IRS Alignment

[Barrykensett]

The default IRS alignment time is 10 minutes and correctly represents the aircraft.
I have been doing a lot of test work in migration to Jeehell and having to wait twiddling thumbs is a little frustrating. I note the trick to turn the IRS switches on and off quickly but it doesn't work for me for some reason. Is there a .ini setting somewhere I can use to cheat while I am testing?
Barry

[spiliot]

Hi Barry, you need to set IRS to NAV then OFF and within 5 seconds back to NAV. If you set the ADIRS system knob to STS (above the IRS knobs) and also select the system you want to align with the knob next to it (i.e. 1) you should see a "REALN DESN 5 SEC" message while going from NAV to OFF.

[Barrykensett]

I am turning on/off/on in hardware and do not have the status screen. Noting your tip I will try and get the graphic visible in the PFD screen and test it that way. Thanks for your help.
Barry

[spiliot]

Hmm, maybe your hardware is taking too long to update the NAV-OFF-NAV positions and it never gets send at all.

You can use the overhead panel to confirm the position of the virtual switch (what JH knows) with the actual hardware position.

[Barrykensett]

Cracked it! My nav switch turns on OK but the software does not recognise when it turns off as the switch is not wired to recognise the off position. I don't have any spare switch inputs up in the overhead so I have programmed three other buttons to enable me to select off, just needs some quick juggling of six switches to get the effect I need, Irs now aligns quickly.

Barry

[spiliot]

Great! If your hardware interface can send a different event when the ON switch is deactivated then you could use that to send the OFF state.

[Barrykensett]

We are on the right track, I use FDS Interfaceit boards so I need to look into the options.
Thanks for your helpful comments.
Barry
www.a320sim.com

[Barrykensett]

I seem to be dealing with a problem which pops up in a number of places. When I use the Interfaceit software from FDS I can input different actions for the on state and off state. In the Jeehell software there are some functions where one can select toggle or on/off but many where I can detect on but no facility to detect off. Apart from the Nav switches in the ADIRS which started this post, I am finding more similar issues as I integrate more and more systems, recent ones include transponder on/off and TCAS modes.
How are others dealing with this?
Barry

[spiliot]

I have no experience with FDS and I don't know if your problem is related to that or JH.

And to be honest I didn't quite get what your actual issue is :)

JH is a bit weird in that it requires an event for pushing and an event for releasing certain buttons. The toggle doesn't actually work as a toggle most of the times, but as an intermediate position or the third state of a switch (i.e. push is ON for strobe lights, release is OFF and toggle is AUTO). This is a bit counter-intuitive and can cause some confusion.

And if for example you set the AP takeover switch to the push state without sending a release event when you release it, it will latch after 30s as the real TO switch would do.

[Barrykensett]

OK coming back to the switches which started this post, the three nav switches to align the IRS. Switching them on creates the event to start; how do I create the event to switch off? Selecting off to do it does not work. As a temporary fix I have programmed some other switches to create the event to turn off but I can't live with that, I would need to get another interface card and set up another switch panel.
FDS Interfaceit software supplied with the cards gives separate on/off events for each switch. Not sure if I can use that software with JH, I didn't think I would have to so have not tried.
Thanks for your comments.
Barry

[jeehell]

Hi Barry,

For the IRS rotating switches, you currently need to have two inputs per switch. One input for the OFF position and one for the ATT position. This is the minimum number of inputs which allows to map all three positions (OFF NAV ATT).

The logic, for all toggle switches, is the following:
- 2 positions toggles: the electrical ON state corresponds to the toggle ON position (or similar). The electrical OFF is the OFF position..
- 3 positions toggles : one input is used for each extreme positions. The electrical ON corresponds to the position where the contact is made. The electrical OFF corresponds to the middle position.

If I read you correctly, you only wired the NAV position on your overhead, disregarding the ATT position (very rarely used) and the OFF position, which was mapped to the NAV electrical OFF in FDS legacy application.
This is currently not supported by my software, and will require a rather major rewrite of the FDS interface (which is more or less planned... but i really lack time these days...).

Regards
JL

[Barrykensett]

Jean Luc
Thanks for your comments. I have hit a road block here as I do not have spare capacity for more switch inputs without a major rebuild. Everything went smoothly getting the Simboards out and the Interfaceit in while using AST. I have changed the FCU to Skalarki which has been successful as the old FDS one would not work with your software. I can understand that you do not want to do more work on the software so I have to look for other solutions.
Is there a way I can use Interfaceit with your software I wonder as it accepts my switch setups?
Barry

[jeehell]

If I remember well, you can run interfaceit application as long as on the same computer you do not run hardware connect, because the way the USB link works (if I remember right) is that the first app laucnhed takes ownership of all FDS/tekworx boards and the next app does not see them as available. I might be wrong and testing is required.

[Barrykensett]

My hardware on that computer is only the Interfaceit boards so I will test and report back.
Thanks again for the help.
Barry

[Barrykensett]

Tested but limited results. The Interfaceit software works on "standard" offsets typically on the MIP. The overhead uses "custom" offsets so a lot of work would be required unless FDS can publish an .xml file for Jeehell similar to the ones they put out for other software producers. I guess they would not write it themselves leaving it probably to a user to generate it.
Barry