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Old February 16th 05, 03:05 PM
Joe Morris
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"Hyperlink" writes:

Joe Morris je osjetio potrebu napisati
Sadly, the game has, as you note, disappeared. You might find copies
(and I have no idea of the copyright status, or the legality of the
offerings) by googling for "tracon" and "game" to locate servers
offering so-called "abandonware". These servers might include
copies of the manual.


Yes, and even the GUI developed for the windows version seems inviting...
but it's hard to actually use it since i dont even know the keyboard
shortcuts for commands to aircraft.


The game is available for download via www.the-underdogs.org or something
like that (google "the underdogs"), but there is no manual. According to
google groups, several posts have been written in this and some other
newsgroups somewhere in the early 90's (geeze... like ages ago )) but were
mostly critisized because "people who dont have the manual dont have the
legal copy".


H'mmm...digging through some of the old stuff in my office...some
notes about TRACON II say that (assuming that you have the complete
distribution -- originally on three 5-1/4" disks or two 3-1/2" disks)
you can run a demonstration with "post-it" notes to you explaining
what's happening via the command

tracon demo

and online lessons can be displayed by the command

tracon lesson?

for ? = 1,2,3,... (I don't know how many lesson files were provided)

Basic commands:

Aircraft selection: click the icon on the flight strip, or use arrow
keys to select the flight strip and press ENTER, or type in enough of
the tail number (usual ATC format, "12C" for N9912C) to be unique,
followed by whitespace or comma.

Command and parameter (all terminated by ENTER):

right arrow Turn right to... 000 or 00 degrees
left arrow Turn left to... 000 or 00 degrees
up arrow Climb and maintain hundreds of feet
down arrow Descend and maintain hundreds of feet
insert Change speed to knots
Delete Resume normal speed/nav no parameter
home Cleared direct to fix name
end Contact tower or center no parameter
PgDn Hold at fix name
PgUp Say heading and airspeed no parameter

Backspace key works as expected.

So...typing in

12C,uparrow170enter

maps to "November 9912 Charlie, climb and maintain one seven thousand."

Mouse control can be used: double-click the aircraft icon and a context
menu will be displayed.

Joe Morris