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Gartro

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About Gartro

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  1. If the boxed version will suit you, PC Aviator Australia currently has it for AUD $12.23 (which is represented as a reduction of 65% from the original list price): http://www.pcaviator.com.au/store/Heraklion-X.html Gary
  2. I don't know what the current sale situation is with LH Simulations but the OP is definitely correct that LLH Creations is discounting at 50% (with use of a coupon code) until 12 January. I received the same email about 18 hours ago. However, the LLH link in the OP is incorrect. It should have been: http://llhinfo.com Gary
  3. Here we are at the end of January and I am intrigued by the “January Deals” listed at the US store of PC Aviator. There are 13 developer/publisher listings (until a day or so ago, there were 12). Two are shown with no expiry date for the discounted price for the products in the listing. One has an expiry date of 5 February (the newly listed one) and another an expiry date of 31 January. However, the other nine have expiry dates well past – seven on 7 January, one on 15 January and one on 26 December (2018). Because this is not the first month in which I have seen this type of thing (but not to this extent) on that website, that got me to wondering whether the already passed expiry dates are not operative and the discounts are still available and, if so, why have the expiry dates not been changed to reflect the current situation? If the discounts are not currently available, why are the listings still there? I can’t test my musing by making a purchase because there are none of them I want to buy. Is there someone who has bought after the expiry date and still received the discounted price? Gary
  4. Being at the mercy of currency fluctuations will probably remain a significant problem until there is a change in the situation of flight sim vendors dictating a mandatory single currency of purchase for some or all of their customers. Ray mentioned UK2000. For people outside the UK, it is the same as us buying from Just Flight. We in the “rest of the world” have to buy in USD the British product being sold by the British vendor. The cushioning factor is that when buying from Simmarket (can only buy in Euros) and in USD from UK2000, for us “rest of the world” the price is free of VAT (and it also seems that Simmarket has given up charging a surcharge for purchases using PayPal). The unfortunate aspect of currency fluctuations and a mandatory currency of purchase is that it can mean that trying to maintain loyalty to a good vendor can come at a not insignificant financial impost. A current example of what I am talking about is the new Just Flight Duchess 76. From various posts I have seen, the Just Flight UK price is (I am rounding all of these amounts for simplicity) 28 UKP. For me here in Australia, that converts to AUD $50. However, if I buy the product directly from JF (who are great vendors to deal with) at the mandatory USD price for the “rest of the world”, as I am required to do, I pay JF USD $42 which converts to AUD $58, the same as if I buy it at PC Aviator US store or at FS Pilot Shop. But, if I buy it at Simmarket, I pay 29 Euros which is free of VAT and converts to AUD $46. Here in Australia, the PC Aviator Aust price is AUD $46 (which includes a 10% Goods and Services Tax) but on a Tuesday the product is 10% cheaper ie about AUD $42. Thus, it is more price attractive for me to buy a product from someone in Australia or from Simmarket. Also, currently, people outside Australia buying from an Australian outlet at an AUD price usually end up in a favourable position when the conversion to the customer’s currency takes place – assuming that the Australian outlet has the product you want, which would not assist Ray with his two intended purchases. I accept that there is nothing we can do about currency fluctuations and we need to learn to live with them (and use them to our advantage if possible). Frequently, they are a “what goes around comes around” exercise. For example, as touched on by Mike, in 2009 the AUD was buying only about USD $0.60, between about 2010-2013 the AUD was above parity with the USD but now it is buying only about USD $0.71. I have no problem about products being sold only in the currency of the country of the vendor. What I fail to understand is why for some vendors, customers from other than the vendor’s home country can only buy in a different currency. Gary
  5. Shaun I am assuming that the problem remains with KAMA. After my post, I had a couple of more tries with the same outcome and then put the download to one side and have not revisited it in the past two months, especially as I have not experienced a similar problem with installing about ten other airports which I have purchased in that intervening period. Gary
  6. Ray Which of the PCA stores are you talking about - the US one or the Australian one? Although my understanding is that they have a common ownership, they have different product ranges, different managers and, from what I have experienced, different administrative and customer relations styles - not so much a Tweedledum and Tweedledee comparative experience as a chalk and cheese one. I have consistently had a very good customer experience with Dean at the Australian store. Gary
  7. Bill Thanks for your response. Prior to posting, I did an Avsim search but could not find anything of relevance. In fact, there was something there because after I posted I tried a general internet search and found others had experienced this problem :https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/392678-fsx-scenery-library-names-of-each-area-not-showing/ I now have to think through what to do. Gary
