“Wanda” the Marshal has Gone Missing?

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22

This choice seems to not be there for me on occasion. I will definitely be more diligent about ensuring I do this, however.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

23

What I do is stop/pause right as I turn off the active and check the ATC menu at that point. It’s usually there for me. If there’s a balk/hold short line, stop there - don’t cross it.

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24

I thought she had gone off with one of the PMDG Captain’s!

Charles

25

Ok. I know I’m crazy, but not when it comes to Wanda going missing.

Today, I dusted off the Famous Flyer V35 Bonanza, and I noticed that after a couple of landings I had no Wanda.

  • I set up a test: 3CA7 to KKIC. It’s a quick 8 minute flight.

  • If I fly the stock C172, I am greeted by Wanda and a small aircraft trolley.

  • If I fly the V35 Bonanza, there is no Wanda nor small aircraft trolley.

  • Same airports, same route, different aircraft, different results for services at destination airport.

So, what is the deal here? A bug with the V35?

26

An Amber Alert has been issued for Wanda.

But seriously - have a look at the aircraft.cfg for each plane and see if the 172!has any ground services options enabled that the V35 doesn’t.

Beyond that… :man_shrugging:

(The one to look for is ‘pushback - small’)

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27

There appears to be no aircraft.cfg for the V35. I see it for the C172.

I suppose this explains quite a bit.

I’m now finding aircraft.cfg is missing for, pretty much, all of my add-on aircraft that I’ve looked at.

There seems to be a significant amount of information in that .cfg file. I don’t understand why the file doesn’t exist for any of these add-on aircraft that I’ve checked (I’ve checked many of them).

28

It might depend on where you purchased them - I often find 3rd party aircraft bought via the marketplace have key files like the flight_model.cfg encrypted and hidden. I guess that would include the V35 Famous Flyer as that would have been developed for MS by a 3rd party studio.

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29

As an Xbox convert, everything I’ve purchased, thus far, has come from the Marketplace.

It seems that a number of my add-on aircraft have this data incorrect and that’s why Wanda seems to not show up for me except when I fly stock Asobo aircraft – which isn’t often.

30

Sorry, I forgot you were one of our strongest Xbox champions.

Yeah, if the Dev has set the services not to give a pushback tug then you ain’t gonna see one for that aircraft no matter where you park. I didn’t think that influenced the availability of Wanda thou, but I may be wrong.

31

It seems like it must be connected given the V35 fails to provide services both at the origin airport and destination airport.

I cannot imagine I am going to see this fixed, but I will submit a report, regardless.

32

You can ask. Asobo opened up all the .cfgs for the stock premium & deluxe aircraft at community request. Tweaking the aircraft.cfg for a given aircraft takes like 1 minute to do. Distribution though is a bit of a bigger issue.

33

So in the interest of science, I set up a number of my add-on aircraft on approach to KSBP, landed, requested taxi to parking/gate and made note of the available services.

It’s interesting, rethinking this a bit. Perhaps it is more odd that Wanda shows up for a 172 than if she didn’t, at all. Really, you’re not going to be directed in like an airliner when you’re flying your small GA aircraft. It’s even weirder when she shows up at some farmer’s tiny airfield.

In that vein, it is beginning to make sense to me that some of the developers have probably made the conscious decision to not have her show up for small GA aircraft.

Overall, I’d say the entre services “thing” is pretty inconsistent across the board:

  • The V35, Staggerwing, Fouga Magister got nothing
  • The An-2 and Boeing 247 get Wanda
  • The Kodiak and HJet get the small trolley and Wanda
  • The ATR 42-600 gets the small trolley, a GPU, but no Wanda
  • The EMB-110P gets it all – Baggage loader, baggage carts, GPU, small trolley and Wanda
  • The Caribou and the Junkers Ju 52 didn’t seem to be accepted at KSBP and had not even an offering of taxing anywhere
  • The PMDG DC-6 and 737-700, understandably, didn’t like being spawned in the air on approach and I had to quit or crash

I have many more I could test, but I think that is a fair sample size. The best part of my test was I got to fly, albeit for a short distance, a few of my aircraft that I haven’t flown in awhile. This sim has given us such great aircraft to experience!

