This past Sunday I had the Archer booked all morning to knock off the remaining 2.6 hours of my solo cross-country time requirement. The plan was to fly from Albert Whitted to Page / Ft. Meyers

, do some time in the pattern there, then head up for a full-stop and maybe a few laps at Arcadia X06, and then go back to Whitted in St. Pete. Viewers of the YouTube channel know that I’ve simulated this flight a few times, including last Saturday.

During runup I noticed the ammeter (which, I’ve learned, is actually a load meter in the Archer) would quickly go to zero at around 1,800 RPM. Throttling back and flipping the ALT switch would show it as carrying a load again, but repeated runups always pegged it back at zero, and turning the landing lights etc. on and off didn’t show any load.

Thinking this was strange, I called ground and asked to go back to the ramp, where I stopped the plane, hopped out, and found some folks at the school to talk to. We couldn’t get the A&P on the phone, but two different CFIs, and my old CFI in PA who has an Archer (whom I called), all indicated that a near-zero reading on the loadmeter was normal behavior, so off I went.

Things were fine down to Page. I had advisories the entire way, and it was smooth flying. After laps at KFMY I headed north for the 20-or-so minute flight to Arcadia X06, talking to Ft. Meyers departure. About five or 10 minutes out of Page I started to get an interesting series of progressive failures. First the GPS (a GNS 430) reset. It came right back, I re-entered my flight plan, and kept going. Then I got another GPS reset, and it really started coming in and out. About that point I was told to switch to Miami Center, and while I could hear ATC on COM1 (which runs through the GPS unit), they could not seem to hear me. Then then GPS and COM 1 went completely dark. I tried to reach Center on COM 2, and while I could hear them they could not hear me.

I was getting closer to Arcadia, so I set the transponder to squawk 7600 (the code for lost communications) so that ATC could see on their screen that I had no radios. I then pulled out the handheld radio my wife gave me for Christmas two years ago, connected my headset, and tried to reach Center that way. I could not really hear them and was pretty certain they could not hear me — the handheld antenna just doesn’t have the reach. By this point I had visual on Arcadia. Though I had started a gentle descent a way back I was still quite high, so I switched the handheld to the Arcadia CTAF and made a call that I was passing over the field and setting up for a downwind entry to land. I tried a radio check but got no response, and as far as I could tell there was nobody in the pattern — but I really had my head on a swivel.

The landing went fine. As I got to the ramp I tried what I’d tried in St. Pete, flipping the ALT switch off and on again, and everything came back. I plugged in my headset and at that point I could hear someone calling me on frequency (which I think was the CTAF on COM2 but at this point those details are fuzzy) saying Miami Center was looking for me. I keyed the mic and told them I was fine and that I had had an electrical failure. The pilot confirmed that and I heard him, let Center know (turns out he was a JetBlue pilot who was calling in the blind as part of the effort to find me, a very courteous thing to do and a great example of the community of pilots). I parked the Archer and was greeted by the person manning the FBO. I called the school, they said stay put, and an hour later they were down in an Arrow to shuttle me back to St. Pete.

The problem? A a bad overvoltage relay, which keeps the electrical system from carrying too much load (and frying the electronics), or maybe a bad alternator that was throwing off too much load and tripping the relay. Either way, it was an alternator failure in flight which led to running the battery down (not helped by my flying with the landing light on as a safety measure, I’m sure). While there was enough juice in the battery for the first half of the flight, by the time I was enroute to Arcadia there was enough to keep COM2 and the transponder on but not enough to transmit. And interestingly the ALT annunciator light never lit (and yes I tested them in runup).

