Sluggish menus...am I the only one?

[GlynH]

Hey Gary,

I never use the network myself as I am really only interested in what my box can 'see' from my QTH

Using the Watson antenna here mounted atop a 17 foot pole affixed to the gable end of my house which is @ 450ft ASL connected by 8m Westflex with a pigtail N Type->SMA adaptor to the box which is in the loft.

I have tried many remote USB->Ethernet hardware/software 'solutions' but none of them have proved succesful as I want to keep the box on a short cable well out of the way of EMI/RFI from my computer, music & rack systems so have settled on an active 5m cable dropped through the ceiling directly into this PC.

Interestingly when I added a Kuhne pre-amp I lost 50% of my contacts...go figure.

Not tried deselecting Airport or Coast Outline as I need a guide to where the aircraft are hence I only use Country Boundaries & Airport Name. No hi-res outlines, 3D or anything like that. I guess I subscribe to the KISS theory ;^)

A reboot offers a temporary cure in that I am able to open menus etc. but the longer it runs the worse it gets.

On the surface the symptoms are akin to a memory leak but I still have 1.6GB physical memory available to the system currently and ANRB consumes 7-22% with the odd peak @30-something CPU which is not huge in the scheme of things.

Task Manager shows anywhere between 60-80% available to System Idle Process so the PC is ticking over really.

I keep on about building a new PC but I use this for work and everything else runs like a dream so reinstalling all my programs, setting up preferences & transferring data is off putting to say the least when everything else runs like greased lightning!

Looking at my emailed logs tells me that ANRB has been up for 11 days now since I last rebooted the system so I guess I am due another one about now.

I was just curious to see if anyone else suffered from similar issues.

I remember Deadcalm who had a system spec close to mine used to suffer a similar fate on older versions anyway.

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

[GlynH]

Hi Keith,

If you take a look at the link in my OP you will see exactly what happens with my menus - far better than I could explain by typing!

Here's a link to a full size video - click the full size icon to see it as I see it on screen;

http://www.screencast.com/t/YzlmZTQ0Y

This time it only seems to have affected the first three, File, Filters & Map but usually I lose all of them - when I click on them they are outlined by a fine black line as if selected but the menus do not open and usually stay selected like this when I move off them.

I don't use LogMeIn RA software so that isn't applicable here I'm afraid.

Thanks & regards,
-=Glyn=-

[Allocator]

Glyn,

I don't use the coast outlines as there is enough of a difference in the land/sea colours to see the coastline.  I do use a selection of bones' airways outlines - force of habit from when I was controlling, didn't really matter where you were over the land, but the airways were a different prospect altogether! You can get an idea of my display from my FTP upload site here (not uploading at present, but you will get the idea.)

http://www.ruyton.demon.co.uk/html/radarbox_screenshot.html

I tend to turn my PC off at night, so I've never left it for as long as you are doing.  My maximum online time is probably only a maximum of 18 hours at a time.  I also shut down RB when I'm updating my iPod using iTunes as iTunes is really a memory and processor hog!

[CoastGuardJon]

Hi Glyn, superb numbers, can you post a screenshot with your polar diagram please.   The highest I've ever had in My Flights was the other day; I assume whilst they were catching up and getting the A/C back where they needed to be; and I had 62/63, my average, depending on day and time is 20 - 30, so your's is quite incredible.   Still using your standard twig, performing exactly as it should!

[Runway 31]

Fantastic numbers on My Flights as the most I have ever had is around 40.  The full network only gets around 1300 at any one time so you are receiving just under half of them yourself.

[GlynH]

Thanks for the kind comments guys but I'd trade the numbers & range for speedy menus & operation any day of the week!

Gary, when you get to my age your eyes will need all the help they can get with contrast! ^)

Screenshot showing polar diagram attached FYI Jon.

Kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

[GlynH]

Couldn't post both screenshots together due to being slightly over the filesize limit :-(

As I said earlier my mate Terry sees more aircraft than I do and so I would expect him to have a bigger polar diagram...surprised he's not been along yet as he's usually up for a challenge! ;^)

Regards,
-=Glyn=-

[CoastGuardJon]

Hi Glyn, fantastic range, thanks for the diagrams, hopefully inspire to buy some tower scaffold and get my Watson antennas up this year!

