Can I make a request for the Skydemon team to completely re-design the W & B setup. It is obvious that more members are having problems with this than any other subject. Those of us who are not mathematically minded (me) are not getting to grips with this and are putting it to one side. I fly a four seat aircraft but usually with only two onboard, so I can leave the W&B as it will not be an issue. Once I go for three or four onboard then W&B has to done. I do it on a printed form with a calculator to do the numbers. It would be great if SD could be configured easily to have an easy visual on the W&B for a particular trip. This a great program but I feel the W & B setup is lacking in simplicty.

I'm afraid Weight and Balance is not a subject which can be given the degree of simplicity you're after. There's only so much we can do, and believe me, we've had countless meetings about it and done all we can think to do. At the end of the day, you need to be able to understand what's going on in order to enter the figures to create the graph. Having said all that, if you have any ideas for how to make it more user-friendly, we'll always listen.

Tim

I'm one of those that struggled with W&B until one day, the penny dropped, so I have enormous sympathy with those that do have problems with it, and having given much thought as to how the process might be simplified, I think I may have come up with a solution, which borrows something from Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Desk Top Publishing (DTP).

I may be completely wide of the mark here, and you may shoot me down in flames, but 'nothing ventured, nothing gained', as the saying goes!

So, basically, I envisage a 'point & click' process. Imagine your computer screen as a blank sheet of graph paper and the mouse cursor as a cross, and somewhere along the bottom of the screen would be a live readout of the cursor co-ordinates, in the form of 'Lever Arm, Weight' which updates in real time as the cursor is moved around.

Now, move the cursor to the point on screen where the readout coincides with the first 'Lever Arm, Weight' co-ordinate and left click the mouse. This defines the point of origin of the W&B polygon. Then move the cursor to the point on screen where the readout coincides with the next 'Lever Arm, Weight' co-ordinate and left click the mouse. This defines the second point of the polygon, and a line is drawn between the two points. Continue in this fashion until the polygon is complete.

It should not matter too much if these points are not absolutely spot on initially, because on completion of the polygon, there should be an opportunity to edit and 'fine tune' it (see below).

The polygon having been completed, the points on the polygon should be individually selectable by double clicking on them, so that they can be moved by the mouse for editing purposes. There should also be an option to move (edit) each point by holding down the Shift, Ctrl or Alt key (developer's choice here) and use the keyboard arrow keys for fine tuning, a pixel at a time. Or maybe at this juncture, there could even be an option to edit the co-ordinate readout directly, press Enter and have the point on the polygon move accordingly.

Now, as I said above, I may be completely wide of the mark here, but having had limited CAD experience and quite extensive DTP experience, where this approach works like a dream, I thought this idea might provide a basis for further thought/discussion.


Mike
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That's pretty much exactly what my colleague has been keen on us doing for years. I like it in theory, but I have two fundamental problems with it. Firstly, it doesn't work on tablets because there's no mouse and therefore no live feedback of coordinates. Secondly, whether you're using a mouse or a keyboard, the precision simply isn't there to select the right value. You might get close, but then as you say, you'd need to type them all anyway in order to "fine tune" it so you haven't really saved any time or made it appreciably easier. And I've just thought of a third: the scales in use across various different aircraft are radically different so our "blank sheet" that we started with couldn't possibly have an actual scale on it. It's a shame, because we would normally embrace such an apparently easy method of entering coordinates, but I can't see how we could make it work.

Tim

Thanks for your feedback, and I understand exactly where you're coming from. It would be such an elegant solution if it could be implemented, so I offer some further thoughts on the matter for your consideration.

I have assumed that most users would set up aircraft profiles on a PC or laptop and save them to the Cloud for downloading on to their tablet/phone, so only ever envisaged the 'point and click' process being PC specific.

With regards to the lack of mouse/keyboard precision, because I envisaged the process being a 'full screen' process, I believe the degree of accuracy required could be achieved, and even if it is necessary to edit the co-ordinates directly, at least the co-ordinates displayed in the readout would be in the correct format, so there would be no room for 'format error'. Two copies of the polygon would be saved -- the original 'full screen' version, so that it could be recalled and edited if required, and a miniature version to fit the SD format.

Concerning differing scales for different aircraft, would it be feasible to have the ability to input an aircraft specific scale right at the start of the process?


Mike
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Inputting such a scale range would be absolutely necessary for such a system. But I think the people who have difficulty entering coordinates at the moment would have the same difficulty entering the scale range.

Yes, you're probably quite right . Ah well! At least we've given the matter reasoned consideration.

Mike
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You should come to one of our developer meetings!

Lol. I would love to, but I'm in deepest West Yorkshire!

Mike
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