A Few Questions

[timc 1]

Firstly, I'll echo some the comments already made about this aircraft. Its fantastic. My first Aerosoft purchase was the F16 and I suspected then that I'd be back for more. My decision to do so has been justified by the Cat - the immersive nature of the model is superb and being able to refer to the manual to fly it is great.

A few questions:

• Whilst the sound of the engines is incredible (especially if played through earphones - my wife doesnt want twin P&Ws hacking round the room whilst she is watching telly!) I dont have any sounds for switch movements or hydraulic pumps for example. Is this related to the ASC? I have been using the Pensacola version.
• Does pushing the feather buttons in model the characteristics of a feathered prop? I suspect it does but how is unfeathering achieved? I couldnt pull the feather button back down again.
• Also on feathering, have you modelled a feathered state when the prop lever is fully back (ie coarse)?
• Can you confirm how I move the radio frequency? I cant get any movement of the dials or frequencies at all (again in the Pensacola version)

Thanks in advance.

timc

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

Firstly, I'll echo some the comments already made about this aircraft. Its fantastic. My first Aerosoft purchase was the F16 and I suspected then that I'd be back for more. My decision to do so has been justified by the Cat - the immersive nature of the model is superb and being able to refer to the manual to fly it is great.

A few questions:

• Whilst the sound of the engines is incredible (especially if played through earphones - my wife doesnt want twin P&Ws hacking round the room whilst she is watching telly!) I dont have any sounds for switch movements or hydraulic pumps for example. Is this related to the ASC? I have been using the Pensacola version.
• Does pushing the feather buttons in model the characteristics of a feathered prop? I suspect it does but how is unfeathering achieved? I couldnt pull the feather button back down again.
• Also on feathering, have you modelled a feathered state when the prop lever is fully back (ie coarse)?
• Can you confirm how I move the radio frequency? I cant get any movement of the dials or frequencies at all (again in the Pensacola version)

Thanks in advance.

timc

The ASC module should provide that sound indeed but in about 1% of installs it seems to lock up the system and we still no sure why that is. We very strongly suspect the C++ runtime modules but as we can test and have no feedback at this moment we just don't know 100% sure. If you have not tweaked the panel.cfg I advise you to check here: http://www.forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?s=...st&p=159229 and make sure you add this to all the panel folders. Let me know if that solves it.

If you are forced to feather a prop you loose all pressure in that system and there is no way to unfeather it. In some aircraft this is realistic (like the Catalina), in others it is not but as this is ALSO a FS bug there is not a lot that can be done about that. As the prop controls are at that moment disconnected from the prop controls the prop should always be in the feathered state.

The radios should not be a problem, but using the mousewheel is 20 times easier then trying to click it. The moment you see the mousepointer as a small hand just roll the mousewheel and the controls should move.

[timc 1]

The ASC module should provide that sound indeed but in about 1% of installs it seems to lock up the system and we still no sure why that is. We very strongly suspect the C++ runtime modules but as we can test and have no feedback at this moment we just don't know 100% sure. If you have not tweaked the panel.cfg I advise you to check here: http://www.forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?s=...st&p=159229 and make sure you add this to all the panel folders. Let me know if that solves it.

If you are forced to feather a prop you loose all pressure in that system and there is no way to unfeather it. In some aircraft this is realistic (like the Catalina), in others it is not but as this is ALSO a FS bug there is not a lot that can be done about that. As the prop controls are at that moment disconnected from the prop controls the prop should always be in the feathered state.

The radios should not be a problem, but using the mousewheel is 20 times easier then trying to click it. The moment you see the mousepointer as a small hand just roll the mousewheel and the controls should move.

Mathis,

Thanks, the sound fix works and I can now enjoy ADF 1300, the sound of pumps and of course the comedy Aux APU. For the record, I am running FSX in Vista 32 as administrator and whilst I have not experienced any crashing, I just didnt have the extra sounds.

Is there any way to model a prop to be stationary when feathered in flight?

Mousewheel works well for radio buttons - good tip, thanks.

timc

[Finn 873]

Mathis,

Thanks, the sound fix works and I can now enjoy ADF 1300, the sound of pumps and of course the comedy Aux APU. For the record, I am running FSX in Vista 32 as administrator and whilst I have not experienced any crashing, I just didnt have the extra sounds.

Is there any way to model a prop to be stationary when feathered in flight?

Mousewheel works well for radio buttons - good tip, thanks.

timc

To feather the props:

-Shut down the engine (if it isn´t allready failed)

-Push the feather button

-Move the prop levers full backwards

I know the last item isn´t fully realistic, but simply how FSX works.

Finn

[timc 1]

To feather the props:

-Shut down the engine (if it isn´t allready failed)

-Push the feather button

-Move the prop levers full backwards

I know the last item isn´t fully realistic, but simply how FSX works.

Finn

I've tried this method for feathering but it does not stop the prop rotating in flight. Any thoughts?

The feather button pushes in but doesnt pop out again which I believe is the marker for a successfully feathered prop. Any ideas as to what I am doing wrong? Is there a particular method of shutting the engine down that FSX 'prefers' in order to stop the prop rotating when feathered?

[Finn 873]

The procedure I described above works fine on my system.

Are You sure that the engine is shut down and not running ?

Finn

[schnurps1 0]

Hi timc,

I've tried this method for feathering but it does not stop the prop rotating in flight. Any thoughts?

The feather button pushes in but doesnt pop out again which I believe is the marker for a successfully feathered prop. Any ideas as to what I am doing wrong? Is there a particular method of shutting the engine down that FSX 'prefers' in order to stop the prop rotating when feathered?

I also had some problems to get the prop to stop spinning, even after performing all the steps mentioned by Finn. I found two possible solutions:

1) After following Finns procedure, pull back hard on the yoke, reducing the airspeed as close to stall speed as possible... et viola, the prop stopped. Pretty unrealistic, though, I assume.

2) The trick is to pull the prop lever further back than the 0% possible when using the prop lever in the VC. After following all of Finns steps and pulling the prop lever of the dead engine back to 0% in the VC, I then select the engine to feather by pressing "E, then engine number" followed by one or more presses of "CTRL+F2" to get the prop pitch below 0% - prop stops.

Try these and tell me if it works for you as well

Best regards,

Andreas

[Snave 466]

As Andreas says, in FSX the `feathering` function is a negative number based on the prop position. i.e. a nominal `zero percent` will not give you a feathered prop, but `-1%` will. As the prop levers ONLY go that far aft for a feather, it would make sense for the developers to remap the levers to truly represent `beyond zero` when the levers are pulled to feather position, and they can always copy the Twotter if they need to know how. Or just assign a `prop brake` function as a hidden gauge for the fully-aft lever - in reality the propeller would stop rotating before it reached the fully-feathered state, because of the drag of the crank and propshaft caused by the failure of oil circulation as the engine shut down...

Until then, the best solution is to firstly ensure that ANY lever you have assigned to prop adjustment is not sending a spurious `spike` signal to the sim (FSUIPC payware is useful for this), then use the simple solution Andreas has outlined.

In any case I don't think FSX models windmill drag so the fact that the prop is still turning in the feathered state is only a visual anomaly.