[jannuh]

Fantastic numbers on My Flights as the most I have ever had is around 40.  The full network only gets around 1300 at any one time so you are receiving just under half of them yourself.

We still don't know his real time-out settings!
With long time-out settings I also can get hundreds of flights in mylog, no problem at all.

Have average on weekdays 150 flights with time-out 30/5 sec.

[GlynH]

Hey Jon, no excuses...get that Watson up!

I have a BS1105 here to compare to the Watson. I know it is a much smaller antenna so I am not expecting too much from it 'naked' but I want to try my Kuhne pre-amp on the end of it.

Having said that the smaller BS1105 antenna might have a better pattern than the high gain Watson antenna if I am to believe what has been written.

Previously the combination of Watson & Kuhne seemed too much for the poor little RadarBox to handle as MyFlights is decreased by @50%...not what one would normally expect from the addition of a pre-amp!

Maybe the Watson/Kuhne overloaded & swamped the RB? Never did get the definitive reason for this issue...

The BS1105 & Kuhne could prove to work well...I am not interested in increasing the number of contacts but need the added protection of the Kuhne & Bias Tee so I don't lose any more RadarBoxes to lightning, static, wind, phase of moon or whatever! ;^)

Jannuh, just for you I exited & restarted ANRB...took @30 seconds to close and over 2 minutes to open again - this with a 110MB MyLog.db3 :-(

At least I have all of my Menus back again for a while...

Not sure if this qualifies as your idea of long time-out settings or not? See attached...

Regards,
-=Glyn=-

[Runway 31]

Nothin wrong with those settings.  My only comment is My Log is only 6.91Mb

[pjm]

Previously the combination of Watson & Kuhne seemed too much for the poor little RadarBox to handle as MyFlights is decreased by @50%...not what one would normally expect from the addition of a pre-amp!

Maybe the Watson/Kuhne overloaded & swamped the RB? Never did get the definitive reason for this issue...

I had the same problem here - I run just the Watson now.

[GlynH]

Well after exiting & restarting ANRB @36 hours ago I woke up this morning to find the virtual radar map not being updated on screen. Every so often MyFlights would flash briefly but the aircraft were not moving and it was showing 256 aircraft permanently.

A quick check in TaskManager showed ANRB was taking up >30% CPU and was consuming nearly half-a-gig of RAM!

Maybe some kind of memory leak after all?

It took nearly 5 minutes to shut it down and an error was generated when it finally decided to exit.

I saved the .txt file generated if it might be of any help to determine what is happening...

Having said that it normally runs for much longer than this before it starts to bog down so maybe this particular instance is the exception rather than the norm?


Interesting pjm...we mentioned this in another thread but saw no 'official' response from AN at that time;

http://www.airnavsystems.com/forum/index.php?topic=3985.msg40301#msg40301

Do you have any idea or theories as to why that should be pjm?

Thanks & regards,
-=Glyn=-

[AirNav Support]

Hi GlynH,

We don't read every single post on the forum so we didn't reply out of a reason.

With any amp, your going to be increasing noise at certain stage which may also counteract your getting more messages. Though once you start to recieve many aircraft you run the risk of messages being recieved the same time and hence this overlap will cause you to loose messages.

A simple Example (not with all the details and message type), 250 ADS-B aircraft each sending 2 messsages per second. Therefore 500 messages recieved in that second. That means it can cope with a message being sent every 1milisecond then 1milisecond gap etc. ADS-B doesn't know another aircraft is sending a message closeby and hence can broadcast at that same time.

Hope that helps.

[bratters]

We still don't know his real time-out settings!
With long time-out settings I also can get hundreds of flights in mylog, no problem at all.

Have average on weekdays 150 flights with time-out 30/5 sec.

Just tried a quick experiment with time-outs on My flights.

My usual settings are 5secs/5secs and I was steady at around 140 in MyFlights.
I increased the time-outs to 60secs/60secs and within one minute MyFlights had risen to 180.
I reverted to time-outs of 5/5 and within one minute I was back down to 140 in MyFlights.

Rough and ready and needs repeating, but seems to demonstrate that if we're making comparisons we need to standardise the procedures.