Introduction of „The Owl’s Nest“ web site

[gsnde]

Inspired by Reggie Fields Wingspan & FSX parking spot size reference, I wanted to provide something comparable for military aircraft. I made a similar list and thought about a way to publish it. A web site was the natural solution. That was the birth of “The Owl’s Nestâ€￾.

I decided to go one step further with my list and enhanced it by adding:

• the year of introduction
• the number of aircraft built
• the crew size
• the speed in knots
• the range in miles
• the ceiling in feet

Today this reference contains 694 military aircraft from the 1930 onwards. You can sort and filter all relevant fields. Every aircraft has a link to the respective Wikipedia article for background information.

What else can you find at “The Owl’s Nestâ€￾?

• a complete overview of all MAIW packages, telling you what aircraft are included, a link to the AVSim download and the original MAIW package description
• a complete overview of all UKMil packages with a link to the download location
• an online converter for distances and speeds
• a referrals page where I describe sites and tools which I find extraordinary
• and more

There are some additional features I will add during the coming months (see the To-do list for details), but I feel the site is mature enough to go live.

I made it my rule that for every referral at “The Owl’s Nestâ€￾ I inform the owner and have him approve my link and the usage of any logos and material.

If all this sounds promising, come and visit “The Owl’s Nestâ€￾. Your feedback is highly appreciated.

[Charl]

Great site and thanks for the post.
I have also subscribed to a forum you link to, that I don't even understand...

[gsnde]

QUOTE (Charl @ Jul 4 2008, 03:32 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Great site and thanks for the post.
I have also subscribed to a forum you link to, that I don't even understand...

Thank you for the nice words, Charl. Which forum do you mean?

[gsnde]

I realized that far too many people did miss a very relevant feature of the aircraft reference list - the filter fields. The filter fields are the yellow colored fields above each table column.

Let say you are looking for the Panavia Tornado. The right way to find it is to enter anything from 'Tornado', "Torn" or 'Tor' in the aircraft filter field (above the aircraft column) and press the Enter key. Providing 'Tor' will produced 14 matches, the Tornado on top of the list, the Vought SB2U Vindicator trailing it.

Filtering for "Torn" will result in only two matches: the Tornado and the North American B-45 Tornado.

Same thing for manufacturer. Enter "Scot"and press Enter to immediately see the four Scottish Aviation aircraft.

Enter ">1900" in the speed filter field will only result in the X-15 and the Habu. Please be aware that the '<' and '>' operator are only valid for numerical fields.

The usage instructions were available by clicking on the Help button, but very few people did so. I have removed the button and add how-to instruction above the table. Without this partial string filtering the list is unusable as a quick lookup reference.

[Charl]

QUOTE (gsnde @ Jul 5 2008, 02:52 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thank you for the nice words, Charl. Which forum do you mean?

FSDeveloper.com/Flight Dynamics.
I am trying to figure out how to silence AI gliders...

[Kahu]

Great site, I've bookmarked this one.

[gsnde]

I like to announce two cool new features of The Owl's Nest.

ICAO Database
Via two list boxes 'Country' and 'County' (the latter only applicable for Australia, Canada and the United States) you can display all airports for a country. The data displayed for each airport is Country, County, City, Airport name, Longitude, Latitude, Altitude, ICAO and IATA.

Airport Search
On a separate page you can search for any airport by providing either the city or airport name or the ICAO or IATA. This works with substrings which is an advantage if you only know parts or a name or are unsure how something is spelled.

Both pages are linked under the 'Tools' section of the menu.

Cheers,
Martin

[Charl]

Very nice, keep it up Martin.

[gsnde]

The Owl's Nest has seen another major update.

Great Circle Distance Calculator
You provide the ICAO code for both the airport of origin and destination. The distance between the two airports is calculated and you are presented the result in KM, Miles and Nautical Miles.

This page is linked under the 'Tools' section of the menu.

[gsnde]

Happy New Year!

I have updated the tutorial on how to use the MAIW packages in FSX. I have added a description how to correct some errors (valid for FS9 as well) and a list of all textures and effects installed by MAIW packages.

In addition I have released Version 2.0 of my MAIW Propeller Texture Replace Tool.

The purpose of this tool is to replace the propeller texture prop-hs.bmp, which is displayed in FSX as a solid disk due to an FS9 compatible (white) alpha channel.
Different than in the last version where only one replacement texture was used the current version replaces all 24 different prop-hs.bmp textures with the individually corrected file. This has to happen 778 times if you have all MAIW packages installed, so it's not a task done easily by hand. If you have already used the last version of my tool please have a look at the included Read-Me file.

You can download tutorial and tool in the MAIW section of The Owl's Nest.

