CIVA for X-Plane

Delco Carousel IV-A

Inertial Navigation System Simulation
Operators Manual – revision 1.3.1

1 Credits:
Jörg Hermann: photographs and documentation of the real unit
Jack Skieczius: photo editing and post-processing
Philipp Ringler: programming
2 Inertial Navigation – An Introduction
Before the introduction of GPS in civil aviation in the 90ies and before the
availability of modern fight management computers (FMCs) in the 80ies,
airliners were navigated mostly by means of radio navigation (VOR, DME, NDB)
and inertial navigation systems. Radio navigation can of course only be used
when traveling over areas covered by the necessary ground installations. It
cannot be used for crossing an ocean. Inertial navigation instead is totally
independent of external sources and totally self-contained in the aircraft.
Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) are based on a principle already used by
Charles Lindbergh: Dead reckoning. By starting at a known position and
keeping track of speed and direction of travel, the position of the aircraft at any
time can be calculated. The tricky part is knowing the precise speed and track.
While Lindbergh relied on rather imprecise instruments and his intuition, the
INS developed in the 60ies used mechanical gyros to measure even the tiniest
acceleration. But still, inertial navigation is subject to position errors that
accumulate over time, due to the nature of using acceleration sensors to track
position. Therefore, it is advised to correct (update) the position calculated by
the INS by means of radio navigation from time to time.
Perhaps the most famous INS installed in classic airliners like the Boeing 707
and 727, the Lockheed Tristar, the Douglas DC-10 and the Boeing 747-100 to
-300 was the Delco Carousel IV-A, nicknamed “CIVA”. A special variant, the
Carousel IV-AC was installed in the Concorde and used to cross the North
Atlantic at supersonic speeds. The name “Carousel” refers to the slowly
rotating platform on which the gyroscopes were installed, to cancel out false
acceleration readings due to gyro precession.
Though the unit looks primitive compared to modern fight management
computers, it is not an easy device to operate. It requires manual entry of all
waypoints as Lat/Lon coordinates and it has a limited memory that stores only
9 waypoints. Therefore, it is usually necessary to re-program the device in
fight, perhaps several times. Procedures like DME updating to correct the
calculated position are very tricky and can, if executed incorrectly, render the
unit useless for the rest of the fight. Therefore, carefully read the following
guide to familiarize yourself with the operation of CIVA.

3 Installation
CIVA for X-Plane is a plugin that must be installed into an airplane. The 727 by
FlyJSim supports the CIVA natively, but it can be used with other aircraft as
well.
To install CIVA for X-Plane in the FlyJSim 727, unpack the “xciva-131.zip”, where
131 is the current version number. Unpacking returns a folder called “xciva”.
This folder must be moved into “Aircraft/727-200Adv/plugins”. “727-200Adv” is
a placeholder here for any aircraft you would like to use the CIVA in. If the
specific aircraft doesn'tt have a subfolder called “plugins”, you must create it.
Linux users must make sure they have libc++ and libGLEW-1.13 or later
installed. Ubuntu 16.04LTS or later or a distribution derived from Ubuntu is
recommended. Other distributions might work but are not tested.
 4 The CIVA Popup window
Looking at the left side of your screen when fying the FlyJSim 727 you see
several icons. One of them is labeled “INS”. Click it to open the popup window.
When using other aircraft than the FlyJSim 727, you may use the menu item
“CIVA” that appears under “Plugins” whenever you are fying a plane you
equipped with CIVA.

Move popup around

Close popup Create Window

Mode Selector-
Quick Align Cheat
Mode Selector+
MSU panel

Keyboard input CDU panel

HOLD key
INSERT key
Load Plan

Waypoint Select

Waypoint Change

Data Selector- Numeric Keypad

Data Selector+

CIVA for X-Plane consists of two panels: The upper part of the popup is the
Mode Selector Unit, the lower part is the Control and Display Unit. Normally,
the MSU is installed in the overhead panel of the aircraft, while the CDU is
installed on the center pedestal. To simplify operation in the simulator, those
two panels are combined into one window.
The MSU is used during the prefight phase to get the unit running. During
fight, the CDU is used for navigation and to get various information.
5 Keyboard Entry
By clicking in the numeric display area of the window, you can activate
keyboard input. It is denoted by a small “K” in the upper left corner. In this
mode, your numpad doubles as the numeric keyboard. Also, you can use the
“N”, “E”, “S” and “W” keys to select the hemisphere of an entry. The up- an
down-arrow keys move the data selector, and with the left- and right-arrow
keys you turn the thumbwheel of the waypoint selector. The Backspace or
Delete keys may be used for the CLEAR key, and Enter or Return on your
keyboard triggers the INSERT key.
To end keyboard input, click the display area again, or simply close the popup
window.

