Firstly, let me introduce myself - my name is Rick Savage and I live near Manchester Airport (EGCC).
I have had the RB for 1 week now, and really enjoying it. It took me a while to take the plunge, and comparing the SBS to the RB. So far, the experience is a very good one, and now looking at how best to setup my RB to enhance my aircraft spotting experience. I love the fact that everything is in one program, and that was one of the main reasons to buy it, as with SBS it seemed you had to buy/install lots of seperate programs to get the same result!
Unfortunately, I seem to one of the members who has the slow menus issue. Seems to be more common when I have the network flights turned on. I have a Samsung NC10 laptop which has Windows XP installed. Not tried it on any other PC so far.
I am off to Paris in 2 weeks, and that leads me onto populating the database with data that did not come with the default one from the install. At home I have an internet connection, so the autopopulate is working great. In Paris I will not...
So I have been using the Network flights to get the RB database with as much stuff in as possible, and thats where it could be improved slightly for me. I am sorting the aircraft into reg order on the Network tab, and then using the mouse wheel to scroll through the list where there is no reg, to get the autopoulate to kick in for those unknown aircraft. Is there a better way, or an enhancement that could be added into a later version to auto pick these up (I read the other posts about splitting the photo and autopopulate into seperate options in a new version, so would be good to have the autopopulate picking up anything not in the main RB database, and then just having the photo option download when you select the aircraft).
(I know ADU and Aviation Databases have a SQB export function for SBS. I presume the import from SQB option was just for SBS to RB users?).
The next one is to do with the altitude, which is only recorded against aircraft with ADSB data in MyLog, and there is also no way to filter in myLog against this (you can that data in the map, and in the MyFlights section. I quite often at home pickup the Flybe DHC-8s departing, which display the altitude in MyFlights. I am hoping the much talked about 2.10 version will have some of the extra functionality which will help me.
Senario for me might be abroad, lying on a beach or pool, with the RB in the hotel room logging away. I would then want the RB to report everything that I have seen inbound to the airport, and not the overflights trailing over.
Another enhancement, in Quick Filter in MyFlights, is there an Advanced Option which could be added. For example, you might want to display the details of anything that is Landing or Taking Off, but not anything else. I am just trying the filter Altitude less than 10000 at the moment, but sometimes that also displays aircraft that are not reporting an altitude. I know you can filter the map much better than the MyFlights list, but sometimes that list is a good reference as a quick look at whats coming in or departing if you sat at the airport.
Lastly, sorry about the long mail! I have been reading about what Steve Bruce has designed for ADU for the SBS, in that you can display on the map or aircraft listing if you need the reg or frame, or if you have seen it before. Is there any plans to have somekind of user text reference in RB, which I could then write a hook into (I still use a database program I wrote). I see there is a Comments field in MyLog, but its in the main RB database I was thinking.
Looking forward to reading more on the forum, and using the RB.
Regards
Rick Savage