Getting home I looked up the ATC tapes online to listen to the other side of the ATC conversation and to see if any of my calls made it. None did. Listening to the Miami Center tapes was a bit creepy. They repeatedly asked me to IDENT if I could hear them (every five minutes or so). They had a Mooney in the area trying to get me on the Arcadia CTAF in the blind. The handheld has such limited range I never heard him. The controller asked him to listen for an ELT signal (which goes off if you crash). They had lost me and my 7600 from their scope just south of Aracadia, probably because the transponder didn’t have enough juice to transmit. But it was great to hear that JetBlue pilot interrupt an ATC call to confirm they had me.

I never felt unsafe, but was most anxious entering and flying the pattern at Arcadia. And of the problems to have in flight in a GA aircraft, this can qualify in my book as a good one. On the whole I consider it a great experience to have had, especially as a student pilot.

Lessons learned …

First, know the POH / Operating Handbook. In the Archer POH under “Alternator Failure” it describes just what I was seeing, including the ALT reset. If I’d checked it before departure I would not have gone.

Second, have complete checklists. The checklist in the Archer doesn’t have alternator failure on it. This isn’t uncommon as there are a million different checklists for any given airframe. But I’m going to make my own, more complete checklists instead.

Third, things move fast when it happens for real. I never checked the POH in flight, as I was too busy trying COM2, then squawking 7600, then switching radios, then getting ready for the approach into Arcadia without a reliable radio. There was a lot going on, and it’s an argument for procedure practice (including procedures less obvious than an engine out).

Fourth, redundant systems are a good thing. I had my iPad in the bird and my portable ADS B unit, so even though I lost the GPS I still had a moving map, charts, weather, and most important, traffic (at least ADS B traffic). This was of great help in getting to Arcadia without having to find my location on the paper chart.

Fifth, practice is useful. I was never sacred or even really nervous. “Focused” is a better word with a problem to solve and risks to manage. I credit that to the number of times I’ve simulated emergencies (though not this one) in the sim, and the time I have doing radio work on PilotEdge.

Sixth, and most important, trust your instincts. If I am ever again on the ramp thinking, “Well, this just doesn’t make sense,” I’m not going to go, no matter how much reassurance I get. Don’t get me wrong: the folks I talked to were very experienced and gave me the best advice they could. Everyone I have talked to has said that I did the right thing in talking to more experienced folks, and that they all would have gone, too, had they been told by three experienced pilots “that’s normal.” But I’m going to trust my spidey sense (and read the POH).

We left the Archer there. I can see on the schedule that it’s back in action and I’ll call in tomorrow to confirm the problem. In the scheme of things that can happen in an airplane, this was a minor one. I’m grateful for that, and for the experience. I can’t wait to get up again: I still have 12 minutes of cross-country solo time to knock off!

UPDATED 11/17/18

I’m often asked for this, so here is the latest. I will update this post over time, and as of this posting these are my VR settings for X-Plane 11.30b4 and the Oculus Rift.

***

My settings are primarily based on a YouTube video I’d found, which I have posted at the bottom of this post. It’s worth watching the entire thing, although the last 10 minutes or so you can probably scan through as it, for the most part, just makes and extended case for the use of the 3jFPS plugin. 3jFPS is excellent, but I now use Twick VR. Here’s the list:

