Good aviation movies

A list with some of my favorite aviation movies, or movies taht contain scenes involving airplanes:

• Sky Fighters
• Top Gun
• United 93
• Air Force One
• Con Air
• The Terminal
• Annapolis
• The aviator

Openflights - A flight database

A nice database with flights:
http://openflights.org/

Airline manager - Facebook aplication for pilots

I came across this nice Facebook game which sounds very promising:

http://apps.facebook.com/airline_manager

Baby croc causes panic in an airliner

Seems like a movie script, but it happened for real:

Read more from source

Safest place to place a tall building

Exactly under the glide slope of the active runway of a busy airport, 100 meters from the threshold.

Seems someone did it for real: http://www.airliners.net/photo/0493224/L/

I remember a funny real story about some investors built a group of houses exactly on the runway center line of a capital's second airport. When people came to mount the new ILS installation for that end of the runway they figured out that one of the light poles would have had to be built exactly in one of the living rooms. Seems the houses were built so close to the runway that if the plane came 50 meters lower on approach would have ment bye bye roof.

Free screen capture programs - how to take screenshots and record movies from flight simulator

I often need a good program to capture screen shots during the flights which I use on the blog or just keep them to review later on. Because it's impractical to minimize Flight simulator after each one and save it with Paint, I use programs that can save automatically JPEG files(best quality/size ratio).

The program I usually use is MWSnap which has all the features I need, is very easy to use and takes little space/resources. You can setup a combination of keys for taking the screen capture and setup the program to save the image automatically in the desired format (jpg, png, bmp, ...) in any folder on your hard drive so you don't get distracted from your flight.
It works good both in fullscreen and windowed mode.

To capture video (create videos to post on Youtube for example) you can use this program.

How to disable crash in FS Passengers X

Open this file with a text editor:
/FSPassenger/config/more_options.cfg

and change the values of "DisableForceCrashDetection" and "DisableForceCollideDetection" to 1

This will disable those annoying crashes without any impact on the program functionality. Please back up the file before doing any modification!

Lufthansa pilot wants to leave his airplane

Funny conversation between Kennedy tower and a Lufthansa A340 pilot, who has a small issue with a opened fuel panel door and would like to leave the airplane to fix it.

How to install aircrafts in FSX

This is especially useful for new users of FSX. Before we get into details let's see how is the folder structure from an aircraft looking like:

/737 - main aircraft folder
|
model - Folder containing the 3d model of the aircraft
|
texture.xx - Textures (images that go over the 3d model to create the skin)
|
gauges - Dashboard instrument, either in .gau files or as .xml and .bmp files (Optional)
|
panel - 2d panel texture/background and/or Virtual cockpit background and panel.cfg
|
aircraft.cfg - Main configuration file of the aircraft - data about texture, model, weight, avionics, electronic buses...
misc files - kneeboard, briefings, etc.


In FSX the folder structure changed a bit from FS2004. If in fs2004 aircrafts were found in a folder called....Aircrafts, in FSX they have been moved to Simobjects and divided by type (rotorcraft, aircraft...).

Basicaly to install an aircraft you close FSX and copy the above aircraft folder (make sure it is in same structure [aircraft folder]/aircarft.cfg) in:

[FSX main folder]/SimObjects/Aircrafts - if it is a fixed wing aircraft
[FSX main folder]/SimObjects/Rotorcraft - if a helicopter

After this si done if the developer provided a separate gauges folder, please copy that as well to have the .gau files directly in this folder:
[FSX main folder]/Gauges

Same applies to effects.

How to survive an airplane crash

A nice video with some good to know safety instruction for those who fly.

Lotus Simulations L-39 Albatros

If you like fighter aircraft you will definitely like the latest L39 Albatros aircraft developed by Lotus Simulations. The level of detail in virtual cockpit and 3d model is unbelievable. The aircraft is available for FSX (SP2, Acceleration and Gold editions).

More details about the product on the developers website.

My first flight

My first flight (as a passenger) happened in the first year of college, when I visited a local air club. The first airplane I flew on was an old Antonov AN2.
I have to admit the pilots made that flight an unforgettable experience :)