New aircraft - add to database?

[tarbat]

Is there a simple guide to adding new aircraft to the RB database?

For example.  The UK Coast Guard now operate several new helicopters, one of which is G-CGMU (400F87), very active over the weekend due to the oil rig incident.  It appears in Radarbox as G-CGMU okay.  But I can't get it to lookup the photo, or get details from GAS.

Aircraft exists on GAS database.


Photo exists on airliners.net - http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?front=yes&s=1&keywords=g-cgmu

But I can't work out how to get the links to GAS and photos working.  I've added a record into the database explorer, but I'm not sure what all the fields mean.

[Allocator]

Tarbat,

I'm back at work now and away from my RadarBox, so this is from memory.

There are issues with the V1.3 database that you have as I'm sure that you have found, one of which is that live aircraft are not "remembered" when you shut down RadarBox.  This is fixed in V1.4 and the whole database structure is changed to an SQL database.

So, there are a few points here:

- First of all, you will start again from scratch with the database when you install V1.4, so don't spend too much time on it - although this might only be the database of received aircraft rather than the core database (earlier versions of RadarBox did write to the "received" database correctly so users of these versions will have populated quite a few records.)

- Next, you might have read some of my stuff about the photo populate bug with V1.3.

-- If you don't have "Download 2 photo's" ticked, then no photo's are downloaded

-- If you have one photo for an aircraft already in the photo directory, (earlier versions only downloaded one photo) then Radarbox doesn't download a second photo and doesn't display the single photo either.  The fix for this was to delete all single photo's in the directory and then they would populate with 2 photo's if they were avaialable.

-- If there is only one photo of an aircraft on the airliners.net site, then RadarBox has the problem described above.

-- I see that there is only one photo of G-CMGU on the airliners.net website, so this produces the problem you have.  The fix here is to manually download the thumbnail from the website and save it in the photo directory as G-CMGU.jpg and download the same photo again and save it as G-CMGU,2.jpg then all will be well.  Take a look in the photo directory and you will see how it works.  I've done exactly this for the Flight Checker B200(?) as there is only the one picture on airliners.net.

I stress again that this is only a problem in V1.3 and has been completely fixed in V1.4. You don't need to manually populate the database with any records, as these will be autopopulated when you detect the aircraft (live only, not network traffic).  You are not actually achieving anything by manually populating the database anyway, as the GAS Populate works invisibly in the background as RadarBox runs - this does work with V1.3, but there is the photo download issue as described.

I hope that all makes sense.  I know that it's really frustrating not having V1.4, but this will be out soon and is a great improvement, especially the database handling.

Let me know if you have any questions.

[Allocator]

Tarbat,

I forgot to add - if you can see the registration of the aircraft in the aircraft list, then the GAS Populate has added the aircraft to the database (or it was already there).  See this in action by clicking on an aircraft in the list without a registration, and watch the registration appear - that's the autopopulate happening.  The aircraft will now be in your database.

Allocator

[tarbat]

Thanks Allocator.

Okay, I've checked the photos folder, and there was one photo of G-CGMU there, so it must have downloaded it okay.  I've copied it, named it G-CGMU,2.jpg.  Now just have to wait for it to appear in the skys again.

I've got 83 aircraft with only a single photo in the photos folder.  Do you know if this is fixed in v1.4, as I won't try fixing this if v1.4 will fix it.

I understand that aircraft will dissapear from MyLog after each session.  In this case, it is still in MyLog, although it isn't showing the registration, only the hex code.  And for this aircraft (400F87) I can't even find it in the Database Explorer:



When I click on it in the aicraft list, all I see is details of the previous aircraft I clicked on.  It's as if RB isn't retrieving data from GAS.  Maybe GAS is timing out given all the hits it must be getting from the SBS-1 operator flags being populated!!

[tarbat]

Okay, I've done some more testing and it looks like the autopopulate isn't working.  I just clicked on 40128A, as it's not showing a reg.  Nothing happens.  Message bottom right of screen still shows "All photo/Info Requests Done"

If I look it up on GAS, it finds it okay:


Is there a setting somewhere that determines whether RB does autopopulate from GAS?

[Allocator]

Tarbat,

Yes, the photo populate is fixed in V1.4.  I only have it set to download the single picture as it gives me more room for the map and to still be able to see the aircraft details to the right of the picture.  V1.4 has a "Populate" option within the MyTools database explorer window - see the V1.4 manual - which seems to download the second picture and populates any "empty" records in the SQL database.

As for G-STRY, have a look in the photos folder again and see if there is a photo for this aircraft.  If there is only one picture, delete it, make sure you have "2 photo download" selected and try clicking on the again.  I think that you can do this whilst RB is running.  That single photo seems to stop autopopulate looking for anything.  I am just gessing here, and I assume that if you can do a manual lookup on the GAS database, then autopopulate should work - I don't know.  We both know from the other box that SBS Populate stops working sometimes.