• Using the automatic overclock wizard in my BIOS I have overclocked my CPU. A 4.0 chip, it’s running at 4.6 after the wizard, which I have manually upped to 4.7. DON’T OVERCLOCK YOUR CPU UNLESS YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH WHAT YOU ARE DOING AS YOU CAN PERMANENTLY DAMAGE YOUR PC.
• Based on the video below, in my BIOS I also:
  • Turned Hyperthreading on
  • Disabled power management
  • Disabled CPU C states
  • Disabled Intel Speed Step
  • AGAIN, DON’T MESS WITH YOUR BIOS UNLESS YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH WHAT YOU ARE DOING AS YOU CAN PERMANENTLY DAMAGE YOUR PC.
• With my old 980ti GPU card I used the NVIDA Inspector I overclocked by GPU by 80 on the clock speed and 200 on the memory speed. DON’T OVERCLOCK YOUR GPU UNLESS YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH WHAT YOU ARE DOING AS YOU CAN PERMANENTLY DAMAGE YOUR PC. But my new 1080ti is factory overclocked, so I no longer bother with overclocking it.
• Using Oculus Tray Tool I:
  • Set the performance to Maximum Performance Plan
  • Disabled USB Select Suspend
  • Set SuperSampling to 0
  • Left ASW alone — which is DIFFERENT from what he says to do in the video, because I prefer Oculus Debug Tool for setting the frame rate, as I can decide between fixing it at 45 FPS with AWS or without.
• Each time I load X-Plane I set Super Sampling to 1.2-1.5, depending on the performance hit I get in the scenery I’m flying in. Typically I now use 1.2 as I can use better anti-aliasing with my 1080ti, and I fly WITHOUT fixed 45 FPS or asynchronous spacewarp (ASW) as I’m getting very good frames in 11.3. With an older card, like my 980ti, I set SuperSampling between 1.2 and 1.5 and ASW to fixed 45 FPS with space warp off. This works best for me, and if you have performance problems you might turn down the Super Sampling to a lower number (maybe start with 1.3 and work your way up – at some point the increase in clarity is not worth the decrease in performance).
• As a result of the two points above

  kupbezrecepty.com

  , please note that (1) the Tray Tool changes are a one-time thing. I do NOT load Tray Tool each time I load X-Plane. I DO, however, load the Debug Tool each time I load X-Plane, and I am good with that.

• Using Project Lasso, I:
  • Enabled Performance Mode in the overall settings
  • With X-Plane and X-Plane VR running, in Lasso I:
    • Set XP’s priority to High
    • Set its CPU affinity to use virtual cores 2-7 (all but the first two and I have eight virtual cores with hyperthreading on)
    • Note: If you are not using hyper threading, run XP on all but your first physical core.
    • I have not had great results moving other items, like the Oculus programs, to the first physical core and away from X-Plane. Rather I give X-Plane the last three physical cores and keep it of the first, and let Windows allocate the rest of what’s running across the cores and threads as it sees fit given my performance and power management settings.
• In Windows Power Management (which is in the Windows Control Panel settings), I set the power management profiles to Bitsum Highest Performance (which is a profile created by Lasso). If you don’t have Lasso, pick Highest Performance.
• In NVIDIA Control Panel, I:
  • Set the overall 3D profile Energy setting to Max Performance
• IF YOU USE 3jFPS:
  • With X-Plane running, in the 3jFPS plugin Advanced Settings I:
    • Ran the wizard for a min FSP of 45 and max FPS to 46, and took the best FPS options in every other choice it gave me
    • Then I went back through the advanced settings and:
      • Reduced sliders in the LOD settings to the bottom of the green scale
      • Reduced min and max sliders in the visibility settings to the bottom of the green scale
• IF YOU USE TWICK VR: I have played with the shadow, weather, etc. settings to please my eye. I then manually set the % of objects slider to get the best balance of performance and scenery objects. For me that’s between 78% and 88% (and 88% is my default setting)
• WITH MY OLDER 980ti CARD in X-Plane graphics settings I:
  • Set it to windowed mode as it seems to perform better minimized (meaning once I have the Rift on I minimize the XP window)
  • Graphics to HDR (position 4)
  • Textures to max (position 4)
  • AA to FXAA (position 2)
  • Objects to almost max (position 4) — while he runs at max objects, I found it hurt my frames too much in busy areas
  • Shadows on if I’m using the latest 3JFPS with it’s auto-shadow setting, otherwise shadows off, reflections off
• WITH MY NEW 1080ti CARD in X-Plane graphics settings I:
  • Set it to windowed mode as it seems to perform better minimized (meaning once I have the Rift on I minimize the XP window)
  • Graphics to HDR (position 4)
  • Textures to max (position 4)
  • AA to 2xSS & FXAA (position 4)
  • Objects to max (position 5)
  • Shadows on, reflections off
• Finally, I did anything else I could do to reduce the CPU load while playing X-Plane:
  • Turned off Windows auto updates
  • Turned off NVIDIA Geforce Experience
  • Set Oculus Server to run in administrator mode, which seems to keep it from loading the full Oculus window unless I specifically open it

These setting are working really well for me, with usually solid 45FPS, smooth performance, and few to no “grey flashes” or frozen views. I do think the changes to the power management settings throughout made a difference, for what that’s worth. It’s really a remarkably good experience, although your mileage may vary.

