Kastendrachen

I am so happy to read that the Beaver enters the agenda. Also I am desperately hoping the lovely Catalina will do aswell. I remember "back in the days" the Catalina was the first addon I bought for the flight sim. It completely cought me and to this day I am so in love with this plane. Many hours of lifetime I spent in this beauty. Thinking about the outstanding quality of the airplane models we see in vanilla I can only imagine the all new feel a PBY on this platform would give. It would be a dream to roam Alaska or Scandinavia (a - for me - much neglected area until now) with it and relive the amazement when looking out the window and having this beautiful landscapes unveil out of the clouds and fog banks while the humming and droning of the engines permeates the air.

I am so dumb -.- Please excuse my dumbness dear sir, I will punish myself for this....it is actually fact that my CD version is already 1.10 but I did not check it first because I was convinced to have updated it earlier :-D Well....shit happens, sorry I'll go dying a little Edit: Oh and thank you very much for your fast reply, you guys do a great work and care about your community

Hello, I just reinstalled the Catalina X and wanted to update it to v1.10 and then 1.11 and 1.20. I downloaded it from the site and previously gave my email/password and as soon as I wanted to install it asks after email and serial number. So I checked my Email account and...nothing. I bought this plane and have the box lying in front of me, how do I get to install this update?

Thanks for your answers. The first thing....my engines didn't even live as long as necessary to build up heat. They died after a few seconds. Does the carb heat work even if engines aren't running? That would be....strange cause there would be no hot exhaust gasses^^ And....somebody on the fsdeveloper forum told me that there are key events for switching the APU and he said that the APU is not restricted to aircraft type...I don't know how FSX manages the availability for APU maybe he was wrong. It would be nice if I could get some information about how it works internally to find a solution. As for now, I have to enable "electric always available" to prevent battery exhaust. Does the battery exhaust even when it (battery master switch) is shut off? Because then I would just connect all devices to the battery bus so that there is no consumer if the master battery switch is off. Only if that has an effect. By now some lights even glow when all power switches are off. That is another problem...I conencted the strobe light to either Generator or battery bus but it flashes even if engines are off and battery is off. I think that's just a bug? So does the strobe consume power even if every power supply is off or is it just a "cosmetic bug" that doesn't waste battery? This question stands for all electric devices that may work even though they should not. The reason for me to ask this is that I am not just a "get in, warm up, fly away, land, shut off, go to bed" pilot but I sometimes have the plane stand on the ground for a while and it sucks when you come back to do a new flight and you find that something wasted your battery. So a WORKING APU is essential for me I know that FPS saving is essential and I don't want a new visible gauge for APU but gauges are in fact "devices" so a gauge with a few lines of code that works in the background would do the job quite well because there is nothing left in the cockpit in regarding visual presence And please don't take my interest and questions as criticism, I just love this plane so much that I want to do a little tiny work to add another bit of functionality and to go around the existing restrictions.

Ok that makes it clear. And today I wanted to do a little flight, it was raining and the temperature was I believe somewhat above 20°C like it is always in FSX even if the real weather shows ten below zero. Nevermind. I followed the procedure and the engine fired and RPM went up. Then I pulled the throttle slightly back due to the problem that I else would have hit some structure in front of me because the plane moves even at zero power...things I hate FSX for. Well I pulled the throttle slightly back and RPM sank, Fuel Pump and Primer were still on, I pushed throttle forward but....RPM sank even faster till the spark plugs were fouled...and I started pushing throttle at approx. 1700 RPM so I've been well over the 1000 RPM limit. But I don't understand why, it fired correctly, I could control it for a few seconds and then out of nowhere it went off....I also pushed the prop pitch in Full RPM position before but the engine died. I thought at least the other one would do like it should but it was the same procedure. But the left one died even faster. I then wanted to taxi the plane to a waste zone And...is it possible to write a gauge that simulates an APU? I saw that there is almost everything possible with XML gauges, I could even integrate a coffee machine (and if I wouldn't be so lazy, I'd already have it done ) so there should be a possibility to add a virtual device that always provides power. Or could one define the APU as a number 3 Generator? So that the APU starting is treated by the game like starting a third engine (with a minimum starter voltage of 0 or something) and switching the generator switch does engage a "Generator 3" and thus would provide power. Would this be possible or are there further restrictions of the game itself?

