Re: [Flightgear-devel] A load of YASim engine stuff
Matthew Law wrote: Is it usual to make the approach or initial climb-out with the mixture set full rich and prop fine in your aircraft? I'm just wondering because it's part of the downwind and pre-take off checks for the aircraft I fly (although I skip over the prop check because it's not CS). For takeoff the mixture should be set for maximum power.. aka on a hot day or at high altitude, if you put the mixture full forward, you will actually decrease the amount of power available and increase your takeoff distance.. For landing it is advisable to make sure that your mixture is rich enough to do a go around with full power. Ryan ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] SVFR
I have only had to ask for SVFR once.. and ironically it was because I needed to do a VFR night flight for my multi engine rating. We left KDPA north to KFLD. On the way back the visibility had dropped to about 2 miles and the cloud deck had dropped to about 1200 AGL. Now normally I would simply call up and get an IFR clearance to fly the approach, but to I needed to log this as a VFR trip. So we called up KDPA tower and asked for a SVFR clearance. They told us to hold 7 miles north of the field while they took care of two IFR flights landing. Once they were done with them, they allowed us to enter the airspace and land. We had to dodge some light snow showers and a few low clouds, but with the help of the Garmin 430 GPS, we were able to find the airport and land safely. Ryan Alex Perry wrote: David said: SVFR means something entirely different in North America. [...] His was a good summary. It did not address the pilot qualifications and currencies needed to use SVFR, which exist in part because SVFR is often used for scud running ... which is extremely dangerous. The reason for SVFR as a third set of flight rules is that it basically permits very near to clouds visual navigation under conditions which preclude see and avoid separation from other traffic. Unusual situation. Whereas IFR traffic could share airspace with VFR, because the ordinary VFR keeps far enough away from clouds to allow aircraft to avoid each other, no IFR is possible in a block of airspace that is being used for SVFR. Of course, you cannot have two SVFR operations in the same airspace block. Because SVFR shuts down IFR, it has to be granted by whoever owns the right to grant IFR clearances through all airspace being approved for SVFR use. For as long as the SVFR use is authorized, all IFR traffic is turned away. All airlines are required to operate all scheduled flights under IFR, and KLAX cannot accept the schedule disruption associated with _any_ SVFR because the backlog of waiting aircraft would build up far too quickly. Technically, there is no reason to specify the No SVFR because they can simply always say no. However, making the statement on charts saves them having to say that often, and deal with the subsequent pilot complaints. Not all SVFR uses are for scud running. If the visibility drops very low, as it often does in the Los Angeles basin, the airports can go below VFR minimums and all VFR traffic is blocked on the ground or is above the inversion layer a couple of thousand feet above the airport runways. Pilots then need an IFR clearance to fly the one mile of climb/descent that gets them through the smog. Alternatively, they can use SVFR. Note that there are cases that are safe to fly and where it is illegal to land at an airport under VFR or under IFR but still legal under SVFR. I have never needed to request an SVFR ... yet ... ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
[Flightgear-devel] [OT] Commercial Ticket..
I just got back from taking my Commercial Pilot, Airplane Multiengine Land checkride, and I am happy to say that I passed! Doing a single engine ILS down to minimums is lots of fun! I took the test in a Piper Aztec (PA23-250). The hardest part of the checkride was trying to get the aircraft back into the hanger without hitting anything. The area in front of the hanger was shear ice. As for the written test, I got a 92. Ryan ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] [OT] Commercial Ticket..
