Bill Lyon's Grumman Goose: changing the radio

[bhk]

I am recently new to the delights of Bill's creations and, having a fondness for flying-boats, I have installed Bill's Goose and all that goes with it.

I would like to be able to change a couple of the radio "programs" and am wondering where the data is found.
I have created several new WAV files, of 22050 kbps, and would like to enter their new names into

Can someone please advise?

Thanks in advance.

Bruce
Canberra
Australia

[Admin]

In window mode, you can mouse over the radio to find the hotspots for the somngs, then right click and browse to the song you want for the 6 presets.

[bhk]

admin said:

In window mode, you can mouse over the radio to find the hotspots......

Sorry, Tom....I should've made it a bit clearer.

What I would like to do is actually change those six tracks to a new selection occasionally.

I have found the WMA or WAV files that are used for the radio broadcasts (they are named something like sounda.wav" or "sounde.wma") and have determined that they are sampled at 22050 kbps.

I have created several new files to replace these and have given them different names.

What I now need to to is to find out where these files are called up.
It doesn't seem to be in the CFG file for the aircraft and neither is it in the sound CFG.
But there must be some reference to these sound files in order for them to be allocated to the radio.

Bruce

[Admin]

Please read what I wrote again. As I said, IF you right click on one of the hotspots, you can browse to one of your new wav files and assign it to that preset.

[bhk]

Tom,
Sorry....I misunderstood and thought that you were advising on how to select any of the six channels!

I have tried what you suggested, but the result when I mouse-over any of the six buttons is not as you describe.
I simply get a Flight Sim mini-menu that allows me to choose various display modes, etc. Nothing that allows for file browsing.

However, all is not lost, as what I have done this afternoon is to take six MP3 files recorded from radio in the 1930's - 1940's.
Each of those shows is a half-hour in length, incidentally, and includes a variety of music and comedy and, because they are recorded from old AM radio, the sound is true to the period represented.

Using an audio-editing utility, I converted the MP3's to WMA files, resampling them to the same specs as the WMA files included with Cutter's Goose.
This reduced each file to approx 4Mb per file, considerably larger than the original sound files included with the Goose.

The original files, "songa.wma" through "songf.wma" were saved out and these six new, half-hour files, were renamed to suit and then inserted into the FS9 main Sound folder.

Now, when flying the Goose, I have 3 hours of variety radio from which to choose, true to the period in which the aircraft was in its prime.
The larger size of the files has no detrimental effect whatsoever on the sim itself and the only restriction to the size of the files would be the amount of spare hard-drive space one has available.

Mission accomplished, but in a somewhat round-about manner!

Regards,
Bruce

[Stearman]

bhk said:

Now, when flying the Goose, I have 3 hours of variety radio from which to choose, true to the period in which the aircraft was in its prime.
The larger size of the files has no detrimental effect whatsoever on the sim itself and the only restriction to the size of the files would be the amount of spare hard-drive space one has available.

Mission accomplished, but in a somewhat round-about manner!

Hi Bruce, that sounds really nice. In case it might be of interest, though, I can assure you that any sound format (wma, wav, mp3) would do, so you don't really need to go converting formats.

The Goose being my absolute FS2004 favourite aircraft, I did also some work on the Radio-CD player.

Since the included radcdgs.gau is based on Rob Clark's older radiocd3.gau, it can only use 6 different files (radio programs), i.e. selecting AM or FM makes no difference.

For that reason, I replaced it with Rob's newer radiocd4.gau (as found in newer Custom Classics and also available from a number of websites). This newer version actually allows for 12 different selections (6 AM and 6 FM), which are easily controlled from a text file (radiocd4.dat) resident in the general Gauges folder. I use this file to change my selections every now and then. It goes without saying you can then locate your sound files wherever you want: for example, I use a folder called C:\FS2004\Music

Placing graphically the Radiocd4 in the Goose virtual cockpit (as seen in the Travel-Air, Luscombe or Tri-Pacer) is another story. I must admit that's beyond my abilities, but placing it in the 2D panel is very easy, so that's what I did:



Hope that helps (or at least, I hope that's inspiring...)

[bhk]

Thank you very much for that information.
I was not aware that the program would automatically use whatever type of sound file was provided. MP3, due to it's smaller size (slightly less than an equivalent WMA) would be the way to go for those tight on space.

I will try that out tonight.

Like your goodself, I have a preference for the Goose; it is a delightful model and joins a small stable of my favourite FS aircraft, the others including the GAF Nomad and the Fokker F27 Friendship.

I will attempt to "insert" that new radio.
Do you have any additional instructions for placing it in the correct location or is it all-inclusive?
I'll go in search of it now.

Thanks once again; your advice is most appreciated.

Bruce

UPDATE[/i]
Downloaded the new .GAU file, installed, read the instructions and all is now lovely in the Goose.
Tom's "mouse over" instructions now work perfectly!

Thanks again to you both for your assistance in pointing me in the right direction.

Regards,
Bruce