CoPilot for MS Flight Simulator - Tech Support
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CoPilot is a worldwide bestselling flight simulator add-on. It's received many favorable reviews. Below are some of these F.A.Q.s that users have been asking. Please read through them to see if we aleady have the answer to your question. If your particular question is not answered, you can send us a Problem Report - see below. |
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Frequently Asked Questions Who
is the creator of CoPilot? Answers to your Frequently Asked Questions
Answer: CoPilot is written by well-known FS toolmaker
Peter Jacobson. CoPilot is Peter's third major revision
of a program that he originally called Navaid. CoPilot
is a versatile tool for flight planning, displaying and printing
aeronautical charts, airport diagrams and instrument approach
plates. It also has a new GPS instrument for real-time navigation
using FS6. CoPilot is unique in that it uses the scenery
file data from Flight Simulator, so you're able to "reconfigure"
your charts, maps, diagrams and plates no matter how many add-on
sceneries you have. Question: How does the AutoRoute in flight planning work?? Answer:
Answer: Basically there are three steps:
Start CoPilot
and create your flight plan Start Flight
Simulator and Go To the departure airport Start the GPS
and Resize the Windows Let's assume that you're flying east to west (for example from La Guardia in New York to Wittman Regional in Oshkosh). You'll want the map to stretch across the top of the screen: Position the main CoPilot window at upper left corner of the screen. Zoom in on the depart from airport using the magnifying glass icon. Resize the map window so that the windows occupies about 1/3 of the height of the screen across the full length. You can gain more visibility by turning of CoPilot's toolbar (menu View | Toolbar. Use the map window scroll bars to adjust the display so that the depart from airport is in view. From the CoPilot menu select Display | GPS Options | Both so that the moving map will display the track and current position of your aircraft and then select Display | Auto Center. Make Flight Simulator the active application (Alt-Tab). Position the top of the FS window so that it's just beneath the CoPilot map window. Adjust the size of the FS window so that it occupies the bottom 2/3 of the screen across the full length. You're now ready to fly using the moving map. Another method is to leave Flight Simulator running and just use the Alt + Tab key combination. This is a Windows shortcut to switch between running applications. In this case, it will take you from Flight Simulator to CoPilot. You may notice that Flight
Simulator will pause when you switch to CoPilot. To prevent this
from happening, use the Flight Simulator menus to choose Options
| Preference. Make sure that the checkbox entitled Pause
On Task Switch is not checked.
Answer: The first time that you run CoPilot, it builds a special fileset which contains information about your Flight Simulator default scenery. To do a complete job, it needs to read the information from the booster files which are on the FS CD-ROM. If you load a map and none of the airports or navigation aids appear, the most likely reason is that you didn't have the FS CD-ROM in your CD drive when you first started CoPilot. To solve this problem if you're using CoPilot V2.0 rebuild the special fileset as follows: Insert the Flight Simulator CD-ROM into your CD drive. Close Flight Simulator if it starts automatically. Start CoPilot Click File | Open Scenery Files Locate and click the Rebuild button in the lower right corner. CoPilot will ask "Delete existing file sets and rebuild from default?" Click OK to rebuild the file sets.
Answer: CoPilot determines the Magnetic Variation
by looking at a file named MAGDEC.BGL. In CoPilot's main
menu choose File | Preferences. On the tab labeled General,
make sure that the "FS Scenery Path" points to the
correct folder (e.g. c:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Flight
Simulator\Scenery).
Answer: The following is the structure of the FIXES.TXT file which contains the intersection and fixes data. This file is located in the main \CoPilot folder and can be edited with Windows 95 Notepad. ID, L, Lo, Type, N_ID, N_ID, N_ID, N_ID, ILS_ID, ILS_ID ID The first field is the identifier of the fix. L The second field is the Latitude of the fix. Lo The third field is the Longitude of the fix. TypeThe fourth field indicates the type of fix and is one of the following: OTHER value 0 IAP value 1 LOW value 2 HIGH value 3 N_ID The next four fields are the navaid IDs which are typically VORs that made up the radials. ILS_ID The next two fields are for two ILS IDs. If a fix is an IAP type, there are two ILS IDs. Empty fields must be present and empty but separated by commas. Here's an example from the FIXES.TXT: MASSY, 42.700733, -82.833867,
1 ,MTC,PSI,UIZ,,MTC,
Answer: Both CoPilot and Flight Sim must be running for the GPS to work properly. Here's a good way to start flying using a flight plan: Start CoPilot Open a file set Make or open a flight plan Minimize CoPilot (but leave it running) Start Flight Simulator Select your plane with the GPS instrument already installed. Goto the departure airport Take off and when you've climbed to a safe altitude (say, 1500 feet), press the Set button A dialog box opens. Select the Flight Plan from the Object Window. Click on the second point (001) in the list box on the left. The first point (000) is the departure, so you'll want to fly the the second point. Click OK to set the GPS to fly to this point. Next click on the AP button to activate the AutoPilot If the GPS is not repsonding properly, click the Power button on the GPS off and then on again. If you're running Flight Simulator
98, make sure that you have BOTH the FSCONV98.EXE Converter
and FS98PAT1.EXE Patch Set 1 installed on your system. Both are
available from the Microsoft
website. |
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