasn’t enough, if you want to leave they even give you the possibility to 301-redirect your traffic to your new site, which enables visitors and search engines to be automatically redirected to the new one
  10. They have a responsive customer service

Services in the cloud should be like this: user friendly, reliable and confident enough in themselves about offering such a good product that they don’t have the need to lock people in. My experience as a user has been excellent with them and I wanted to share it.

abril 3, 2011

Review: Wilco Airbus Evolution released

NB: The Wilco A320 is still the best Airbus for FS2004 out there in my opinion. This review is about the recent paid update they’ve published. If you don’t own an Airbus yet, you’ll probably be happy with Wilco, but is it worth to pay for the update if you already own it?

Wilcopub has released its update called Airbus Series Evolution vol. 1 And so far… it has been disappointing to me. I just bought the update for 19,95€ and while it can’t be classified as being a scam (as some may define Airsimmer Airbus) it’s just a minor update. It may be not worth the price in your oppinion.

I’ve done a test LEVX-LEMD flight with the A320. This is what I’ve found so far:

GOOD:

  • FS2004 doesn’t crash to desktop when shutting it down after flying the A320. ¡Finally!
  • Gauges adapt OK when changing to 3D cockpit
  • WX radar, but unable to tilt it or view with range 10NM
  • It idles on descent marker and tries to keep it that way (the older one tried hard to mantain the selected speed doing idle/max cycles)
  • Speed constraints are met when reaching the fix (not after, see below)
  • Hockey stick for target altitude
  • Continuous TOC recalculation
  • Edit: Direct-to DOES draw curves, not just sharp corners as it used to, but has a hard time following them on 4x or greater

BAD:

  • It overwrites old Wilco Airbus and custom liveries disappear (overwritten .cfg I suppose)
  • Unstable autopilot on 4x or greater (does not easily follow the descent profile at that simulation rate). Climb/descent rates still vary when using it. Not nearly as bad as the unusable Airsimmer, though
  • Speed constraints are not followed between two distant fixes with same constraint
  • Same configuration interface, same little amount of shortcuts. Difficult to integrate with external panels. For example, selecting ALT via M-Panel is impossible.
  • TOD is not recalculated after inserting speed constraint. I guess this also causes “dives of death”
  • Some stuttering sounds (this might be my hardware, anyway)

VERY BAD

  • Dives of death still present (6000 fpm)
  • No sound or graphic updates (this is why I feel my 19,95€ may have been wasted). Still the crappy older ones. Such a bad quality cockpit or sound is unacceptable for a 2011 product. This is something they could borrow from AirSimmer (great sound!)
  • Very limited support. No web page forum, no twitter, nothing. Just a web form. This gives a slight feeling of Wilcopub being limited on receiving feedback, to say the least

This update would be worth it had they updated the sounds, the A/P stability, the cockpit graphics and the 6000fpm descents. If you need an A320, go for Wilco and stay away from AirSimmer until it is usable. But you might not be happy with the update, and I hope this short review will help you make a decision.

What I’d love to see is the great sounds, graphics and accuracy of the systems achieved by Airsimmer, but with the stability and usability found on those by Wilco. That’d be a killer product

I’ll edit this post if I find something new or if the bugs are corrected by Wilco (or Airsimmer, for that matter)

abril 1, 2011