The sledgehammer test for this is to rename your photo folder to something else, create a new empty photo folder to replace the original one - set RB to 2 photo download (in fact do this before you shut RB down to alter the directories so it starts with 2 photos selected) then run RB again.  All aircraft without photos (i.e. every aircraft, both live and network)should then be GAS checked.

And no, there is no manual on/off for the autopopulate - it just works.

Are you having the same autopopulate problem with all aircraft - live and network?

[tarbat]

Allocator, thanks for your help in this.  It's much appreciated.

2 photo download was ticked by default, and I've always left it ticked.  Like you, I'd like to just display 1 photo, but I'd already read about the problems with just 1 photo selected.

I've only really checked the autopopulating on live aircraft, I have network aircraft turned off most of the time.  It seems to be all aircraft that don't have a registration.  I don't have any photos for G-STRY in the photos folder, and it's not in the database explorer either, but I definately clicked on it.

Looking in MyLog for this latest session, I've got 28 aircraft listed without registrations.  I've checked the first few, and they're all found on GAS ( http://www.gatwickaviationsociety.org.uk/modeslookup.asp ), so looks like something is prevent RB getting the details from GAS.

Do you know if RB goes directly to GAS for the autopopulate, or do Airnav have a central server that collects these - I thought that was the original proposal from Airnav, but that was quite a while ago.

I'll try the sledgehammer approach and see if that cures it.

Thanks again for your help.

[tarbat]

Okay, renamed photo folder, and created an empty one.  Restarted RB, found an aircraft without registration.  Clicked on it, got message bottom right about doing 2 info requests.  About 20 seconds later, came up photos not available, and still no registration displayed.

This was for 4B0EE6, a normal GAS lookup returns HB-FQS.  But RB fails to get the registration.  Strange.

EDIT:  Same problem with GAS not populating the Registration on the following hex codes - 4B0EE3, 400825.  All of these exist on the GAS database ( http://www.gatwickaviationsociety.org.uk/modeslookup.asp ).

[Allocator]

Okay, renamed photo folder, and created an empty one.  Restarted RB, found an aircraft without registration.  Clicked on it, got message bottom right about doing 2 info requests.  About 20 seconds later, came up photos not available, and still no registration displayed.

This was for 4B0EE6, a normal GAS lookup returns HB-FQS.  But RB fails to get the registration.  Strange.

Strange indeed.  As I said, I'm not at home a the moment, so I can't compare results.  Maybe there is a time-out on the GAS Populate check and you are right, the users from the "other side" might be hogging the bandwidth.

The trouble is, I've tested so many versions of RB now, including variations of V1.4, it's difficult to remember the specific issues of V1.3

I must admit that's it's unusual for me not to get an autopopulate registration, although there are some stubbon aircraft - the odd Ryan Air - that don't autopopulate, although I've never bothered to go to the GAS website to check manually.  The only time I do this is it's an aircraft that I think I have a particular interest in.

In the MyLog file on my laptop, I have 3155 live aircraft recorded and all but 218 have populated registrations - not a very scientific measure as I tend to run the laptop without an internet connection, then populate the database every now and then when I am on line.

I've no idea how many aircraft I have on the desktop pc (my normal RB PC) MyLog, but it will be considerably more that this.  I'll have a look later if I get the chance.

You can easily manually update or alter the MyLog database in V1.4, but that doesn't help you yet!

[tarbat]

This appears to be an intermittent problem.  Earlier it started populating my aircraft, and I populated over 200 aircraft on the network aircraft list.

Now, I can't get it to populate any on my local list.  I'm suspecting some sort of time-out at GAS.

AirNav Support, any ideas why this isn't working?

[AirNav Support]

The information is not directly received from GAS your end. Our server will connect to GAS but you will connect to GAS.

We would look into this further however it may just be a load issue and plus with 1.4 round the corner with a different system it might be better to hang tight. Sorry but it might save hassle in database changes later on.

[Allocator]

As Tarbat reported, I don't think that the GAS Autopopulate is working at the moment.  I'm at home now and I'm not getting the records populate.

Support, maybe you do need to look into this?

Thanks

Allocator

[tarbat]

Well I'm glad it's not just me.  Having only had the Radarbox for a couple of days I was starting to think I'd messed something up with the installation or configuration.  I was beginning to think that I had to enter new aircraft into the system manually.

As long as Airnav can confirm that it's a problem at their end, I'm happy to wait for v1.4.  Hey, I'll even beta test if you want - it's what I did for a living for many years (among other things)!!!

[AirNav Development]

Please send us examples of mode-s codes that don't auto-populate so we can test and check them here...today.

[tarbat]

These in the last hour:
43C034
43C015
43C033
43C052

All resolve successfully at GAS http://www.gatwickaviationsociety.org.uk/modeslookup.asp