Curtis L. Olson wrote: It very well could be a model setup issue at which point it's probably beyond my ability to debug, but with the JSBSim c310, I took off, climbed to a comfortable altitude and speed, and chopped the throttle on my right engine. Then I slowly pitched up to bleed off speed little by little. As the speed bled off, I held my heading with rudder and kept the wings level with aileron. From the readme: Minimum single-engine control speed (Vmca): 75 KIAS However, I was able to fly right through this until I got the stall horn, (about 60 kts?) and all the time, the rudder had plenty of effectiveness to hold heading. In the real thing (assuming the README is correct) at about 75 knots the rudder loses enough effectiveness to hold heading against the one good engine at full throttle and you begin an uncontrollable yaw. This doesn't happen right now in the JSBSim C310 anyway. I'm sure this is just a matter of tweaking the configuration file. But this is an important behavior to have reasonably correct in small twins. I also tried this with the YASim C310. I see a definite yaw effect from the engine, but I think I am getting to the stall point there too before I'm getting to the point where the rudder looses effectiveness against the engine. At about 80 kts (yasim version) the rudder can't quite hold heading by itself, but I can add a bit of bank towards the good engine with ailerons and hold my heading until I stall. At the point of the stall in the real aicraft, the good engine would definitely dictate the direction of the spin. I find in the yasim model, the aircraft can stall/spin into the good engine about as easily as the other way. In both cases it's probably just the models that need tweaking, but in their current form, I don't think they are very useful for engine out training. Ok it seems we need a little definition of Vmc. To do a Vmc demo you configure the aircraft as follows. Altitude - 3500 MSL Gear and Flaps - UP Left engine - IDLE Right engine - Full Throttle Props - Full Forward Entry Speed - Blue line CG - farthest aft. Weight - Maximum 0 to 5 degrees of bank to the right. Execute manuver - pitch nose up to decrease airspeed by 1 kt / sec. discontinue when you encounter any of the following stall warning stall buffet lose of directional control These will give you the worst possible situation to deal with. Also remember that Vmc decreases as altitude increases in normally asperated twins. I will play around with the 310 tomorrow to see if I see any other issues. BTW, does FG currently simulate P-factor? This is very important in multi-engine aircraft because of the off-center nature of the thrust being created. This is why most US made ME aircraft consider the left engine to be the critical engine. Ryan ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] NMEA *out* to a Garmin
It would be nice if Garmin would port their demo software over to linux and be able to feed it data from another app. I use the Garmin 430's all the time when flying. Most of our club aircraft have at least one if not two of them. Oh and btw, I got taxi a Cessna 414 today and a Commander 115TC, besides flying a Piper Aztec for 2 hours. It was a fun aviation day! Now all I have to do is finish my Commercial/Multiengine with Instrument checkride and I will be happy, for now at least. Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Curtis L. Olson Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 10:22 AM To: FlightGear developers discussions Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] NMEA *out* to a Garmin David Megginson writes: Does anyone know if it's possible for a Garmin GPS to take its position information from external NMEA input, rather than just broadcasting the position as NMEA output? I wanted to experiment with using my (brand-new) Garmin 196 slaved to FlightGear, but I have not had much luck yet. This works to slave FlightGear to the GPS: --nmea=serial,in,20,/dev/ttyS0,4800 This, however, does not work to slave the GPS to FlightGear: --nmea=serial,out,4,/dev/ttyS0,4800 I selected the NMEA IN/NMEA OUT in the 196 menu. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who has used any Garmin receiver slaved to FlightGear (rather than the other way around). I was hoping to be able to do this with my etrex handheld, but I concluded it was not possible. I'm guessing that it probably won't work for you either, although if there is a menu that says NMEA *IN*, that sounds promising. Perhaps the unit needs some sort of initialization string, or something in addition to NMEA? It might be interesting to plug the output of some other Garmin gps into your 196 to see if that works. Coincidently, I talked to Garmin this week about their higher end GPS's (like the GNS 430). None of the 400-500 series GPS's can take remote faked input. However, for the same price (which is substantial), they sell flight simulator versions of all these series 400-500 units which do take input via a serial line. However, they have a different communication protocol ... not fancy, but just a bit different from NMEA style strings. The other thing I wanted to play around with is a GPS application running on a palm pilot being fed fake gps strings from FlightGear. Has anyone done anything like that? Regards, Curt. -- Curtis Olson HumanFIRST Program FlightGear Project Twin Citiescurt 'at' me.umn.edu curt 'at' flightgear.org Minnesota http://www.flightgear.org/~curt http://www.flightgear.org ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] VASI question
Is that ToDo list published somewhere? Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Curtis L. Olson Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 8:35 PM To: FlightGear developers discussions Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] VASI question Hoyt A. Fleming writes: I was shooting an approach with FG and noticed that when I pitch up the aircraft, the VASI lights turn white. Similarly, when I pitch down the aircraft, the VASI lights turn red. I loaded the UFO and verified the VASI lights change color when the UFO is stationary and the pitch of the UFO varies. Is this a known issue? Yes, it's high on my todo list (along with about 300 other things.) :-) Curt. -- Curtis Olson HumanFIRST Program FlightGear Project Twin Citiescurt 'at' me.umn.edu curt 'at' flightgear.org Minnesota http://www.flightgear.org/~curt http://www.flightgear.org ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] Electrical system work..
