[A real Katana in Austria]

I found a really nice video of a real Katana flying in Austria, with a landing, a take off, and another landing. Just shows the accuracy of Marcels modelling in this great addon.

I have one question though. I noticed the pilot didn't have his position lights turned on. Is this normal practice in the real world?

[Constantly pulling to the left: normal behaviour?]

I pretty much read every thread written for the Katana, but I didn't see anything relevant to trim tabs in the context I'm referring to. I chose the Automatic mode because I don't want to join a multi player session and end up in the air, because of the lack of parking, and have a shut down engine etc.

I'll run a few investigations into the file writing stuff, but the cfg file for this aircraft is written to with no problems. I'll check the trim tab figures in that file, and then re-trim and check them again to see if there is any difference. It might just be me being a total dickhead

Thanks for the help though. I'll try a few things tomorrow, I have the day free I think.

[Work in progress]

Ah Daniel, that's very nice of you. I didn't want you to do anything for me personally though, really I didn't. I just liked the paint you were working on, it's very special, classy even. The cockpit looks like something out of an expensive plane, I've always loved a bit of wood on the dash

You just keep up the good work. I've saved a couple of you pictures on my drive to admire when I want

[Constantly pulling to the left: normal behaviour?]

Hi bliksimpie, thanks for the reply.

Ah yes, good point about what state the plane is loaded in, I never thought of that. I'll check right now. . . . . . . I can say I'm loading it in realistic mode, that's a given. It is cold and dark, with wheel chocks, tie downs, and controls locked etc. As for whether someone else has used it in the mean time, I'm waiting for FSX to boot up. . . . . . . . . OPERATION MODE: Realistic. INITIATION MODE: Automatic. CONTROLS: Prop Lever (FSX) Flap Lever Compatible. All the rest are checked, Lighting, Effects - Sounds, Effects - Vibrations. I can't see anywhere that says only used by me, or may be used by others, so I can't select anything there, so have no way of knowing.

I load the plane, do maintenance checks, and service checks, (after taking away the ground items, and control locks), then I do my walk round, and check fluids etc. (Required elements on that screen). I check Payload, and fuel to 70% every flight, check the trim tabs screen, but don't touch them. Then clean the plane, start up, and the usual before flying, then take off. I did notice today that it wasn't as bad as normal. It still needed an adjustment, but not as much. Maybe it's the conditions? That's the only element of my flights that isn't constant, the weather! I'm really not a pilot, so I wouldn't know what affects what regarding trim tabs. Maybe those adjustments will become easier and quicker with experience? I was just trying confirm that the plane was "supposed" to react in that way really.

After shutting down today, I used the "Clean Aircraft" in the Maintenance screen, instead of doing it manually. ONE HOUR later it's still cleaning. I had to stop it or I felt it would clean forever. The kid's been sacked of course, and I didn't pay him either, the lazy toe rag. Guess I'll have to do it myself in future

[Constantly pulling to the left: normal behaviour?]

Sorry to resurrect an old topic, but it is related.

I'm new to the Katana, and so far very impressed. I do however have a small issue that I need some clarification on. I've installed the 1.01 Beta update (if that helps), but nothing has changed.

My issue is this: I set the trim tabs and the plane flies very close to wings level, depending on power/cruise settings, and perfectly wings level at a "sweet spot" mentioned earlier. I complete my flight, and shut down the plane at parking. Put on the ground items such as tie downs, control lock etc. and close flight sim. When I come back to the Katana, do a maintenance check, and a service check, and the walk round, followed by a quick clean. Everything seems to be in order, no problems, all fluids checked etc. I start the plane and warm up, taxi, and then take off. The plane "feels" like the trim tabs haven't been set, and the hours the previous day are totally wasted, because I have to do it all over again before I can actually fly anywhere.

Is this normal? Do you have to reset the tabs every single time you take her up? I'm finding I am spending too much time setting up the tabs, and running out of time to do any serious flying. It's rather spoiling the whole experience for me.

I've checked the cfg file, and data is definitely being written and changed each flight, so I doubt it's a file issue there. Any thoughts on this? Oh I use the same weights for pilot every flight, and fuel is pretty close each time too (but not exactly spot on).

Any help would be greatly appreciated, as at the moment I'm reduced to flying in simple mode to see if that helps.

[Work in progress]

But if you've the tools to do it by yourself : Try !

Really, you 'll enjoy.

Daniel

That has to be joke of the day I haven't got one artistic bone in my body, I've known that all my life Can't draw, paint, or play music, but I can drive anything you want to throw at me lol.

It's still a very nice paint, like the colour, and love the cockpit dash

[Frame Rate?]

The only other thing I can think of that may be related, is complex aircraft with their own GPS database. May have got corrupted? Any software that updates the GPS database? Things like that. I have a friend who updates the GPS database, and sometimes he gets problems with an update, and has to revert back to previous versions.