Check out the golf balls he had made for me. I can’t wait to start losing ’em.

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I had a little fun in DCS World today. This game / sim is incredible in Virtual Reality.

https://youtu.be/CijOc3qgJPA

I’ve been hoping to increase the quality of the sky colors and clouds in X-Plane 11. While I have used xEnviro for some time and have liked it very much, I don’t think it always looks great in VR (especially in how it handles haze). I had downloaded a number of free cloud and sky enhancements over the past few days, but none of them looked right (or even much like what I saw in the screen shots online). Today I realized that part of the problem was that I was running the wrong version of FlyWithLua — I need the “complete edition” if I (or other scripts I install) are going to modify art datarefs (data refs are the variables X-Plane uses to run its world). Things immediately got better once I had the correct version installed, but I also continued down the path of playing with different cloud and shadow datarefs in search of a mix that suits my eye.

I’m getting close and have attached screen captures below of various cloud decks. These use the FSEnhancer sky colors (free) and set 2 or 3 (I can’t recall which) of the Unique Clouds Variety Pack (also free). I’ve modified quite a few datarefs in getting this look (and they load in via a little LUA script I’ve written), and in addition to the clouds looking good I am particularly happy with the look of the cloud shadows — something that I think the default X-Plane release handles quite poorly. Things look good in VR as well, with one exception: the cloud shadows rotate when you move your head. I’ll work on figuring that out next, and once I have it nailed I’ll post the LUA code here.

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A few posts back I reviewed the awesome GNS 530 unit from RealSimGear. It’s a great piece of gear

, one that I find extremely true to life (especially when running the RealityXP GNS 530), and one that I was very happy to not have to build myself. I also did not have to pay for it as it was a courtesy unit sent to me for review, but in candor I would pay for it if I did not have the good fortune to have one.

Along the way the good folks at SimVim have sent me a note to make mention of the fact that the unit uses their Arduino board and firmwear, and a user of this GNS 530 also downloads their ArdSimX plugin for use with X-Plane. I just wanted to mention that here in the interest of proper credit being placed where it’s due. This is also all an excellent example of how the different parts of our simulation community work together to create amazing things for us to use in our hobby or real-world practice.

Solo cross country complete! Thanks for all the support. Another one of these, some night work, then it’s time for check-ride prep.

kupbezrecepty.com/

Went up today to knock the rust off before tomorrow’s scheduled XC solo. Today was my first solo hop in Tampa. It was intense – big boy airspace, traffic, and the door popped open on climb-out prompting some unintended pattern work – but it felt good to be in the airplane alone again. Weather permitting tomorrow it’s off to Ft. Meyers Page and Arcadia.

I’ve done some troubleshooting in the sim and all seems to be working well, so we’re going to take another shot at practicing the real-world solo cross country that I’m set to fly next week. The flight is KSPG – KFMY – X06 – KSPG. If you would like to come along, there are two ways to do so:

• I will stream the flight on YouTube here.
• Or fly it with me on PilotEdge. We will make standard CTAF calls using the real world ground and tower frequencies given the flight is outside of the PE ATC network coverage area. We can brief on 123.45 to start, and if you miss the brief I will fly 4,500 on the way down and 2,500 on the way back.

For route planning

kupbezrecepty.com

, see the route I’ve planned on SkyVector here. Hope to see you then.