Also, on some small twin's you can't run everything on only one bus. So if you have a problem with one of the buses or the alternator you will have to shut down some extra stuff or risk draining your battery. Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Erik Hofman Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 9:42 AM To: FlightGear developers discussions Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] Electrical system work.. Gene Buckle wrote: .Gene Buckle wrote: Avionics power ratings are always available as nominal and max normal draw. Electrical systems are designed with a bit of extra capacity to deal with power on rush current, etc. The only time an aircraft author would have to give the the current draw any thought at all is if they're also building special avionics and even then, they only really need to specify the nominal draw. The only time the breakers will pop is either on command from an instructor station or via a random systems failure routine. But then there is no need to define amperage in the instruments, is there? Yes there is. That's where the load definition belongs. The load figure should follow the equipment, not the bus it's connected to. Ah, I didn't realize those where two separate issues. So we need the nominal power consumption for the battery lifetime and such. That makes sense. This would be an excellent improvement. Erik ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] Any Volunteers?
Anyone have a static copy of terragear for linux? Ryan ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] sidewinder-joystick.xml
Heres one for the sidewinder force feedback pro. http://junster.com/fg/sidewinder-force-feedback-pro.xml.txt Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of WillyB Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2003 12:33 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Flightgear-devel] sidewinder-joystick.xml Erik I see that you are adding joystick xml's Here is the one I made for my MS Sidewinder joystick, if you'd like to add it I'd like to contribute it :) http://24.121.17.106/fgfs/sidewinder-joystick.xml.txt Re's WillyB ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] Aero-Matic
its available at http://junster.com/fg/ for now.. Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of David Culp Sent: Friday, June 27, 2003 5:32 PM To: flightgear-devel Subject: [Flightgear-devel] Aero-Matic I've finished Aero-Matic 0.1, and it's available to anyone who has a local webserver with PHP turned on so you can try it out. It will generate aero, engine and prop config files for JSBSim, based on a few questions about the airplane you want to model. The purpose is to allow people to quickly generate a plausible flight model for a given airplane. You can always edit the files later to add more details if you have them. It works good on my local apache server. Curt is looking into finding a public host for it. It consists of four files, an HTML forms page and three PHP files. http://home.attbi.com/~davidculp2/aeromatic.html http://home.attbi.com/~davidculp2/aero.php http://home.attbi.com/~davidculp2/engine.php http://home.attbi.com/~davidculp2/prop.php The links might go dead in two days. My ISP was bought out. Dave Culp ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] Trip Report and Pictures: CYOW-CYAM;CYAM-CYYB; CYYB-CYOW
I just got back from a 290nm (one way) trip from KDPA to KANE. I left friday night at about 18:30. It was amazing how much the weather changed during that trip.. It started out partly cloudy with winds 12kts gusting to 25kts, with a barometric pressure of 29.36. I took off on an IFR flight plan to KANE, which was forcasting 2500 foot ceilings and winds 15kts gusting to 20kts. I was flying into a headwind of about 35kts, so my ground speed was about 100kts. As I was handed off to Rockford approach control (KRFD), they asked if I had a storm scope (which I did). I looked at it and it was lit up like a Christmas tree in front of me. I asked Rockford approach for a deviation to the west to avoid that storm (I was able to start seeing the storm at that time also). I was still about 45nm from the the storm and there was plenty of room to the west to get around it. While flying westbound I started to encounter some hard updrafts and downdrafts in the 500ft/min range. I asked for a block altitude (5000-6000ft msl) to maintain while dealing with the turbulent air. They granted it and I tried to maintain about 5500 ft. I never went outside of that block although I did come pretty close. After clearing the storm to the west it was again partly cloudy and the sun was shining bright. It looked like it was going to be a much nicer flight the rest of the way. I flew through puffy white clouds the rest of the way up to the Minneapolis area. About 50nm from KANE approach control had me decend from 6000ft to 4000ft. This put me in the clouds and in some moderately turbulent air. I was easily able to maintain altitude and the general heading, but was being bumped around enough that the gear unsafe light would come on every time I hit a good bump. At one point, it actually stayed on and I had to slow to about 90kts and extend the gear and then retract the gear to get the light to go out. After about 30 minutes of this approach control decended me to 2700ft which put me about 100ft above the cloud bottoms, I asked for another decent to 2500ft to get me in VMC, which they granted. I then was easily able to spot the airport and started heading in that direction and was preparing to land on runway 36. The winds were reported at 18kts gusting to 34kts from a heading of 350 and a barometric pressure of about 29.86. I was second to land behind a small twin coming from the other direction. I watched him land and was satisified that it would not be a difficult landing. I put it down with about 10kts extra airspeed and made a halfway decent landing. The return trip could not have been any easier.. winds were calm at both airports and aloft, there were no clouds and there was no turbulence the entire flight. Between trimming the aircraft out and putting on the autopilot, I could have easily taken a nap for 2 hours. Instead I spent time playing around with some of the features of the Garmin 430 GPS that the aircraft had along with figuring out which RPM setting got me the best bang for the buck. 2100 RPMs won, because I pay by the tach hour, not the hobbs meter. Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of David Megginson Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2003 6:19 PM To: FlightGear developers discussions Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] Trip Report and Pictures: CYOW-CYAM;CYAM-CYYB; CYYB-CYOW matthew Law writes: Just brings home how small the UK is compared to Canada and the USA. From my home airfield, 800nm in almost any direction by my reckoning would land you in another country. That was 800nm round trip (i.e. 400nm out and 400nm back), but it is true that 800nm straight west from Ottawa probably wouldn't be enough to get me over the provincial border into Manitoba border. One of my nearer-term goals is to visit all three coasts. From Ottawa, it's 515nm east to Halifax on the Atlantic Ocean, 1917nm west to Vancouver on the Pacific Ocean, and 1682nm northwest to Cambridge Bay on the Arctic Ocean. Although a C-152 would have ran out of fuel after 600nm probably. Probably considerably less. At 75% power, my Warrior could probably manage 600nm and still just barely have the required 30-minute fuel reserve, but I'm not tempted to try. Did you see much variation in weather over the distance? Yes, even over 400nm, the changes were quite dramatic. All the best, David -- David Megginson, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.megginson.com/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
[Flightgear-devel] Meigs Field Closed by Mayor Daley
Mayor Daley ordered Meigs Field (KCGX) closed early this morning and they have already torn up parts of the runway. Here is the current info on it.. http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/newsitems/2003/03-1-157x.html If you can help in any way to fight this please let me know. Thanks Ryan ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] major frame rate drop?
I noticed the same thing, but it seemed to clear up after you moved away from the KSFO airport. 15-20 to begin with, then 60-70 away from the airport. Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Curtis L. Olson Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2003 9:14 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Flightgear-devel] major frame rate drop? I returned from being gone for the week, did a cvs update to get all the latest changes and now I'm seeing about 1/3 the frame rate I'm accustom to seeing. I now am getting something in the 18-25 range which is pretty horrible for my hardware. I've done a complete reboot to rule out my machine being hosed after sitting idle for a week, and complete rebuild of everything from scratch to rule out some sort of incremental build dependency wierdness. The frame rate loss doesn't seem tied to aircraft/fdm/panel/visibility or anything graphical-load related. It *acts* like there might be some new big computational step that is being run every frame? I don't recall seeing anything like that in the cvs change logs, but there were a lot of them from the last week so I didn't browse them all closely. Is anyone else seeing this with the very latest cvs, or should I look for something on my end? Thanks, Curt. -- Curtis Olson IVLab / HumanFIRST Program FlightGear Project Twin Cities[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota http://www.menet.umn.edu/~curt http://www.flightgear.org ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] Change to default aircraft
Carb heat on non-fuel injected engines helps keep the venturi from being plugged up by ice. This can happen with air temps as high as 100F and relative humidity of +50%. This normally happens when you are about to land or make a long decent. When you bring the RPM's out of the green arc on a fixed pitch prop aircraft you should either turn carb heat on for the duration or with Piper aircraft, turn it on an make sure the engine doesn't run rough. If it does, leave it on and let it burn off the ice, then the engine should run more smoothly again. There are many descriptions of how to use Carb heat in the POH's and on the web. Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Arnt Karlsen Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 9:42 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] Change to default aircraft On Wed, 5 Mar 2003 21:33:35 -0500, David Megginson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Arnt Karlsen writes: ..heh, and you the emacs'er balance that by running lean-of-peak? ;-) I am afraid that I do no understand your insinuation. If I'm on the side of the angels with one, should I not be on their side with both? .. ;-) ..how far back can you drag it before it starts running rough? Without carb heat, I can lean back to between 65% and 75% power, depending on the day and how long the engine has been running. With carb heat on in cruise, I can pull it back much farther, probably right to cutoff if I were so inclined. The nice thing is that I have my Piper POH for backup: For Best Economy cruise, a simplified leaning procedure which consistently allows accurate achievement of best engine efficiency has been developed. Best Economy Cruise performance is obtained with the throttle fully open. To obtain a desired cruise power setting, set the throttle and mixture control full forward, taking care not to exceed the engine speed limitation, then begin leaning the mixture. The RPM will increase slightly but will then begin to decrease. Continue leaning until the desired cruise engine RPM is reached. This will provide best fuel economy and maximum miles per gallon for a given power setting. It's easy to do this with a fixed-pitch prop, since the tach gives a direct indication of power setting at any given density altitude. ..I should have asked: how far back/down of peak temp? Carb heat helps you down the temperatures on leaning way back, how far down? -- ..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt... ;-) ...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry... Scenarios always come in sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] Problem: unrealistic YASim stalls
