Spanair "MD-82" Causes Crash to Desktop

[flyingkiwi]

I have recently downloaded two of your McDonnell-Douglas MD-83 aircraft from AVSIM. One is for Centennial Airlines, and works like a dream. I am very happy with that aircraft. It has some nice features too!

However, the other one, which uses the MD-83 model but purports to be an "MD-82" with Spanair livery, causes a crash to desktop every time I try to load a free flight with it. I have tried deleting it and doing a fresh install, but that does not work. None of my other aircraft cause a crash to desktop when I try to load a free flight with them. That includes the Centennial Airlines plane, which has all the same gauges, sounds and so forth (as far as I can tell).

There seems to be something fundamentally broken with the Spanair plane, but I can't work out what it is. As far as I can tell, all the gauges and sounds are where they are supposed to be (and certainly, they cause no issues with the Centennial Airlines version). There may be something amiss with the aircraft config file, but I don't know what that could be. While I can modify an aircraft config file to add new liveries, and know how to manually add a new panel, I really don't know too much about coding, and certainly wouldn't know what specific piece of code might be causing the CTD issue.

Again, this Spanair MD-82 is the ONLY aircraft that causes such a problem for me. ALL other aircraft that I have, including the Centennial Airlines MD-83, load up in a free flight without any problems. So it is not an issue with FSX. (I'm using the Steam Edition, by the way.) It's not an issue with your MD-83 aircraft generally. It's just this one particular plane.

Hope you can help me solve this problem. Many thanks in advance for your assistance.

[flyingkiwi]

I found a possible reason for the problem, but it still hasn't solved my issue.

In the "spanair.texture" folder, the file called "Misc1" was saved in PSD format, when it should have been saved in DDS format. FSX can't read PSD files, I don't think. So I replaced "Misc1.psd" with "Misc1.dds" (which was in the other "texture" folder). Thought maybe that would fix it. But no, the crash to desktop happened just the same. Comparing the Spanair and Centennial Airlines texture files, I discovered another file in the spanair.texture folder that appeared to be unnecessary: alpha-misc1.bmp. So I deleted that as well, leaving the spanair.texture file pretty well identical in content to the Centennial Airlines texture folder. But guess what? Still that wretched crash to desktop.

Someone on Flightsim.com reckons that the problem is with the 2D panel. (See www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib.php?searchid=46098423#comments_start)

Here is the start of the panel.cfg file for the Spanair plane:

[Window Titles]
Window00=Main Panel
Window01=Grupo de radio
Window02=FMC
Window03=GPS
Window04=MFD
window05=FSND Services
Window06=Groundhandling
Window07=GPWS

Here's the start of the panel.cfg file for the Centennial Airlines plane:

[Window Titles]
Window00=Main Panel
Window01=Grupo de radio
Window02=FMC
Window03=GPS
Window04=MFD
window05=FSND Services

So maybe there's something corrupt with the "Groundhandling" or "GPWS"? Here's the code in the panel.cfg file for those two:

[Window06]
size_mm=204,65
visible=0
window_size= 0.20,0.09
window_pos= 0.0,0.05
background_color=16,16,16
gauge00=RCB_Groundhandling5!PushbackDisplay, 2,2,74,61
gauge01=RCB_Groundhandling5!PushbackStates, 0,0
gauge02=RCB_Groundhandling5!Taxispeed, 79,2,64,61
//gauge03=RCB_Groundhandling!UseToebrakePedals, 0,0
gauge04=RCB_Groundhandling5!Brakes, 146,2,56,61
gauge05=RCB_Groundhandling5_Sound!dsd_xml_sound3, 0,0,0,0, ./Sound/Groundhandling5AA/Sound.ini

[Window07]
size_mm=82,31
position=2 // Opens the window in the top-right corner of the screen.
window_size= 0.12,0.06 // Window screen size: 12 % Hor., 6 % Vert.
visible=0
Ident=10060 // Used by MasterWarn to toggle this window on/off.
gauge00=rcb-gauges!GPWS3_3_Default, 0,0,82,31

I don't have enough expertise to be able to identify the issue, but maybe it could be somewhere in that. Or perhaps the gauge files themselves are corrupted somehow?

[flyingkiwi]

BY GEORGE, I'VE GOT IT!!!

After a long and very frustrating afternoon trying to figure out what's wrong with this aircraft, I have finally cracked it! The problem is indeed with the panel! Specifically, it's the GPWS sound gauge. That must be corrupt or something. Anyway, after a degree of trial and error, I have figured out that the following needs to be done to get this plane working:

1) Make a backup of the panel.cfg file.

2) Under:

[Window Titles]
Window00=Main Panel
Window01=Grupo de radio
Window02=FMC
Window03=GPS
Window04=MFD
window05=FSND Services
Window06=Groundhandling
Window07=GPWS

Remove "Window07=GPWS".

3) Completely delete this:

[Window07]
size_mm=82,31
position=2 // Opens the window in the top-right corner of the screen.
window_size= 0.12,0.06 // Window screen size: 12 % Hor., 6 % Vert.
visible=0
Ident=10060 // Used by MasterWarn to toggle this window on/off.
gauge00=rcb-gauges!GPWS3_3_Default, 0,0,82,31

4) Finally, in the list of gauges under [Window00], delete this line:

gauge131=GPWS_Sound!dsd_xml_sound3, 0,0,,, ./sound/GPWS/Sound.ini

Change "gauge 132" in the next line (gauge132=rcb-gauges!GPWS3_3_MasterWarn, 16,95,13,13) to "gauge131".

And that's it! Hopefully this solution might help someone else having the same problem.

There must be something wrong with the file GPWS_sound.gau. Either that or there's an error in the code somewhere, but I really can't figure out what that might be.

But anyway, I've now got a working plane, so the frustrating afternoon hasn't been a complete waste!