Hello, I just experienced a problem with my Catalina. Yesterday I landed somewhere in the Baltic Sea and switched the whole plane off to go to sleep. Now I reloaded the saved flight, switched APU and battery and some lights on and wanted to start the engines. But I saw that the cockpit light was off though the switch was in "on" position. So I switched all off and restarted APU and checked voltage. It was pretty much below 20 Volts, I thought it was just a little bug and tried to start the engines. I don't know if I did hear the fuel pump but when I engaged the starter, nothing happend. It didn't even crank. So I now enabled "electric always available" to avoid this problem again because I don't want to reload the plane everytime I rely on the APU and see it does not work. Was this just a bug and because of reloading a saved flight? And yes I did engage the APU-Gen switch but not even the little green lamp wanted to shine. If this is a problem which cannot be avoided I plan to take down the minimum voltage of the right engine so this engine would start always and so act like the APU or leave the "1" at the electric always available section. I have never had this before so does the APU actually produce or permanently provide current or does it exhaust itself the same way the battery does?

Well...I love the Catalina and love to fly it by hand. But an autopilot would still be a nice feature. I know, no Cat ever has had an autopilot and I understand the motivation in keeping it like that in the virtual Cat. But has somebody ever tried to travel from Gera, Germany to Stockholm, Sweden without autopilot? :-D 5 hours of flight stupidly looking into the screen is not what I want to spend my leisure time with^^ That has one simple reason. It IS a simulation and I am NOT a real pilot. So I see no justification in thwarting myself into hours of "ultra high realistic real time I am the big balled hardcore pilot" boredom if I do not have the possibility to enjoy the REAL plane and atmosphere around me. So I chose the FSX-shortcuts for keeping heading and altitude and now my black Cat makes her way over Germany to Scandinavia while I enjoy a nice hot cup of coffee :-) ...... of course I still have an eye on the gauges. Because my goal is to land it safely and not to autocrash it^^ I hope one does understand why I sometimes don't want to keep the flight experience on a 100 percent level. It's just: I AM no pilot, so I DO NOT have to act like I was one. Though I would enjoy every single second "steering manually" if I could fly that baby in reality. Well.....enough said. I get me my next coffee....flying a Cat is soooo much stress :-D

Oh ##### I'm so dumb -.- I'm gonna try it and will tell you if this was the problem^^ And thanks for your replies

Hello, I have a problem with my PBY. When I begin a new flight the aircraft sets up in the first second after loading, I see a needle of the RPM-gauge going to zero and hear something like the last breathe of an engine before it dies. The problem is: the right engine does not want to let itself getting started. Left engine....no problems at all, it often starts even without prime but the right one doesn't. I follow the correct procedure (I must do so because the left one works) but it is impossible to get it running. When I press Ctrl+E then it works flawless and when I turn off the right engine after that and start it again, it works without problems. Can anyone tell me if this is a bug or some misconfiguration of FSX? I have the boxed PBY, my standard free flight in FSX is a saved flight I did with a Cessna, is it possible that some saved parameter of the flight and the previously used plane prevents the right engine (or any other system) from working properly? Because that's my thought, I think that something in the program causes this problem. It worked properly before. I do not know what I did to crash it. Otherwise I changed the airport from the standard free flight and put it into warmer regions (I thought that the engine is just too cold) but even in Algeria there was no chance to get this engine running. I don't know any further and hope that somebody knows a bug or problems like this. Technical Information: PBY Catalina X boxed, no Updates 1,8GHz ÁMD Sempron 2GB RAM Windows XP SP2 And...please excuse my English, I'm German^^