quoteI understand that many higher-performance aircraft can have quite violent (and even unrecoverable) stalls, as can some trainers like the Traumahawk/quote I have to disagree with that quote.. I did the first 40 hours of my training in a Tomahawk, and I was never able to get a wing to drop.. I know they added some little strips on the leading edge of the wings about half way down to help cause a mild stall before a full fledged stall would occur. The worst stall I have been involved with was in a Cessna 172 where the right wing dropped extremely quickly to about 75 degrees, while my instructor was trying to show me how docile the 172 is. I am not sure if he had to much left rudder or something, but it wasn't very docile. I personally have not had any problems in the following aircraft during any type of stall. Just remember to keep them coordinated and you should never have any problems. Piper Tomahawk Warrior Archer Arrow Cessna 172 172RG Ryan ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] PA-28-161 C-FBJO
I flew an Arrow-III up to Minneapolis and back this past weekend. Even with a CAS of 135 kts, I had a GS of about 80-88 kts the whole way up to Minneapolis at 6000 feet because of a cold front moving through. On the way back, I had a great tailwind and at 9000 feet I was at 130 kts CAS and 194 kts GS. With a top speed of 217 kts GS on a descent from 9000 to 7000 feet. If you have an idea of what types of numbers you would like to get in terms of performance data.. I can try and get some on the Arrow and an Archer. I also have manuals for the Arrow and the Archer if that would be helpful. Do we have a central place we could store this stuff? I hope to get checked out in a Mooney 201 Turbo soon.. 174 kts CAS on 12-13 GPH! Anyway.. congrats on the purchase. It looks like a nice plane.. wish I had the guts to pull the trigger and buy my own plane, but with the job market the way it is.. I can't afford to make that purchase right now. Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of David Megginson Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 10:00 AM To: flightgear-devel Subject: [Flightgear-devel] PA-28-161 C-FBJO After a few months of dithering, searching, and researching, I've bought a used plane, a 1979 160 HP Piper Warrior II with (mostly) King IFR radios. It will be at least a few days before I actually take legal ownership, but it is parked safely at the flying club waiting for me. I am quite impressed with the handling compared to the 172's I've flown. Here are some pics: http://www.megginson.com/private/C-FBJO/ I originally saw the plane when I went to Toronto to try out a Cardinal (which I didn't like), but it wasn't possible to fly the plane then because the annual wasn't finished. I did a test flight and had my AME do a detailed prepurchase yesterday. All the best, David -- David Megginson, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.megginson.com/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] FWIW
Doh, and I am flying to Minneapolis again this weekend! Not sure if I am going to ANE or MIC yet. Need to get the charts tomorrow. Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Curtis L. Olson Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 10:45 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Flightgear-devel] FWIW For what it's worth, I will be out of town Friday through Monday, likely with minimal net access (if any.) So, please don't panic if you email me and don't get a reponse back before next week. :-) Curt. -- Curtis Olson IVLab / HumanFIRST Program FlightGear Project Twin Cities[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota http://www.menet.umn.edu/~curt http://www.flightgear.org ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] New Attitude Indicator (Artificial Horizon) Behaviour
This is why I carry 2 instrument covers in my flight bag.. I tried out a 3 axis sim at the AOPA Single Pilot IFR seminar here in Chicago about a month ago. I was flying along just fine until in the dark in IMC the instructor took away my vacumm system. I noticed about 30 seconds after it happened and proceded to correct, but I had the hardest time not doing what the AI showed me. It was stuck in a 20 degree bank to the left and I continued to keep trying to correct that horizon.. now if this ever happens to me in IMC in real life, I will just cover up the instrument(s) and continue to work with what I have left. Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Alex Perry Sent: Tuesday, September 24, 2002 2:08 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] New Attitude Indicator (Artificial Horizon) Behaviour Hah! That's very nasty, the AI continues to operate just fine, and then [ever so] slowly starts to drift off center, but still reacts to overall aircraft motion. There are many different failure modes, that is one of them. That's what happened when I had a bearing failure (VMC). On another VMC vacuum failure, the AI simply stopped moving and continued to show straight and level irrespective of what I did. Since I was in completely smooth air, there was no indication of the failure until I tried to turn intentionally to a new heading. I was using an external horizon while VMC; had I flown into a cloud on an IFR clearance after the failure, imagine my sudden surprise ... I bet killing the vacuum system in a sim would be a good way to recalibrate a *lot* of pilot's egos. The alternative is to recalibrate their bodily shape in a real aircraft. In real IFR it's deadly, because as you bank to keep the AI centred, you gradually put the plane into a spiral. If you happen to notice the increasing airspeed, decreasing altitude, or divergent TC reading Many pilots get lazy in cruise and stop doing a proper scan. In consequence, they don't notice the subtle symptoms in time. (or glance at the vacuum pump) before you pass Vne, you might recover in time. After that, though, you'll be dizzy, confused, and badly disoriented, but will now have to fly IFR using the TC until you get the plane on the ground, praying not to get an electrical failure before then. Recently, I had a simultaneous failure of the TC and the DG, thankfully in VMC but under a real IFR clearance. It