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So great news that PMDG has announced the release of the DC-6 next week. I'd never even looked at X-Plane until a few weeks ago. I bought it specially for the IXEG 737-300, as the 73 Classics are dear to my heart. Since then I haven't been tempted to start-up P3D, and if the DC-6 is half as good as the hype I think X-Plane's going to be my sim of choice from here on in. If you haven't yet considered X-Plane, maybe give it a go, with this year's aircraft addons you may be pleasantly surprised! Unfortunately I'm off on vacation a couple of days after it comes out, and my laptop won't run X-plane so I'll wait until I'm back mid June before buying the 6.

 

In the meantime though I've uploaded a profile for the DC-6B to www.airlinerperformance.net.

Some qualifying notes at this point:

1. The data is derived from a combination of a modern DC-6 operator's manuals and original Douglas hardcopy manuals from the dark ages.

2. I don't have PMDG's aircraft (yet), so I don't know how their model compares to this data.

3. Data is not available for weights below 75000lbs. I have capped the minimum weight above OEW. You'll need some fuel onboard or a reasonable load to get the weight up; if that's a real pain for people I may just stick another artificial low weight value into the tables.

4. We may find that there's biasing needed to get the calculated burns up to actual (PMDG) levels. The real-world operators were applying 15% contingencies to tabulated sector fuel, which suggests that theory and reality may be aways apart on these veteran aircraft. 

5. Some of you youngsters may not realise that back in the day we didn't have computers in our offices. We typed letters on a good old-fashioned typewriter (or messages on the Telex machine) or manually calculated flight planning paperwork. As a result the data used and provided by the manufacturers was very basic compared to what's available today. In particular data often was not published for descent. I never worked with the DC-6, but on many other types basically you planned the entire flight at a set cruise speed, and then added an overall adjustment for climb and descent. If you were lucky you had climb data and then used cruise the rest of the way with a time and fuel allowance for an instrument approach. So I have no descent data for the DC-6, which is a no-go for PFPX. What I've done is taken a 205 KIAS constant speed and 7 nautical mile per 1000ft descent as the ops manual suggests, to derive time and distance. For now I've assumed 1600lb/hr fuel burn.

 

So a request for help please while I'm away from any PFPX users who buy the DC6. If someone (or more than one person!) is able to run some tests I'd be very grateful. Set the aircraft up at somewhere around max landing weight, at 22 or 24000ft running in- or outbound on a fixed radial to a VOR/DME, so you've got a distance reference, set ISA temperature and zero wind, fly the descent as per whatever PMDG's manual's going to suggest and passing a few set altitudes on the way note the time elapsed, IAS, descent rate (fpm), fuel flow and DME. That'll help me better define the descent data and we can then review overall how the profile performs.
 
Let's see what PMDG unveil!

Cheers
Jon

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Great work! Now the aircraft is released, would love to give the profile a try.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Great work! Now the aircraft is released, would love to give the profile a try.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Hi Will,

 

Well instead of packing for vacation i bought the DC-6 to see what Olympic 260's comment was about. So yes there is a PFPX file included with the PMDG package. At first glance there are significant differences between that PMDG data and the flight-planning data from a current real-world operator which I used for my profile. Cruise data looks OK, except I've included detailed ISA deviation figures in my file, which PMDG hasn't. Their standard cruise profile setting is different, their weights are quite different, and PMDG's PFPX file fuel capacity is also showing significantly lower than this operator's lowest capacity 8-tank system, though whether that's down to options/modifications over time, I don't know.

 

Doing side-by-side comparisons PMDG's calculated burn is lower than mine, that may be largely down to my inclusion of approach allowances and I have a 20000ft max operating altitude, which is probably an operator limitation given the age of these old birds, but I was struggling to get fuel load figures up to the real world levels. I had to go open the manuals again just to be sure given the wide variations in some figures. Incidentally .per files are heavily compressed at encryption, the original file has about double the data of PMDG's.

 

I'll go fly and have some fun for a bit, but will have to wait till after hols to look in depth.

 

Choice is never a bad thing though, and PMDG's file is probably more tuned to their X-Plane flight model? I guess I'd better update my guide to file format so it's up to latest PFPX standard. Right, head down back under the parapet and open to correction, ridicule, etc........:banghead1_s:

 

Jon

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