Here is a flight computer I made for the TI-85 calculator. It is a very functional program. You can use it to store information about your plane, a trip, and wind conditions. The program will use this information to caclulate your trip, including airspeed, time enroute, fuel burn, your true heading, wind correction angle, and cross wind component. If you want to see what the trip would be like in a different airplane, or with different winds, that's the only thing you need to change, and the program will recalculate the trip. And it's all driven by easy to follow menus.
The program is in .85g format, so you will need TI Graph-Link Software to view it.
These directions will be organized in the following manner. Right underneath the heading for a menu, there will be a line that shows what the menu should say. There will then be a list explaining what each item does.
The installation is fairly simple, but can be time consuming if you don't have a link to your computer. First you need to download the file. Just in case you missed it, the link to download the program is at the top of this page. After you download the program, you must unzip the file that you downloaded. Since it is an .85g format, there is only one file, even though the program has many subroutines. Then, if you have a data link to your computer, just transfer the group file to your calculator. If you don't have a data link, you'll have to enter everything manually, which will take a lot of time, but if you need a flight computer, it's worth it. To enter the program manually, you will need to use the File Utilities in TI-Graph Link to ungroup the .85g file to be able to see the individual subroutines. Note that it may ask you to rename files that begin with a ¾. Just get rid of the ¾ to view the files, but when entering them in your calculator, use D (delta) as the first character in the subroutine name. Also, anywhere where a subroutine is called in any program, replace ¾ with D (delta).
Once all the programs are copied, you need to make sure all the variables that you need for the program exist on your calculator (they probably don't, yet). You'll need to create them. Just run the program called DFLII. This is the setup program. Once you run it once, you won't need it ever again. You can delete it if you want, or save it if you are planning to give the program to other people, so that they can set up the variables on their calculator.
Plane, Wind, Trip, More, Quit
- Plane- Edit the plane's attributes
- Wind- Edit wind velocity and direction, determine cross winds
- Trip- Enter trip information, calculate trip
- More- Nothing yet
- Quit- Quit the program
New, C-152, C-172, Ercou, Main
- New- Allows you to enter in the information for a new plane that is not predefined.
- C-152- Sets a Cessna 152 as the plane. Sets all the info for the plane
- C-172- Sets a Cessna 172 as the plane. Sets all the info for the plane
- Ercou- Sets an Ercoupe as the plane. Sets all the info for the plane
- Main- Returns the user to the main menu
Know, Unkno, XWind, ,Main
- Know- Prompts the user for information on a known wind (speed, direction), and stores the info.
- Unkno- Not finished yet. It will determine an unknown wind from other information.
- XWind- Prompts the user for a heading, then shows the crosswind component for that heading.
- Main- Returns the user to the main menu.
1 Head, 2+Hea, GS, More, Main
- 1 Head- Prompts user for trip information, then caclulates the trip. Only allows one heading.
- 2+Hea- Allows the user to input a trip with different headings for each leg.
- GS- Allows the user to input a trip based on a known ground speed. The calculated trip is independent of the wind.
- More- Shows the user Trip Menu 2 with more options.
- Main- Returns the user to the main menu.
Trip Menu 2 (More)
View, Redo, , Back, Main
- View- Shows the user the current trip information
- Redo- Recalculates the trip, then returns to the first Trip Menu
- Back- Returns the user to the first Trip Menu
- Main- Returns the user to the Main Menu
The following information is for anybody who wants to try to figure out the program if they want to make any changes to it.
The table below tells what each program does. For the subroutines, it says what the name of the subroutine is short for. It then gives an explanation of what the program does.
Note that D is the capital delta symbol.
|FLIGHT||Main Program||Menu that leads to everything else|
|DFLIHD||subroutine- Flight: Heading Display||Displays TH, GS, CW, WCA|
|DFLII||Initiation Program- Flight: Initiate||Creates all the variables needed to run the program|
|DFLILD||subroutine- Flight: Leg Display||Displays time and fuel burn for a leg|
|DFLILI||subroutine- Flight: Leg Input||Inputs number of legs|
|DFLIP||subroutine- Flight: Plane||Displays current plane data/Inputs new data|
|DFLIS||subroutine- Flight: Setup||Resets variables DT, TT, FR|
|DFLIT||subroutine- Flight: Trip||Inputs trip information and displays calculated values|
|DFLITB||subroutine- Flight: Time & Burn||Calculates time and fuel burn for each leg|
|DFLITT||subroutine- Flight: Total Trip||Displays total trip information|
|DFLIW||subroutine- Flight: Wind||Inputs/Displays wind data; Calculates CW|
|DFLIWC||subroutine- Flight: Wind Correction||Calculates TH, GS, WCA due to wind|
The list below tells what each of the variables stands for. If a variable is followed by ( ), it is a list. Each of the elements of a lists corresponds to a leg of the trip. The only string variable is AP.
|AP||-Airplane Type (string variable)|
|F( )||-fuel burn|
|G||-temp variable used to input GS( )|
|GPH||-fuel burn per hour|
|GS( )||-ground speed|
|H||-temp variable used to input TC( )|
|L||-number of legs|
|LT||-leg type (1- 1 heading, 2- 2+ headings, 3- groundspeed)|
|TC( )||-true course|
|temp||-temp variable used to input values for lists|
|TH( )||-true heading|
|WCA( )||-wind correction angle|
|WCD||-wind correction direction|
|theta||-angle between wind and course|
|theta2||-wind correction angle used in calculations|