is incredibly hard to maintain IFR tolerances under those conditions and the incorrect instrument indications wasted about a third of my concentration by the distraction. I could have covered them up, using my instructor safety pilot's plastic disks. This was practice for a solo cross country and I'd forgotten to bring my own along so we completed the flight the way I'd have had to do it for-real. Had that happened in IMC, I'd have declared the emergency and required vectors to the FAF of the closest ILS. I had no redundancy remaining. Now perhaps someone can remind me why I want to get an instrument rating ... Because, without that training, if the same thing happens in a night or on-top or between-layers flight, you're basically beyond help. I should also point out that, visibility 3SM in haze at 9500 ft is quite legal and occurs regularly in some places. However, you're two miles above terrain, so your horizon is almost directly below you with a tiny circle of visible ground. You may be navigating and separating visually, but the instruments are not optional. Thanks. I'm looking forward to input from Alex and other IFR pilots on how I can make the behaviour more realistic. I'll play with it this evening, time and compiler permitting. I noticed that FGFS refused to build, as of 8am pacific this morning. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] IFR in FlightGear
I did my first IFR flight last weekend (First one after getting my Instrument rating). It was in an Piper Arrow, which I have flown only two times before. Sky conditions where 2000 to 4000 overcast with 10sm+ visibility. I found it harder to fly the plane when VFR than when in actual because of the extra scanning you have to do outside the aircraft. For the first half of the flight, I was constantly fighting to keep within 10 degrees and 100 feet. After I got the hang of doing that, it was a little easier, but trying to learn a new complex plane and do an IFR flight in semi VFR conditions was a lot of work. I would recommend to anyone that is new to Instrument flight to go up with a safty pilot and practice. It is completely different than flying with the hood or foggles. BTW, in the last 4 months, I have flown 6 different models of aircraft.. I find it very rewarding and would recommend it to anyone. Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Alex Perry Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2002 9:22 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] IFR in FlightGear Tony Peden writes: Coming from one who lives in a place that is overcast 9 months out of the year, I must point out that there is a solution to that problem ... IFR. David comments: Surprisingly, I find this much harder when I am above the overcast layer because I *can* see: I tend to look out the window at the cloud horizon and my instrument scan goes to crap. As soon as I'm in the cloud and there's nothing out the window but white, my scan goes back to normal. When outside IMC, even when IFR, you are _supposed_ to be looking out at the scenery and almost never at the instruments. When not in a cloud, you are just as responsible for see-and-avoid as any other VFR aircraft. Therefore, above an overcast, you should be doing full traffic scans as usual, occasionally glancing in to check heading,altitude,navigation against your IFR clearance before going back to the traffic scan again. If you don't do that, you're setting yourself up to be a midair statistic. In FlightGear, do something like ... shift-4 [traffic] shift-7 [traffic] shift-8 [scan] [traffic] shift-9 [traffic] shift-6 [traffic] shift-9 [traffic] shift-8 [nav] [traffic] shift-7 [traffic] ... and repeat. Also, when you exit a cloud, whether side, bottom or top, do a full traffic scan that includes shift-1 and shift-3 before much else because you've got about 20 seconds before collision with a legal VFR aircraft and a lot less for someone who is cutting corners ... or if you're in class G. And, yes, maintaining IFR tolerances when in bumpy VMC is very busy work. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] Pictures of trip to Minneapolis
I started my training in a Tomahawk based at Flying Cloud, so I am more used to the low wing than the high wing. However, I have been doing most of my IFR training in a C172 as of late. Landing the Archer is a little harder as it does float a lot more than a 172. You also land the Archer flatter than you do a 172. And you have the extra weight of the Archer that is noticeable (especially at gross weight) when climbing or turning. The Archer is more stable in my opinion during turbulent air and is very docile during stalls. I like the Archer better for long flights because it has more room and more carrying capacity. I also like the low wing during pattern work, as you can see the airport at all times. The C172 is a fun aircraft to fly, but requires more work to keep it where you want it, or maybe I just haven't figured it all the way out yet! Here is a breakdown of the aircraft that I have flown. AircraftTotal Time X-Country Time Tomahawk45.214.5 Warrior 8 3.1 Archer 42.617.2 Arrow 1 0 C17228.612.4 As you can see most of my time has been for training.. Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of David Megginson Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2002 6:16 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: re: [Flightgear-devel] Pictures of trip to Minneapolis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I flew my roomates and myself from Dupage airport (DPA) to Crystal airport (MIC) in an archer-II over the 4th of July weekend. It was a lot of fun and sure beats driving 7 hours in a car. Anyway here are the pics.. http://dsl081-150-106.chi1.dsl.speakeasy.net/gallery/view_album.php?set_albu mName=album01page=1 It looks like you flew by Curt without stopping to pick him up. How do you find the Archer compared to a high-wing plane like a 172? Is ground effect noticeably stronger? Is it annoying having the wing in the way whenever you want to look down and to the side? All the best, David -- David Megginson, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.megginson.com/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] GS needle sensitivity.