[gsnde]

I have released version 2.0 of the MAIW FSX Installation Guide. It goes far beyond version 1.x by that it introduce a location concept for MAIW files in FSX. For each file you are told if and where to copy it over in FSX.

Also the layout of The Owl's Nest has changed. The menu bar has moved from left to top with the menu items dropping down. Furthermore the menu and header is alway visible, while the content scrolls. The website supports IE >= 6, Mozilla and Opera.

I hope that you like both the new guide and the new web. Your feedback is highly appreciated.

[gsnde]

The Owl's Nest has seen some changes in the last quarter.

1. Both Airport Search and Distance Calculator now have Google Maps support. You can open the airport location in Google Maps by clicking on the link in the airport search results.

The distance calculator presents the calculation result with a map showing the route.

2. I have established Owl-AI to support the release of the Ralf Kreibich AI collection. The first Owl-AI release - coming soon - will be a huge F-104 package. I have teamed up with Ray Parker who has made all the marvelous paints. You can read about the background and the next releases in the Owl-AI section.

If you have a military AI aircraft that you like to publish under the Owl-AI umbrella you are welcome to contact me.

3. More and more people install MAIW packages in FSX. There are only few issues, most of them concerning opaque canopies. I have made texture fixes for the Fernando Martinez Tornado and Mirage 2000 models for all MAIW packages. Furthermore I have released a tool to fix the opaque canopy of Rysiek Winawer's great A-10 model. All fixes and tools are available in the new Download Section.

[gsnde]

The Owl's Nest has seen a major update. The site design has changed to a much lighter shade.



Other changes are:

• New and more robust Download Center
• Live Air Traffic Viewer
• redesign and update of several pages
• no fixed page header any longer
• all tables shown with full length immediately
• as per request works with mobile phone browsers Safari and Opera now (I never thought of testing that to be honest )

You are welcome to check out the new design whenever you like

[gsnde]

Good day

I think you might be interested in a new feature that I have introduced to The Owl's Nest lately. Namely a reference of many of the often asked and looked for military AI aircraft, paints and flight plans, that are not included in the well known packages.

It goes without saying that this list - which has 448 records as of now - is far from complete. This is the input I could give. I know that almost everybody is aware of some great military AI aircraft, paints and flight plans not mentioned yet. You can download an Excel sheet from the page and provide me with your data in the right format - if you like to do so

Please check out the "Other AI Aircraft" page via this link or from the The Owl's Nest menu "AI & Flightsim Sites" --> "Other AI aircraft".

Your feedback is appreciated.

[Ian Warren]

Cheers Martin , was chatting about AI the other day .. very disappointed with TrafficX payware so may be worth a looksie .

[gsnde]

QUOTE (Ian Warren @ Jul 15 2012,2:06 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

... so may be worth a looksie .

I definitely hope it's worth a visit, Ian
I can not compare freeware and payware civil AI, but for military AI the freeware offers are lightyears ahead.
Have a look at The Owls Nest and tell me if it was a satisfying looksie.

[Charl]

Great resource Martin, and I can confirm it works with Safari/iPad.
Since you are visiting this neck of the woods, don't forget the RNZAF AI at flightsim.com!

FS2004 Royal New Zealand Air Force AI
Name: rnzafa21.zip
Size: 29,659,394 Date: 02-28-2009 Downloads: 1,028

[SeanG]

QUOTE (gsnde @ Jul 16 2012,4:22 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I definitely hope it's worth a visit, Ian
I can not compare freeware and payware civil AI, but for military AI the freeware offers are lightyears ahead.
Have a look at The Owls Nest and tell me if it was a satisfying looksie.

Hi Martin,

I'm a regular visitor, and gotta say, the new addition is great (already used it!)

SeanG

[gsnde]

QUOTE (SeanG @ Jul 16 2012,12:43 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Martin,

I'm a regular visitor, and gotta say, the new addition is great (already used it!)

SeanG

Sean,

If you have a website running, hearing somebody say he Is a regular visitor is the best possible compliment.
Thank you

Martin

[gsnde]

QUOTE (Charl @ Jul 16 2012,12:10 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Great resource Martin, and I can confirm it works with Safari/iPad.
Since you are visiting this neck of the woods, don't forget the RNZAF AI at flightsim.com!

FS2004 Royal New Zealand Air Force AI
Name: rnzafa21.zip
Size: 29,659,394 Date: 02-28-2009 Downloads: 1,028

Hi Charl,

Thanks for bringing that back to my mind. I actually wondered how to deal with packages like the RNZAF.

I have added the RNZAF package, the ADF package from your cousins on the big island to the left and the Czech AI package now under the category Various aircrafts. See for yourself and tell me if this solution is adequate.