If none of those are relevant then I'm afraid it's a waiting game until someone with intimate knowledge of this craft comes on line Mine seemed install fine, and runs on my very low spec PC satisfactorily. And my PC is nowhere near the spec of yours.

[Night Lighting in VC]

I did look at mine late at night, and it looked fine. I'll take some shots later and post them here for you to see. Providing I don't find a problem of course

Okay I'm going to concede the point on this one. I put myself at a strip in British Columbia at 00:15, where I knew it would be pitch black, and no airport lights to speak of.

You are right, finding the switches to turn the lights on in the first place is near impossible. I feel it would be the same in real life though. The advantage in real life is "feel", you can feel your way around the cockpit, whereas in the sim you don't have that.

My on screen view wasn't as bad as the pictures showed it, although dark, I could still just about see most of the switches. But even with the flood lights on the instruments at full, it still wasn't that great. But in a built up area, like my home airfield, there is enough "ambient" light to see everything without any problems at all.

As this aircraft is not designed to be flown at night, I'm inclined to let things be, and not push for this to be modified. Yes that means I wouldn't be able to fly in British Columbia at night in this plane, but then who would do that anyway, in a plane that wasn't designed for that?

Incidentally, I did notice the GPS was much easier to adjust the brightness when in the dark environment. I don't mean the knob was easy to find, I couldn't find that one very easy at all. I mean that it had more increments of adjustment before the colours distorted. In the day time, I can only turn it on one click on the mouse wheel before it gets too bright, but night time, when it's a dark environment, I could rotate the mouse wheel 5 clicks before it was distorted, and it was much clearer in the night because of that extra adjustment. Just my findings after inspection

[Frame Rate?]

The RXP problem was my first thought, that's the reason I stopped using it, because of the 0.3fps problem. I would suggest backing up the FSX.cfg file, deleting the original, and then let FSX rebuild it to start with. Then work from there.

Could be something to do with admin rights maybe? Or a simconnect problem? Just guessing on the usual culprits here

[Work in progress]

Liking that one very much indeed. Hope you get to release it when it's done

[Night Lighting in VC]

Yes I know about that and it rather light it up nicely the instrument panel as a whole, so you dont really need backlighting.. but I think the other posters want MORE like backlighting

I guess some people are never satisfied I quite like it personally

[Night Lighting in VC]

I'm not sure I understand what this thread is all about. My Katana has a light that illuminates the gauges, not just the GPS and radio. the knob for it is on the left of the gauges, a black round knob with a white curved arrow on it. I use the mouse wheel to turn it up brighter. Is this not what you guys are talking about?

[Carb heat = high CHT = engine self destruct]

Hi Marcel, this my first post on the subject of the Katana. I only bought it 2 days ago, and haven't flown it very much yet. I spent the time I have had going through the systems and the manual. I haven't noticed any real problems as yet, but the news of a patch coming soon is very nice to hear.

I want to say at this point, although I haven't done anything but circuits yet, this a remarkable piece of work. She feels very nice to fly, and I really like the trim tab simulation. I new roughly how trim tabs worked, or rather what they did, but it took me a few circuits, landings, adjustments, and more circuits to get it just right. Well as near as I can get it so far anyway. I made a few stupid mistakes (yes I'm an idiot), and one was forgetting to put the cap back on the oil filler. Boy did that cost me A new or repaired engine, and took ages to clean off all the muck. Talking of which, there was a video on youtube that showed the Katana coming in on final. I was watching intently, then suddenly, SPLAT, a bug hit the canopy and made it dirty. That was the deciding factor in me buying this plane, the fact it gets dirty, and you have to clean it. Totally inspired and realistic.

I'm going to take her up this afternoon for a real flight touring some airports, and I think I will enjoy this plane very much.

Congratulations on such a fantastic, immersive product, I am very, very impressed so far. Look forward to the patch, and thank you.

Update on yesterdays first real flight:

Started off really well, apart from I had to adjust the trim tabs a few more times to get them right. I did however have a problem with my engine CHT, and Oil pressure being a bit high I thought. I didn't use carb heat for the first 2 legs of the flight, and taking off on the third leg all seemed fine. I did do the walk round and checks on each landing as I had to shut down to adjust the trim tabs, and no problems were found. On the third leg I started to lose power and had to use the carb heat. I think I was too late, and had to set down. I shut down and did a complete inspection, but still nothing wrong found. I spawned behind the host at the next airport, and did another complete inspection and waited five minutes to get going again. For the rest of the flight my CHT were very high, and oil pressure too, but no faults were reported. When I go back in the Katana again, I'm gonna have to replace the engine I think. I don't know if the same issue as others, or bad pilotage, but I suspect the latter to be honest. One thing I can say, this plane lands beautifully.