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Paul Deppe Sent: Tuesday, July 09, 2002 4:31 PM To: FGFS-Devel Subject: RE: [Flightgear-devel] GS needle sensitivity. I had someone recently comment that they thought the glide slope needle was too sensitive in FG. Can anyone comment on this? What sort of needle range relative to how many degrees off the target glide slope should we be seeing? This person suggested 2 'dots' per degree off the glide slope (but they aren't a pilot and haven't flown any real instrument approaches.) I thought I had investigated this and had done it correctly when I first wrote the code, but it would be nice to verify that we are still doing this right since the question has come up (and given that the 2d panel instrument can also scale the values, there is more than one place an error could creep in.) Gents, Glideslope beams are designed to be 1.4 degrees tall, that is, +/- 2 dots (full scale) deviation on the gauge is equal to +/- 0.7 degrees glidesope deviation, or 0.35 degrees per dot. This is the same for all standard ILS's. This is correct. The localizer beam width is designed to produce +/- 2 dots deviation at +/- 700 feet deviation from centerline at the runway threshold. The localizer scale sensitivity in degrees per dot is therefore a function of the distance from the threshold to the localizer antenna. This is worded weird. I would word it like this (this is from the diagram in the FAA instrument rating written exam). The glideslope is a beam 1.4 degrees thick. It is pointed 3 degrees up from the horizon starting at the 1000' foot mark down the runway from the threshold. At 1300' from the threshold you are at an altitude of 100' above touchdown zone. If you are off the GS by 2 dots at the 1300' mark you are off by 28' (so either 72' or 128' above the touchdown zone). If you are 5.6nm from the threshold (the Outer Marker) and you are off by 2 dots you are off by 420' up or down. The target altitude at that point is 1500' above the touchdown zone. Here is a table of what 1 dot or 2 dots mean at different distances. Distance from threshold Target Alt 1 Dot off 2 Dots off Significance 1300' 100'14' 28' Inner Marker 2600' (1/2nm) 200'28' 56' Middle Marker 1.9nm 500'70' 140' 5.6nm 1500' 210'420' Outer Marker Ryan ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] ANN: C172P Hi-Res Panel Photos
I have put some pictures up at the following address. http://64.81.150.106/planes/ I have cockpit and exterior shots of an old C182 (1957), Beechcraft Sierra and a Piper Warrior. I also have external shots of a Grumman Tiger. I will need to redo some of them as they were a bit fuzzy. I filled my memory stick up before I got to the Arrows or any of the other aircraft. I will bring my laptop next weekend so that I have a little more storage. Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of David Megginson Sent: Friday, June 21, 2002 5:52 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Flightgear-devel] ANN: C172P Hi-Res Panel Photos Ryan Larson writes: I can get hires photos of a Warrior, Archer, Arrow, Grumman Tiger, Beechcraft Sierra, C182, C172R, C172RG, Mooney 201, Saratoga II and possibly an Aztec F. I love my new flying club! Sounds good. We have an Arrow as well, but I don't think they'll let me close to it yet (ditto for the Duchess). What do we have and what do we need? Well, we have the C182 modelled already, so it would be a good start. Otherwise, it depends on what people want to model (aero-wise). Would it also be helpful to get hires photos of the outsides of planes and maybe the moving parts (gear, alerons, rudder, flaps, elevator and the prop)? Yes, I took some of those, too (all from the left side, hidden by the plane, to avoid too much embarrassment, but I still got jokes about taking 'before and after' photos before I went up). Thanks, David -- David Megginson, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.megginson.com/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] ANN: C172P Hi-Res Panel Photos
I can get hires photos of a Warrior, Archer, Arrow, Grumman Tiger, Beechcraft Sierra, C182, C172R, C172RG, Mooney 201, Saratoga II and possibly an Aztec F. I love my new flying club! What do we have and what do we need? Would it also be helpful to get hires photos of the outsides of planes and maybe the moving parts (gear, alerons, rudder, flaps, elevator and the prop)? Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of David Megginson Sent: Friday, June 21, 2002 2:33 PM To: FlightGear Development Subject: [Flightgear-devel] ANN: C172P Hi-Res Panel Photos I spent ten minutes before my flight this morning snapping 51 quick interior and exterior photos with my digital camera. I've put the some of the photos from that shoot (the panel portion) together on a Web page: http://www.megginson.com/flightsim/c172p/ This page contains high-resolution closeups (1024x768) of each of the instruments and controls except for the Hobbs and the mag compass. I hope that it will be helpful for panel designers. All the best, David -- David Megginson, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.megginson.com/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] a4 panel