6 Basic modes of operation “Easy” and “Hard”

CIVA for X-Plane can be used in two diferent modes:
• When you load the aircraft with engines running, CIVA for X-Plane is
initialized in “Easy mode”, which means it is already warmed up,
initialized and aligned, no failure will occur and you can start fying right
away
• When you load the aircraft cold and dark, CIVA for X-Plane is initialized
in “Hard mode”. Which means the unit is switched of. You have to turn
it on, initialize the position and complete the warmup and alignment
cycle before you can use it for fying.

7 Navigation using X-Plane fightplans

The easiest way to use CIVA for X-Plane is loading up the aircraft with engines
running, and then loading an X-Plane fightplan. Please note that even in Easy
mode, the waypoint storage is restricted to 9 waypoints, just as in the real unit.
Therefore, you can only load up to 9 waypoints from an X-Plane fightplan.
To load a regular X-Plane FMS fightplan, press the REMOTE key (“R” on your
keyboard if in keyboard mode). REMOTE lights up and you can use the
thumbwheel (left and right arrows if in keyboard mode) to scroll through your
saved fightplans.

The displays show the filename of a saved fightplan. A left arrow indicates you
have reached the end of the list of saved fightplans. To load the currently
displayed fightplan, press INSERT (Enter in keyboard mode). To cancel, press
the REMOTE key again.
After loading a fightplan, the waypoints 1-9 are programmed according to the
fightplan. You may now use the Autopilot in AUX NAV mode to fy the route.
If you load a fightplan in fight while enroute to your 9th waypoint, only
waypoints 1-7 will be loaded from file to not disturb your current leg to point 9.
8 Hard mode – from Cold and Dark

8.1 Warmup and Alignment

To begin using the CIVA from cold&dark, make sure to power up AC power and
the avionics bus of the aircraft you are fying. The CIVA can also operate up to
30 minutes from its own internal battery, which will get you down in case of an
emergency with loss of AC power.
Start by turning the Data Selector to the DSRTK/STS position and the Mode
Selector to the STBY position. Observe the status code in the right CDU display.

Status Action/ Perf Desired

Code Malfun Index Perf Index

Check that status mode is 0 (not in NAV), no malfunction is displayed,

performance index is 9 (the worst), and desired performance is 5.
Next, rotate the Data Selector to POS. Now you have to initialize the position to
the current ramp position of the aircraft. You get the coordinates from your
airport chart, alternatively you can look them up on sites like http://airnav.com.
You can also use X-Plane'ts Data In/Out feature to display the current latitude
and longitude of your aircraft, and then use a calculator like
http://www.directionsmag.com/site/latlong-converter/ to convert from decimal
degrees to degrees, minutes, tenths of minutes.
To enter a position into the CDU, you have to do the following:
Start with selecting the hemisphere of the latitude by pressing either 2/N for
northern hemisphere or 8/S for southern hemisphere. Observe the INSERT
button light up. Now enter the 5 digit sequence of latitude degrees, minutes
and tenths of a minute. If you make a mistake when entering, press CLEAR. If
you entered the latitude correctly, press the INSERT button. Next, select the
hemisphere of the longitude by pressing either 4/W for western or 6/E for
eastern longitudes. Observe the INSERT button light up. Enter the 6 digit
sequence of longitude degrees, minutes and tenths of a minute. Press INSERT
button to confirm the entry. Please note that longitude is always 6 digits
instead of 5, because longitudes go from -180 to 180, while latitudes only go
from -90 to 90.
Now make sure the parking brake is set and the plane is not moving.
Set the Data Selector back to DSRTK/STS and rotate the Mode Selector to
ALIGN.
Note that alignment will start after the warmup phase is completed. Warmup
time is dependent on the current outside air temperature, the colder it is, the
longer it will take for the unit to warm up. At 15°C outside air temperature,
warmup will take a little more than 5 minutes. Note that warmup starts as soon
as you select the STBY mode, so while you have been fiddling with the initial
position, the unit will probably already be warm.
You can now watch the system go through its alignment. During alignment, the
Performance Index will count down from the initial 9 to 0. The total time it takes
to complete this countdown depends on your latitude. The nearer you are to
the equator, the faster alignment will be. At 40 degrees of latitude, alignment
will take slightly less than ten minutes. During the waiting time, you may
proceed with manual fightplan entry, see next section.
You may choose to cheat and skip the long waiting period by clicking the
hidden spot on the READY NAV light.
Note that at performance index 8 a test of the internal battery is commenced,
which you can see by the yellow BAT light on the CDU lighting up. If also the
red BAT light on the MSU lights up, the internal battery is critically low and it is
unsafe to rely on it.

