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Strange ATIS at departure airport

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Mike T
Post subject: Strange ATIS at departure airport
Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2018 10:01 pm
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Hi guys - I have a strange problem all of a sudden and I'm hoping that it's not just me. I'm getting ATIS that says Winds 360/0 Temp 0 Visibility 0 when on the ground before takeoff. When I look at the METAR for Activesky it has the correct conditions but PFE ATIS can't seem to read it. However, once airborne it gives the correct altimeter and at arrival airport the ATIS is fine. I've reinstalled ActiveSky, I've reinstalled FSUIPC, but it is still giving the same results.

Thanks,

Mike T.


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Dave March
Post subject: Re: Strange ATIS at departure airport
Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2018 10:39 pm
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Without a log it never happened! :)

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Dan77
Post subject: Re: Strange ATIS at departure airport
Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2018 10:43 pm
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One possibility is that you may be checking ATIS before the weather is fully loaded in the sim. PF3 gets the weather from your sim, not from the weather program, and on my slow PC I need to wait several minutes after starting the sim and weather program for the weather to fully load. If it keeps happening attach a debug log, as Dave said.

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Mike T
Post subject: Re: Strange ATIS at departure airport
Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2018 3:45 am
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dmarch wrote: *  Mon Jun 25, 2018 10:39 pm
Without a log it never happened! :)
HA! I knew you'd say that. I'll pull logs from my next flight. As for waiting long enough - I can sit on the ground for an hour and ATIS remains the same - which is so strange. I'm not even sure that its an issue with PF3 but lets see what the logs show and hopefully it will point me in the right direction.

Thanks!

Mike T.


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Mike T
Post subject: Re: Strange ATIS at departure airport
Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2018 10:29 pm
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Log files attached.

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Logs.zip
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Dave March
Post subject: Re: Strange ATIS at departure airport
Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2018 12:28 pm
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Don't know if this is anything to do with it but we couldn't retrieve anything using the normal ICAO for the weather station
Quote:
6/25/2018 1:24:03 PM: 930 - No ATIS Weather data detected for KEWR --> now retrying...
6/25/2018 1:24:05 PM: 000 - ATIS Weather retrieved for KEWR using Lat/Lon co-ordinates 40.69485,-74.16877
6/25/2018 1:24:06 PM: 870 - #1 Initial sweep shows AI using runway 22-2
6/25/2018 1:24:06 PM: 870 - Runway found not usable due to user configuration...
6/25/2018 1:24:06 PM: 870 - ATIS Active Runway determined by AI Traffic at KEWR
6/25/2018 1:24:06 PM: 870 - Oceanic: False - UPIC_Connected: True

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Dave March

Email: dmarch@oncourse-software.co.uk

I don't know if my memory is getting worse as I get older...
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Mike T
Post subject: Re: Strange ATIS at departure airport
Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2018 8:48 pm
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So this is very strange. I haven't made any changes to PF3 and I just updated the database with makerwys.exe to see if that helps but same result. Any idea what can be done to remedy short of blowing away and reinstalling PF3? I've got a lot of customized airport runway designations that I'd hate to have to do over from scratch? Anything else I can check?

As a side note, the default ATIS works fine along with Activesky it reads the right winds. I reinstalled FSUIPC and I have also updated to Prepar3D 4.3 which hasn't changed anything.

Thanks,

Mike T.


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Dave March
Post subject: Re: Strange ATIS at departure airport
Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2018 9:22 pm
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There would be nothing to gain in reinstalling PF3 nor rebuilding the database. PF3 only uses FSUIPC to gain weather information and it does so by providing the ICAO of the airport you require ATIS for. If, for whatever reason, that does not return any information (as in your case) it simply reverts to using Lat/Lon co-ordinates for the airport and thereby retrieving the data for the general area. That's it, we don't do anything different than we've doing for a very, very long time.

Personally I don't believe there is anything 'wrong' that can be 'fixed', either with PF3 or FSUIPC. The later simply retrieves the data from the SIM (as far as I know) and the SIM receives it from your weather program, which I assume injects it into the SIM. So my guess is if we can't obtain the data it's because it simply isn't available.

Here's an interesting snippet from the FSUIPC SDK:
Quote:
1. The application generates a "signature", any 32-bit pseudo-random number. It will use this as its temporary access key into this area.

2. Each time it wants to read weather for a station, it writes the signature to the ulSignature field and the ICAO to the chICAO field, AT THE SAME TIME -- i.e. a write of 8 bytes altogether. If it wants to read the weather at a specific location instead, not at a station, then the ICAO code should be set instead to 4 spaces (" ") and the Latitude and Longitude fields should be written at the same time as the signature and this blank ICAO code. That makes a total of 28 bytes written (the dynamics and spare fields can be set zero. they are ignored).

3. If the area is free (signature is zero) or this signature is the same as the last one written, then this access works, and FSUIPC obtains the requested weather. If, however, the signature does not match and someone else is reading the weather here, this write will be discarded and nothing will be done. A program which wants to be cooperative can use a signature of zero -- this works providing it is zero already, but it doesn't stop any other program from reading whatever it likes. The program which is being so friendly must be prepared to see a different ICAO or location being read than the one it asked for -- the WeatherSet2 program does this. You can ask it to display any location or WX sttion, but it will display whatever any other program is reading too, or, rather, instead.
So, is it just a case of being unlucky or are you maybe using another program that's possibly reading the FSUIPC weather to?

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Dave March

Email: dmarch@oncourse-software.co.uk

I don't know if my memory is getting worse as I get older...
...I just can't remember how it used to be!

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