The left one says something temp.. maybe an egt? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Jim Wilson Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 9:28 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Flightgear-devel] a4 panel Can anyone ID the left two instruments in the top row and the left most in the bottom row? http://www.avsim.com/pages/0801/a4c/shot02.jpg Does anyone has a decent cockpit photo of or diagram for an a-4c ~ a-4f? Been looking online with little success. Thanks, Jim ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] My First Flight
There is a very good reason for that.. its like drug dealers.. they give you the first hit for free.. then they have you for life! Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of David Megginson Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2002 6:25 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] My First Flight Erik Hofman writes: In fact, I have decided to get my pilots license whenever possible, despite the first experience in the simulator. I was surprised by how inexpensive an intro flight is (much less than a modest dinner out). All the best, David -- David Megginson [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] My First Flight
Most aircraft are trimmed (with trim tabs) to compensate for p-factor at cruise flight. Durning most of my flights in Piper aircraft, you don't have to use the right rudder much. During stalls you will notice that you need to use it a lot otherwise you will stall one wing before the other and you will start a spin. This is rather exciting the first time it happens.. But you can usually recover before even a 1/4 rotation if you know what to do. I have flown an aircraft that was sevearly out of trim and caused a constant 45 degree right bank if you centered the yoke. This happened during a training flight in a Piper Warrior, at the request of my instructor, we landed on the first available runway.. in this case 36 after taking off from 27L (the winds were calm). To this day I check that trim tab before flight. Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Jon Berndt Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2002 6:32 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Flightgear-devel] My First Flight Wow. Thanks for the feedback. This is really the only _best_ way to making sure the feel of the flight modeling is right - getting the qualitative reports from many people is even better. P-Factor is definitely one of those effects we need to adjust based on the qualitative judgment of people who have flown the type. If we had good data on the phenomena it would be good, but we don't. We knew full well that in our model we'd need to adjust it. Feel free to do so until it matches your recollections. Landing gear steering *gain* is another one of those things. As far as the differential steering with braking, I don't know what to say other than we may have to take another look at that section of code. Thanks for the impressions. Jon Although I've said before that I wouldn't do it, I went up today for a CA$45.00 (US$30.00) introductory flight in a 100HP Cessna 150 at the Ottawa Flying Club at CYOW (there's a separate north field for small aircraft so that we don't have to worry about wake turbulence from all the big jets). My instructor was younger than I am but had 1,600 hours flying experience -- I think this is the first time I've ever been formally instructed in anything by a younger person. ... ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] Workaround: making the planes flyable again
This is correct, they either have a trim that is adjustable or they have a set trim tab on the rudder that will give you straight and level at most cruise speeds. Ryan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of David Megginson Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2001 11:05 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] Workaround: making the planes flyable again Martin Olveyra writes: On 2001.12.15 09:59 David Megginson wrote: (...) P_FACTOR 10.0 Now you will need to apply a fair bit of right rudder during takeoff and early climb, but will not need to apply any during cruise. All the best, Is this the real behavior? To my knowledge, and according to the sources I have read, this is accurate. The C172 (and most other GA prop planes) seem to be designed slightly asymmetrically so that they require no extreme yaw correction during normal cruise conditions. All the best, David -- David Megginson [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