  8. I have all SXAD airports except Exeter, Lydd and Block Island. My two most recent purchases were KAMA and Aeroflex-Andover. I bought KAMA from the US store of PC Aviator and the other one from Simmarket and tried to install them on the same day. I have never had a problem with installing SXAD scenery but whilst Aeroflex installed without a hitch, my AV, Avast, kept telling me KAMA had Win 32:L Malware-gen and kept deleting oitfrom the download before I could install it. Although I have occasionally experienced this type of problem when installing an aircraft, I have not experienced it with an airport. It seemed to me that if it is an essential component of KAMA which is causing this, why has there not been the same component in my other SXAD products to also cause a problem? Has anyone else experienced this with KAMA and is it a false positive? Gary
  9. Until about two weeks ago, I had not used my flight sim for about six months although, during that time, I had continued to purchase products. When I got back my enthusiasm a couple of weeks ago, I installed and tried most of those purchases. Most of them were airports and, therefore, I was checking that they had gone automatically into Scenery Library and I had to do the "Add Scenery" exercise with those which had not. They all found there way there. Everything went okay for a couple of days and then FSX closed down with an Out of Memory message. The next time I checked the Scenery Library via Settings, everything in the Scenery Area column was blank - there were no entries. Yet, the other two columns were complete, the Enabled column having most products ticked as I had intended and the the Priority column showing priorities from 1 to 1045. In Free Flight, the Select Airport feature works without any problem. However, the problem with the Scenery Library means that I can't identify airports to enable/disenable or to move or delete. What might have caused this problem? How can I fix it? Gary
  10. Part of the product description for Richer Simulations' GrenadaX reads: "This is Caribsky: GrenadaX; a complete photorealistic representation of the island, complete with custom vegetation, reefs, buildings, vehicles and a highly detailed airport. Product Features: 344 square km of photoreal covereage....." That area is only 4.5 square kilometres less than what Wikipedia says is the area of the island. As it is a FSX product and not limited to the airport, why does it not suffice (but a word of caution - reviews of the product on the Simmarket site suggest that an available patch must be used to avoid the product breaking your autogen)? Gary
  11. TonyD's suggestion about going directly to the developer is a good practical one. I had to do that for a FlighrSim Store matter in the past couple of days. Four years ago, I had bought from FSS the Virtualcol SAAB Regional Pack. Recently, version 2.0 was released and is available at a 40% discount to owners of the earlier version if bought from the same store. My problem was that FSS does not have v2.0 shown on its website but, even if it had been there, the current problem discussed above would appear to prevent me downloading it. I emailed Virtualcol and got a quick response from Luis who made arrangements for me to get the updated product directly from the Virtualcol Store at the discounted price. He told me that of the ten external retail stores which have historically stocked the Virtualcol products, only Simmarket, FS Pilot Shop and the Australian and US stores of PC Aviator have listed for sale the supplied v2.0. FSS is in the list of the six other stores which Luis mentioned and he said that people who bought the earlier version from stores other than the four which are currently selling v2.0 can contact Virtualcol via the Contact page on its website (indicating where the product was purchased) and they will be sent a coupon code to purchase the upgraded version at the reduced price from the Virtualcol Store, much like what I did. Gary
  12. Ted and Luke Thanks for the suggestion about the Simmarket website address. I did the suggested addition at the beginning of the address and it worked. Like Henning, I also was lulled into what now seems to be a false sense of security by seeing "secure.simmarket" as part of the address, especially when compared with the "not secure" messages I had seen with some of the other retail sites I have used for flight sim purchases. Ever since Jim Young's post about a year ago explaining the green lock and "secure" in relation to the Avsim Forums, I have been conscious of the security aspect when making flight sim purchases and I have been surprised that on a few sites the green lock and "secure" do not appear and the "not secure" message does not disappear until after the log in with details of user name and password has taken place. What's stopping someone hacking my log in details there and then using them to download products I have historically purchased? After the suggestion worked for me on the Simmarket site, I then tried it on two other flight sim retail sites and it worked on one but not the other. I want to see the comfort factor of the green lock when I first visit a site. Why don't all sites provide that, either via Luke's suggestion or otherwise? Gary
  13. Over the past three or so days, the following notice has appeared on the home page of the Australian store of PC Aviator: I have not yet seen anything similar on the home page of the US store. However, judging from Carlo's comments, it looks like the improvements are progressing. Gary
  14. Carlo As you will recall from the locked January thread which both of us posted in, my understanding is that the US and Australian stores of PCA both use the same server. If I am preaching heresy here, Dean from the Australian store will soon correct me. The two stores are related. My recollection is that Robert Ferraro set up PCA in a suburb of my hometown in Melbourne Australia before he moved to the US and set up the store there and before the Australian store shifted base to Queensland. By way of a bit of historical trivia, I still have a box containing one of his early products published via that Melbourne store, the 1997 MegaScenery Melbourne Victoria/Australia. Gary
  15. Today, I received a newsletter email from Dean at the Australian store of PCA saying: Gary
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