AFS Data Macros

Advanced Flight Systems - Flight Data Chart Utility

Version 2.0.2 Release: Google Earth fixes

Posted 06/18/2009 by Mike Behnke

Christian Meier in Austria discovered that the Google Earth file creator didn't work right for him. I found this was because in some European countries commas are used as decimal separators and decimal points used as thousands separators when displaying numbers. This version fixes that and should work for most users regardless of how you display numbers.

I also was trying to figure out why the flight tracks in Google Earth showed you well above the ground even at the airport. It finally dawned on me that the AFS files store the altitude in feet, whereas Google Earth wants the altitude in meters. I added a conversion factor in my GE file creator routine, so it should now show your actual altitude.

Download AFS Flight Data Utility v2.0.2.xls

Version 2.0 Release: 6-cylinder Engine Support and Google Earth file creator

Posted 06/17/2009 by Mike Behnke

Gary Blankenbiller modified the code to added EGT and CHT for cylinder #5 and #6 to the charts for those with 6-cylinder engines. The same code should work for both 4- and 6-cylinder engines. He also discovered a fix to a bug that prevented older versions of Excel from importing the data.

Travis Danner from AFS wrote a program in another software package that creates a .KMZ file that, when opened in Google Earth, shows your flight based on the log data. I've adopted his code to Excel to create the same type of .KMZ file. When you run the utility it will detect if there's latitude and longitude data (not available with engine monitor only systems) and automatically create a file with the same name and in the same folder as the input .ALD file, but it will have a .KMZ extension. If you have Google Earth installed you should be able to simply open the file and it should automatically launch Google Earth and zoom in on your flight area.

Download AFS Flight Data Utility v2.0.xls

Download Mikes Flight.kmz and save to your computer, then open the file to see one of my flights in Google Earth.

Version 1.0 Release and Site Launch

Posted 05/30/2009 by Mike Behnke

Advanced Flight Systems EFIS and Engine Monitoring systems keep a log of most of the displayed flight parameters and allow you to export the data onto an SD card. The format of the data is a text file with an .AFD extension. It's possible to import this data into Excel to review the data and create charts.

Ralph Capen developed some VBA code (macro) to take the data in Excel and automatically creating a few charts. You can see his work in this post in the AFS forums. Ralph's macro takes the engine data and creates graphs of your EGT vs RPM (same scale) and CHT, OAT, OilTemp (again same scale). There are also a couple that average your CHT/EGT and graph the differentials. These are useful graphs, but are limited to data files generated from an EM-only system.

Because I have both an EF and an EM system, I took Ralph's code and started making it more generic so it doesn't matter what type of system you have. This initial version generates the same graphs thaat Ralph's does. It also automates the flight data import process, opening up a dialog box that lets you select the original data file and the code takes care of the rest.

This first version doesn't have a lot of error handling, but should work for most users. To use it you simply open the spreadsheet available below, click on 'enable macros' when prompted and then there will be a large button to click on. From there it's pretty self explanatory. Note, the code currently only handles 4-cylinder engine data. If you have a 6-cylinder engine it will create charts based on your first four cylinders and ignore the last two. This should be pretty easy to fix in a future version.

Please feel free to email me at the link to the left with suggestions, comments or problems. Also, I'm hopeful this site can help foster and coordinate joint development. Feel free to get in touch with me to share code additions, fixes and enhancements.

Download AFS Flight Data Utility v1.0.xls to use the macro already included in an Excel spreadsheet.

Download AFS Data Chart Utility Macro v1.0.txt to see the VBA code.