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Losing power mid flight


dizzy

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Reset my default flight to the Trike flying over Friday Harbour. Still lose the power about 10 min into the flight. I tried mapping a button to the generator. Doesn't help. Just turns off and on the generator as if i clicked the switch with my mouse.

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It happens every flight no matter the location. The location I used is just my local area and know the freq without looking them up. I've tried in various spots. Both with default scenery and add-on scenery. Day and Night flights too. A night VFR flight was the reason I found there was a problem, kind of hard to fly when all the cockpit lights go out. :D

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Dizzy, after you lose power...  pause the sim and switch your aircraft to the MS Cessna, then look at the state of your avionics, generator, battery, etc.  I'm curious as to what you might find.

 

--WH

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WH. Good Idea! I gave the idea a try today.

 

My setup for this. Default flight is the trike over Friday Harbour. Default weather, and time to day. 

 

I load the AN-2 from the free flight menu. And the airport is going to be Key West (KEYW). Start the plane and take off on runway 09 and make a climbing left hand turn to fly over Fish Hook NDB. I have the radio on ATIS for KEYW, the Fish Hook NDB tuned with the volume on, Nav lights on and cockpit lights on. Cross over Fish Hook and head to NAS Key West. I made it abeam to KEYW and lose power. ATIS cuts off, NDB ident stops, lights go out. I pause the sim and load the default 172 trainer. While paused the Volts light is on. But as soon as I unpause the volts light goes out and indication 28V, the ATIS comes back on, NDB ident starts on, and lights come back on. 

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I find it very interesting that people have reported this issue with several different P3Dv4 aircraft.  I know of this being reported at least with the Leonardo MaddogX, the Airbus Pro, if I remember correctly the Quality Wings 787 and PMDG NGX.

 

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I'm running FSXA so I haven't experienced this issue exactly except for what I mentioned earlier.  I had one payware aircraft that I could not start at all until I changed the starting voltage, and my latest acquisition does not follow the cold-and-dark startup unless I hit Ctrl+Shift+F4.

 

Dave, was there any solution for those examples mentioned?

One more question for dizzy so I better understand the issue.  When you lose power, exactly what happens?  Do you lose thrust?  Does the propeller stop in flight?  Do you lose all electrical?  Or all of these symptoms?

 

--WH

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I'm just losing some electrical. So I lose Lights, ADF, Com. But I don't lose flaps, cowl flaps, oil cooler flaps, the gauges. So I think I lose most of the stuff connected to the inverter. When I lose the lights, coms, and nav I still show a charge on the generator and get the correct voltage. When I turn off the generator I get the warning light and show a draw and get proper voltage for the battery, and all the lights, coms, and nav come back to life. Switch the generator back on then everything stays on for another few minutes and then dies again. 

 

This is the only aircraft that shows this behavior. And I know there was this issue about a year ago with the P3D version. 

 

This just crossed my mind. Could it be that I'm using an English cockpit from the repaint pack? I'll have to go test. Be back in a bit.

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Just tried the same setup using one of the original Russian cockpits. The AN-2 that's blue and yellow. That's a no go. Same thing happens.

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Changing cockpits do not matter.  The English and Russian cockpits are different due to the panel textures.  Both share the same panel folder, gauges and aircraft.cfg file - the later containing all the sections for electrical, etc.  Also I should point out that the systems you are not losing appear to be all hydraulic, whereas the systems you are losing are all electrical. 

 

I'm assuming that you do not have a failures set for your sim?

 

--WH

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  • Aerosoft
12 hours ago, WarHorse47 said:

Dave, was there any solution for those examples mentioned

 

No, it has been reported to Lockheed but they also could not give us any direction. But there is a bug in the sim that combined with somethings else (we know that because it never happens to most people) switches systems off. We have never seen it on any of our systems but know the issue very well.  We simply have no idea what to change. 

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On 8/28/2019 at 11:56 PM, WarHorse47 said:

Changing cockpits do not matter.  The English and Russian cockpits are different due to the panel textures.  Both share the same panel folder, gauges and aircraft.cfg file - the later containing all the sections for electrical, etc.  Also I should point out that the systems you are not losing appear to be all hydraulic, whereas the systems you are losing are all electrical. 

 

I'm assuming that you do not have a failures set for your sim?

 

--WH

 

Failures are not set in the sim. And I didn't think the cockpit change would make a difference but it was worth a try at this point.

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  • Aerosoft

I have no idea what could cause this. I have let the aircraft flying most of the weekend, over 10 hours in total and never had this issues (it did run out of fuel though, man that engine drinks a lot). There has to be another factor we are not seeing.

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I don't run too many add-ons. Just the standards like Chaseplane, AS16, RAAS pro, precipitfx.