[open beta 1.01 update]

I found my answer elsewhere, so I edited this post

[Carenado PA 34]

Make sure your "Global textures" are set to maximum.

The PA 34 Seneca is great choice, it's a really nice plane. Once you get these little glitches sorted, I'm sure you'll enjoy her.

[Discus T]

Haven't got it, but is there a fuel on/off switch somewhere? I have the Discus X with two different engine models, (the BT and the BM) and at least one of them has a fuel lever on the right hand side I keep forgetting to switch on If it has got a fuel switch, have you got any fuel?

Just a couple of suggestions to eliminate before you go further

[Aerosoft Adras Field Online server]

On the one hand I say, Well done for this. It's a great idea, and very welcomed. On the other hand, putting it in the "Free Flight" lobby was a huge mistake. For most of us, as soon as we change to the free flight lobby, we immediately get kicked off game spy during certain times of the day. Then trying to log back into GameSpy is a complete nightmare. I personally stay way from the free flight lobby religiously, and never go there.

Shame, I was looking forward to the experience of Andras Field, but unfortunately I won't be going there sorry.

[Gamespy server for Andras Field is coming]

This is actually very good news. So good it will probably sway me to buy Andras field. The only thing that held me back was the on-line playing part of the whole thing

[Graphical issue with town bar and wheel fairing]

The "town bar" graphics issue is undoubtedly due to too many beers, you'd be surprised how messed up things look after a few too many

[CumulusX! not working at all!]

Hi Emi, I had a few false starts with this too, but as Peter says, yours is working, and it's probably just the time of day. I've no doubt mine was working all the time too. If you look around the Soaring forums, there is a post on how to get it all working for a test. It involves setting Summer, 2pm, and Fair weather etc. It's a good test, and helps to understand the why's and what for's. I didn't realise thermals were so dependant on many things until I read up about them. Once I knew what I was looking for, it all made sense and I could see what Cumulus X was all about.

I'm writing this because I made a HUGE error when setting mine up, and I wanted to pass that on so it doesn't happen to anyone else. That particular post I was talking about said to "Load the default settings" in Cumulus X. I thought I had done that, but apparently I loaded "Difficult" instead. It's the one below "Default" but my eyes aren't what they used to be, and I clicked the wrong one. I don't know what the difference is, but I assume "difficult" would mean less thermals etc.

With a bit of perseverance and looking at real weather patterns, I was able to set up some flights using real world weather over the other side of the world from me. It's time dependant, but it was worth the test. I was so impressed in the end, I went and bought a license for it the other day. I won't lie to you, I got very frustrated in the beginning, and un-installed it 4 times and re-installed it again. Peter was very helpful, and got me going. It's worth the effort to see this all working. Don't give up like I did in the beginning, persevere and get it working. It makes a huge difference

[Active Sky Evolution]

@B21: Thanks for the ridge lift and active sky info. much appreciated. I tried to set up for some ridge lift earlier, but my PC decided to spike all over the place. Probably because it was trying to handle too much information. I'll have to look into that a bit further, and maybe adjust some settings to compensate.

@Bulau: Thanks for the multi player info, but my evenings aren't free I'm afraid. Not to worry, Once I get into this a bit more, I'm sure I can enjoy myself with the time I can fly

Because of the PC problems I'm having at this time, I can't fly for more than an hour without a PC restart anyway. Quite a low end system really, I'm amazed it runs FSX at all. Now I've just added yet another module for it to cope with, and I'm sure it doesn't like working that hard

I tested Cumulus X again later this afternoon in the Lake District UK, and again there were some thermals about. Not too many, but then I didn't expect many because the temps weren't very high today. But it was still working, and that is the main thing.

[Active Sky Evolution]

Okay, I had a look at that Peter, and it is USUALLY set to medium, but I recall that instruction post saying set "no change" so at that time it was set at no change.

Update on my situation: I reinstalled just this morning, and set a flight in Australia with real world weather, the temps were very reasonable there right now. Cumulus X was working just fine, I found thermal after thermal and no problems at all. I have now just this minute set up a flight in Austria, but the winds are too low for ridge lift. I can see a thermal cloud right in front of me, so I'm going to give that a try. It all looks fine right now though.

Will update if there are any problems

Tony

[Active Sky Evolution]

Hi Peter, Hi B21,

I'll answer peter first I think.

@Peter: didn't say I couldn't get it working, I said for ME for some reason it wasn't reliable. I'll try to explain when I answer B21.

@B21: Yeah I realise Cumulus X was specifically designed for soaring, that's why I was interested in it. I am led to believe that Active Sky does indeed have ridge lift of a sort. I think it's simulated rather than real though. Anyway, I decided not to go ahead with that, I can't justify the expense for what little I'd gain, unfortunately.