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34

I found some older discussions about this topic, but nothing that helped me solving my problem. After landing I follow the ATC instructions to the gate, but I never ever found a single Ground Marshaller waiting there for me.

To give you some more information about my setup:

  • I usually fly A320 Asobo between mayor international airports, for example last testflight from KEWR to KBOS
  • I fly with Flight Plan and ATC support from cold and dark at gate to gate.
  • To be sure it is the correct destination gate I activated the blue taxi ribbon.
  • When taxing I follow all the instructions including holding for other traffic or staying below 15 NM.
  • I have some free custom airports installed in Northern Europe/Southern Germany (LIME,LIMC, LIML, EDDS)
  • I have fsltl installed for AI traffic
  • At the gates when starting I have other ground services (fuel, cathering, backpush, etc). I also think backpush was waiting for me at destination but do not remember for sure.

Any idea?

Thank you in advance.

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35

I haven’t seen one for a very long time. Used to get them regularly.

36

When I did my testing (your post was moved here, to this thread, so you may want to read from the beginning of this thread to see what I’ve been up to when trying to figure out why “Wanda” the marshal has been erratic for me), I removed all my 3rd party airports, regional vehicles, FSLTL, etc. just so I could have a baseline when testing my aircraft for available services. I didn’t uninstall 3rd party aircraft, as they are the ones I felt I wasn’t seeing the marshal with.

This thread is one that I’ve referred back to a few times when trying to figure out my “Where’s Wanda?” issues:

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37

I did some testing in safe mode at Geneva Airport an the Ground Marshaller appeared. When I did the same landing in normal mode the GM would not be there. If I understood correcty this should depend on some addon installed. I have a few airports from AVSIM as mentioned above, as well as one market place ariport and Top Gun Carrier (plus the Mod from Jayshreeke). Could it be any addon, only for example the ones from Marketplace, or do I have to test all of them? Could you tell me which was the problem in your case?

38

I am still tying to work out if there are any conflicts with my non-aircraft 3rd party content.

I moved all my airports, FSTLT, regional vehicles, etc. back into my OneStore directory (I’d bought all of mine via the Marketplace as I am an ex-Xbox user).

When I load the EMB-110P, for example, the services vehicles all appeared.

However, I just landed the 787 at KSFO and there was nothing there for me. Something must still be going on, but trying to determine what that is is going to be difficult.

39

I just removed them all again and flew the same test loop flight on the 787 and this time I had Wanda and her services at the gate.

I still cannot answer your question, but I know it has something to do with the add-ons I’ve removed from my OneStore directory.

Now the arduous task of figuring out which one(s)…

40

Well, I have discovered this. I’d forgotten that I have a few items in my Community folder.

I just discovered that with these three freeware airports installed Wanda doesn’t appear:

  • KTRM
  • L08
  • L52

I don’t know if it is one or all of them, but I’ve tested with all three installed and all three uninstalled and Wanda doesn’t appear when they are installed and does appear when they aren’t. I also don’t know if this is a coincidence, because earlier in this thread I found some oddities with Zinertek and AK Mesh as posted here:

I’m unwilling to blame the developer of the three aforementioned airports. I have asked him to take a look for me to ensure that everything looks good in his code.

This is a complex problem to solve.

For reference, I’ve been repeatedly flying the 787 on a flight plan that is a small loop around the SF Bay Area. I takeoff, fly the loop, land, request taxi to gates and check for Wanda.

EDIT:

Well, that shoots that in the foot. I made no changes to my add-ons and I just flew the loop again and I didn’t get Wanda. I did get a different gate…

This is seriously annoying to narrow down.

EDIT2:

I flew it again and got my original gate and no Wanda. Again, no changes to the add-ons.

I guess this is just going to be another one of those “things” that this sim does that is completely perplexing. The inconsistencies here are hard to understand and make sense of.

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41

Maybe, just maybe, Asobo have a probability applied to the availability of ground services? Also it may not ‘reset’ after the first landing if more than one is conducted in a single session.

That said, I have never not had Wanda after flying a filed IFR route in a commercial airliner. VFR circuits? Not so sure.

My advice would be to try a mix of scenarios, including some normal non-test flights and make a log. It might help illuminate common factors (and preserve you good humour)

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