Could the Old prop stuff cause problems? I know the precipitfx edits the aircraft.cfg to point to it's effects. 

Would it help to attach my fsx.cfg dll.xml exe.xml?

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  • Aerosoft

Would not do any good as it would just show what's installed. You could try to disable it and try, I still feel this is an issue with the sim as we seen it with every add-on aircraft except the CRJ. Not just ours, also PMDG etc.

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  • 4 months later...

Hi All,

 

On my sim (FSX:SE) the problem is fully reproducible in 100% flights, but I believe I found a workaround for it.

 

Reproducibility: here nothing to add to previous complains. After approximate 10 minutes of starting engines the power is gone. Regardless plane is airborne or landed or not yet departed.

If, being airborne and problem appeared, reload the plane, then power will come for 10 minutes and gone again. The ~30 minutes flight is 3-4 times of reloading plane.

Referring to previous tips: the problem is reproducible (and workaroundable) regardless of presence of Carenado planes in sim; also I don't have any traffic add-on (never had) and was disabling the sim traffic for testing purposes.

 

Main idea of workaround: if end flight while generator is ON and working, and load flight again, then problem will not appear.

 

The workaround (step by step) is:

A )

1 - Load the flight with AN2, start systems and engine according to standard procedures.

2 - End flight (with running engine and all systems) while power is still there (i.e. within 10 minutes interval).

3 - Load flight again. The plane systems are on and engine is running.

That's it, problem is not appear, does not matter how long the flight is (I was flying until all fuel is burned).

 

If during flight switch off generator and switch it on again, then the problem will come back - power will gone in approx. 10 minutes.

 

B ) If you are concerned about cold and dark start (I am concerned, so it is about me) then:

1 - Load the flight with AN2, start systems and engine according to standard procedures.

2 - Within 10 minutes interval (so while power is still there) shutdown the plain manually according to procedures (DO NOT use Cold&Dark button), switch off all systems EXCEPT generator. The generator switch always remains in ON position.

3 - End flight.

Now you can load flight again, start plane, fly anywhere, shutdown plane (without touching the generator switch), end flight and start it again as many times as you want.

If generator switch is accidentally off (by pilot or by using Cold&dark button) then power will gone in 10 minutes again. In this case start from point 1 of workaround.

 

Hope this will help somebody same as helped me.

 

 

@Development team,

Don't you think that having some debug mode in planes could be good idea? In this mode for example plane could write some detailed logs with details of what happens in plane as well as in sim. These logs can be submited to you to analyze the problem.

 

 

Regards,

Evgeniy.

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I too see this happening. It apparently happens that the generator, while on, does not power "fully" the aircraft and definately not recharges the battery. While flying, after a while, the battery dies (as shown on shift2 window) and you are left powerless.

I think I can trace it back to the c&d button, but it could also be some other aircraft setting under the hood. I have to play around with starting on a default ac before going into the AN2.

 

When engine running, I see the following on the battery amp meter (center console, 26 in manual) and amp meter (left dash, 10 in manual) :

- bat off, gen off --> battery amp 0, amp 0  --> OK

- bat on, gen on --> battery amp -2, amp 0.6  --> NOT OK

- bat on, gen off --> battery amp 6, amp 0 --> OK

- bat off, gen on --> battery amp 0, amp 0.6 --> OK

 

It seems the bat on, gen on situation shorts out the charging or something: so battery drains despite gen on.

And when it drains, gen does not power the aircraft anymore.

So either i'm missing something, or something is quite not right.

 

To circumvent, I just turn off batter and have gen turned on after startup, so i keep power and battery does not drain.

 

I will check further on loading other ac before the AN-2 and/or use of the C&D button.

see attached screen with gen on, bat off state.

 

Please login to display this image.

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  • 1 month later...

Process question: with dare I state poor feedback from Aerosoft on this topic and the statement above that "the project is closed", why keep a support forum open if questions about proven(!) product bugs  are not answered nor solved? This makes the whole use of a forum like this "debatable".

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  • 6 months later...
  • 1 month later...

I was having this same issue, however I think I've found the solution, works for me at least... I had been placing the magnetos in the both on position, and then using the left/right switch to start the engine as normal.  However I found a video on youtube showing that you can leave the magnetos off, push the switch to the left and hold it there, and then as you move it to the right to turn on the engine, hit CTRL+E to move the magnetos into the on position as would be the procedure in the real aircraft.  I've been doing that and haven't had an issue since.  Also, on the left of the virtual cockpit view make sure that on the box that is on the side window, have the "set" (Сетъ) switch facing up to "1" and the Radio (Радио) switch set to the down position.  I saw that in a real world aircraft video.  Hope it helps.

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