Now to this problem of sometimes it works and others it doesn't: I read a post from a person who was having trouble finding lift, and Peter, I think it was, or it may have been you B21, went into quite some detail on how to set it all up to test lift conditions. I followed these instructions to the letter, and low an' behold I was able to find the lift. Yes I checked the debug window, and it gave some figures for thermal lift. I tried again to test everything was working, and did EXACTLY the same as before; place, time, weather, and Cumulus X. But this time the debug window showed no lift of any kind. All I did was "End Flight" and start a new one with the same criteria as the previous one.

So that takes care of the first suggestion yes? I couldn't work out what was going on, and got frustrated and gave up. There isn't many ridges/hills/mountains where I was testing, so I can't say if ridge lift was working. I must admit, I'm not 100% sure how to set that up to test anyway. Yeah I know the theory, but not the geography of the terrain So I'd guess I'd have to go into the sim, find the "mountain" and decide what direction I need the wind to come from.

Your last sentence: I think I know. That is to say, I know that theoretically I'd get thermals in the summer between 12 noon and say 3pm, but wouldn't get any in say December at 7am. The instructions I followed were along the lines of; set to summer, 2pm, fair weather, no wind, and automatic in Cumulus X. I don't know if any addon scenery, mesh,or land class would cause problems or not, but I didn't change any of those things between tests anyway.

As I said in my original post, I'm very new to soaring, I only have about 25 hours. I don't pretend to know anything about soaring, but I think I've grasped the general theory behind where to look for thermals. One time I was heading toward a cloud that wasn't that far away, and when I reached it, it just disappeared. I headed to another cloud, again reasonably close by, and as soon as it was in front of my canopy looking up, it disappeared again. and again, and again, and again. Every time I approached a cloud it just disappeared. I think that's why I gave up in the end. It wasn't a dissipating cloud either, these were "new" clouds. The manual showed what new clouds, mature clouds, and dissipating clouds looked like.

I didn't know what to do next to be honest. I'd done research to make sure I knew what to look for, but it just wasn't happening reliably. So I just went back to boring old default FSX thermals, and started to look around for alternatives. Hence the original post. But if anyone has any suggestions how I can find out what the conflict is, I'd listen and try to sort it I've just spent all evening researching the Condor Simulator, but I'm not impressed with the amount of scenery, or quality there of, that comes with it. So I won't be bothering with that one. Besides, I won't be able to use my Discus in that sim

[Active Sky Evolution]

Thanks for the replies guys.

@Bulau: The Problem I'm having with Cumulus X is, it only seems to work when it wants to. One minute it will work fine with a given set of criteria, and the next minute with the same set of criteria, it decides it ain't gonna work. I got so frustrated with it, I ended up un-installing it and reinstalling it FOUR times. I gave it enough chances, followed numerous tips, and settings from the author, but found it to be not reliable enough on my system for some reason.

No I didn't post anything in the Cumulus X forum about it, simply because I'm sick and tired of analysing, trying different things, and basically testing stuff that doesn't work because of one reason or another. My thoughts are there is something I have installed and being used by FSX that for some reason prevents a reliable result.

@ManuelL: So the lift generated is not strong enough? That's a shame.

I use REX for the clouds and other textures, but their weather doesn't generate ridge lift either. I don't really see the point in buying something that won't fit my needs. Having realistic weather is all well and good, but as I can't get Cumulus X to work reliably (see above), I wouldn't gain anything by buying Active Sky. Never mind, it was just a thought

[Active Sky Evolution]

Hi guys, I'm very new to Soaring, and I'm trying to work out what's best to use for the weather. I've tried CumulusX that everyone in these forums rave about, but I can't seem to get it working properly. I was wondering if Active Sky Evolution was any good for soaring? The write up about it says it's capable of thermals and ridge lift etc. Has anyone used it, and can say if the ridge lift works okay?

I've got some nice scenery for Hawaii, PNW and Australia, but being from the UK real world weather doesn't really work too well because of the time difference, so I tend to do most of my Soaring in the UK, where I can use real world weather. Not much use for ridge lift where I am though

I've read a lot of posts picking up tips here and there, but haven't seen anything for multi player around here. Not interested in FSHost, or FSInn, so I've been looking for multi player on GameSpy without success. These forums don't seem very active for soaring either. Do any of you regular guys still soar?

I have the Discus X, and a handful of what I classed as the best freeware gliders, and everything seems to be working fine. I've done flights of 1 1/2 hours on several occasions, and could've stayed up in the air for hours if it wasn't for the fact I was on my own and bored I've tried just soaring around one particular area, aswell as going across country from airfield to airfield, not sure what I prefer yet. I had visions of flying around mountains, but can't stay in the air long enough, hence the questions on ridge lift.

Any answers would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

Tony