As soon as the Performance Index is less or equal the Desired Performance

Index, the green READY NAV light on the MSU will light up. It indicates
alignment is now sufcient for fight operation. You can still enhance navigation
performance further by letting the aircraft sit with the parking brake set and
the Mode Selector in ALIGN, while the Performance Index counts further down,
until finally to 0. But at any time the READY NAV light is lit up, you can
commence NAV mode by rotating the Mode Selector to NAV.

Note the READY NAV light extinguishes and the Status display now reads:

Status Action/ Accur Desired A/P

Code Malfun Index Index

The Mode Index shows 1 for NAV MODE. The Performance Index has now been
replaced by the Accuracy Index. It will slowly increase during fight indicating
navigation accuracy fades due to long operation without position updating.
Note that the accuracy index does not correspond to a specific navigation
performance radius and is not suitable for RNP operations!
The desired A/P Index will always display 4 in this simulation, as Triple-Mixing or
Update Eradication are not simulated.
8.2 Manual Flightplan Entry
You may use the fightplan loading feature as described for Easy Mode. Or you
may choose to enter the waypoints manually. The entry procedure is as follows:
Turn the Data Selector to WAYPT. Turn the Waypoint Selector (thumbwheel) to
the “1” slot.
Now you can enter the first waypoint:
Like you did for the initial position, first select the latitude hemisphere, then
enter the latitude, click INSERT, then enter the longitude hemisphere, enter the
longitude, click INSERT.
Verify the coordinates, then turn the Waypoint Selector to the “2” slot and
repeat the entry for your second waypoint. Repeat this procedure for up to 9
waypoints that can be stored in the unit.
Note that you can enter the waypoints while in STBY, ALIGN or in NAV mode,
which means you can program your fightplan while alignment is still in
progress.

9 Display Modes

9.1 TK/GS:
Left display shows ground track related to true north to the nearest tenth of a
degree.
Right display shows ground speed in knots.

9.2 HDG/DA:
Left display shows heading related to true north to the nearest tenth of a
degree. Note that this heading will be diferent from the heading shown on the
HSI because the HSI shows track related to magnetic north.
Right display shows drift angle due to wind, from 0 to 180° sufxed “L” for left
or “R” for right.
Note that drift angle is not displayed for ground speeds lower than about 75
knots.

9.3 XTK/TKE:
Left display shows cross track error in tenths of nautical miles, sufxed with “L”
for left or “R” for right.
Right display shows track angle error from 0 to 180°, sufxed with “L” for left or
“R” for right.

9.4 POS:
Left display shows Latitude of current airplane position in degrees, minutes,
tenths of a minute.
Right display shows Longitude of current airplane position in degrees, minutes,
tenths of a minute.
9.5 WAYPT:
Shows Latitude in left and longitude in right display in degrees, minutes, tenths
of a minute for the currently selected waypoint. The current waypoint is chosen
and indicated with the waypoint selector (thumbwheel).

9.6 DIS/TIME:
Left display shows distance in tenths of nautical miles to the currently active
TO waypoint.
Right display shows time in tenths of minutes to the currently active TO
waypoint, based on current ground speed.

9.7 WIND:
Left display shows wind direction in degrees with respect to true north.
Right display shows wind speed in knots.
Note that reliable wind indication requires at least 75knots of ground speed.

9.8 DSRTK/STS:
Left display shows desired track angle to current TO waypoint in degrees.
Right display shows status codes as described in the warmup and alignment
section.

9.9 HOLD mode

To enter hold mode, press the hold key and observe it is lit up.
The display modes are now the following:

TK/GS:
Left display shows sign of the along-track acceleration. No indication
means positive, N indication means negative.
Right display shows along-track acceleration in milligs.

