SPAACARS

Thanks Chili,

I notice sometimes the site is slow to load and might indicate a problem with our provider's server. This happens from time to time and I have to contact them to give us more bandwidth. I might also look at having SPAACARS make several send attempts before timing out, but haven't needed to do this yet at this point and we've been using this program for a number of years now.

I made two flights earlier today without issue.

Another alternative is to fly without using Econ Mode. That will allow you to make as many "send Pirep" attempts as you want by repeatedly pushing the "send pirep" button. I'm guessing that subsequent push(es) will eventually be successful, indicating that it's a connection problem to the server the site is running on.

Pilots experiencing this type of error should try turning off Econ Mode and report if subsequent send attempts are successful.  Understand, however, that the Econ Mode must be set or unset before starting your flight logging, otherwise it is disabled and will not allow changes to the Econ Mode setting during the flight.

Thanks,

John

Thanks Chili,

That's quite helpful, but I'm not sure what to do about it yet.  I'm guessing this is related to our moving to HTTPS security, but what I don't understand is why it works for most pilots without issue.  I wonder if James is also using Xplane - so is this related to XPUIPC.  I also don't understand why this should suddenly be a problem now, as we migrated to https quite some time ago now.

On the other hand, SPAACARs was never changed to address possible errors related to https, and it still attempts to make connection via http as listed in your spa.ini file.  The server redirects automatically to the https connection.  This has seemed to work for all simulators until this point.

With Econ Mode turned off are you able to send pirep with subsequent pushing of the "Send Pirep" button or does it simply refuse to complete the connection?

I can look at having SPAACARS bypass TLS errors or something on the server side to allow the connection.  Again, I'm not understanding why it works for some users of SPAACARS and not others - with the only difference (other than the simulator) being the FSUIPC or XPUIPC interface.  Also please make sure you are using the latest XPUIPC version in case they've made some changes to address this issue.

John

Thanks Oswald,

All connections through SPAACARs are made via .NET WebRequest class, and I did rather sloppy error handling so I don't get reasonable error messages returned at this point.

Again, if it's the WebRequest class that's causing the error, I don't know why it would not affect all users.  I can try code to bypass the SSL for the transfer of the pirep as a possible solution.

So...Chili:
Does the connection always fail?
With Econ mode turned off does the pirep eventually send successfully with multiple tries pushing the "Send" button?

This is very strange and shouldn't be related to XPUIPC now that I think about it because that only interfaces between the simulator and SPAACARS and not between SPAACARS and the website.

Also, if it were a SSL/TLS error, I would think it would consistently fail every time.

John