POS:
Shows position frozen at the time HOLD key was pressed/lit.

WIND:
The left display will show direction of the longitudinal wind component: N
for head wind and S for tail wind.
The right display will show strength of the longitudinal wind component in
knots.

To leave HOLD mode, press HOLD and observe the light is extinguished.
10 Leg change
If necessary because of ATC assignment you can skip any leg or track directly
to the next assigned waypoint.

10.1 Intercept Next Leg

To intercept a leg from one waypoint to another, press WPT CHANGE, then the
number of the waypoint on the “from” end of the leg, then enter the number of
the waypoint on the “to” end of the leg. For example, if you are currently
headed to waypoint 1, and instead want to intercept the leg from waypoint 3 to
waypoint 4, press WPT CHANGE, 3, 4. Note that it is not possible to construct a
leg that goes in the opposite waypoint order of your fightplan.

10.2 Direct-to next waypoint

To go directly from your present position to a waypoint in your fightplan, press
WPT CHANGE, then 0, and then the number of the waypoint you want to go
direct to. For example, if you are currently headed to waypoint 1, and instead
want to go directly to waypoint 4, press WPT CHANGE, 0, 4.

11 DME updating
DME stations can be used to improve the accuracy of inertial navigation and
get rid of the accumulated position errors. For optimum performance, you
should select a DME between 15nm and 200nm of-track to either side of your
fight path. Start with looking up a suitable DME on the map, note its frequency,
position and station elevation. If you don'tt have a real enroute navigational
chart, this information may be obtained from websites like
http://worldaerodata.com
Turn the Data Selector to WAYPT.
Before beginning DME updating, disconnect the autopilot from the INS by going
into HDG or ROLL mode.
Use the waypoint selector to select a slot between 1 and 9 (0 is unavailable for
DME updating).
Now press the keys 7 and 9 simultaneously. As you can'tt do that with the
mouse, you have to activate keyboard input and do the following: Hold down
the Alt-Key. Now press first 7, then 9, after that release the Alt-Key. Now you are
in DME entry mode.
Note that the displays will have reverted from displaying waypoint coordinates
to DME coordinates. So you are not going to overwrite a waypoint by entering
the coordinates now.
Use the normal entry procedure to enter DME coordinates: Select latitude
hemisphere, enter latitude, press INSERT, select longitude hemisphere, enter
longitude, press INSERT.
Next, we have to enter the DME station'ts elevation to calculate the slant range.
To do so, press 3 and 9 simultaneously, by going in keyboard mode, holding the
Alt-Key, and pressing 3 and 9.
The left display will now display the DME elevation in thousands of feet. For
entry, round the elevation to the nearest thousand. That is, for 2800ft station
elevation, you would enter 3.
To do so, press N/2 key to put the unit in elevation entry mode.
Enter the elevation in thousands, then press INSERT. If you made a wrong
entry, press CLEAR and try again.
Now rotate the Data Selector to DIS/TIME. Be careful to go directly from WAYPT
to DIS/TIME, not selecting any other data display, because that will cancel DME
mode!
In the left display you will now see the 2-dimensional distance to the DME
coordinates. Compare them to the distance the DME indicator for DME1 is
reading (you should have tuned the DME frequency on the NAV1 receiver
now!). Note that those distances will difer slightly, because the DME indicator
shows slant range, while the CDU displays direct range. The higher you are
fying, the more the values will difer. This is the last chance to detect any error:
If you made an error inserting the DME coordinates, you will notice a big
diference between DME indicated distance and CDU displayed distance.
If you are absolutely sure everything is alright, press WAYPT CHG, and then the
number of the DME slot used. Position update will commence. Let the update
run for a few minutes. To finish DME updating (or cancel the DME mode at any
point in time), rotate the Data Selector to any position that is not WAYPT or
DIS/TIME.

12 Interfacing CIVA
CIVA for X-Plane exposes all MSU and CDU function keys as X-Plane commands,
which may be used to drive the unit by external means like a HID interface:
Also, the left and right displays and the waypoint FROM/TO display are
available as string-datarefs, all lights and switch positions are available as int-
datarefs:

The datarefs “de/philippmuenzel/xciva/cdu/display_left_hemisphere” and

“de/philippmuenzel/xciva/cdu/display_right_hemisphere” use the following
values: 0=Of (no light), 1=North/East (upper light), -1=South/West (lower
light), 2=TestMode (both lights)