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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/12/11 in Posts

  1. 2 points
  2. Hey there, here's a quick step by step of a way to LED backlight real instruments that start out as white incandescent, in this case a Percent RPM gauge. Gauge Backlighting (3 of 10).jpg by KLaFaille, on Flickr 1. Here's the gauge assembly removed from it's can. Next to it you can see the standard incandescent T1-3/4 lamp which is very common in aircraft components, and the hollow cylinder next to it is the housing the lamp sits in. Gauge Backlighting (1 of 10).jpg by KLaFaille, on Flickr 2. Here's the internals of the gauge. You can see towards the face of the gauge the rear of the lamp, the housing, and the copper plate that contacts the bottom of the bulb. There are three lamps wired in parallel so that if a bulb burns out the other two still work. One half of the lighting circuit goes directly to the gauge body itself, ground, while the other half goes to each of the three copper plates. Gauge Backlighting (4 of 10).jpg by KLaFaille, on Flickr 3. The lamp, housing, and LED we are going to replace the lamp with. Because the LED is smaller than the housing, we are going to use the leads of the LED to keep it in place in the housing and give us a good electrical contact. Gauge Backlighting (5 of 10).jpg by KLaFaille, on Flickr 4. Step one is to take the cathode (negative) leg and bend it flat against the base and back towards the front of the LED. Gauge Backlighting (6 of 10).jpg by KLaFaille, on Flickr 5. Next we wrap the cathode around the body of the LED. This is so the LED will sit snuggly inside the housing and you get a good electrical connection to ground. You may have to trim off a bit of length so that you don't have any of the cathode overlapping onto itself. After we wrap the lead, the wrapped end of the cathode is soldered to itself. At this time you can better round out the cathode around the LED body and make sure it fits snug in the housing. Gauge Backlighting (7 of 10).jpg by KLaFaille, on Flickr 6. I used hot glue to "pot" the LED securely into the housing, both in the rear and around the front of the LED also. While the glue is cooling make sure the LED sits centered in the housing. Gauge Backlighting (8 of 10).jpg by KLaFaille, on Flickr 7. Take the anode (positive leg) of the LED and bend it 90 degrees flat against the back of the housing. Then take and bend it back over itself so you end up with something like in the picture. Gauge Backlighting (9 of 10).jpg by KLaFaille, on Flickr 8. Fill the gap left in the anode with solder. We don't have to go crazy but want enough so that we end up with a decent sized ball. Trim off the excess anode and file smooth any sharp edges left by trimming. We have basically made an LED lamp at this point that works on the principal electrically as the incandescents we removed. The cathode is touching the housing which goes to ground, and the anode is touching the copper plates supplying the positive voltage. Depending on the voltage you choose to power your lighting and the voltage drop of the LED itself you will need a resistor to soak up the excess voltage. In the case of the LEDs I used, they have a forward voltage of 3.7V, which is a bit odd for a green LED but that is what it is, and I will be supplying them with a 5V power supply. 5V - 3.7V means we need a resistor that will soak up about 1.3V so the LEDs don't go poof. I ended up using a 22 Ohm resistor which resulted with about 3.65V going to each LED. A caveat regarding LEDs in parallel. Generally the way the LEDs are wired in the gauge now isn't the preferred method. Ideally we would like to calculate the required resistance needed for each LED and put a resistor in series with each one. Wiring LEDs in parallel with only one resistor requires that all the LEDs have a very close voltage drop to each other otherwise a single LED may end up pulling more current than the others which could lead to a failure. I did a simple swap of incandescent to LED, and incandescent lamps don't care about voltage the way an LED does and given the limited room (and some laziness on my part) I simply kept the wiring the same. The end result: Gauge Backlighting (10 of 10).jpg by KLaFaille, on Flickr Hope this was helpful, Red
    1 point
  3. http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/09/04/090411-news-usaf-pararescue-part2-1-4/ Some nice in cockpit A-10 vid. Could also be titled "Air Force's Ugly Duckling kicks a**!"
    1 point
  4. The thing is, it is ready, Wags confirmed that. What's holding things up is the distributor trying to get retail outlets to stock the game. Best way to get the retail game available is to start asking the retail shops around you why they aren't stocking it. Ask multiple stores, talk to the managers not just the clerks, send emails to parent companies and that kind of thing.
    1 point
  5. The offsets are there to adjust the dynamic HUD symbology for unique differences in specific aircraft. Things like slight differences in canopy optics, manufacturing and maintenance differences, and the fact that some airplanes just don't fly as straight as others. There are baseline offset values that are determined by OT&E and used across the fleet, and then Mx can tweak the values for each individual aircraft if the need arises. Along a similar (but different) idea, Ejection Velocity and Rack Delay settings can be tweaked to account for aircraft and weapon specific differences. The CCIP/CCRP solution already factors in the standard values, so any inputs made in DSMS for these values is added to the "standard" value.
    1 point
  6. I know this is an old thread but just in case... I figured out at least one way to control which is the default skin. The way it works is the ME uses the first one in the list by default. So the easiest thing to do is to make the one you want end up first on the list. Get the name of the skin you want and go to C:\Games\DCS A-10C\Bazar\Liveries\A-10C. The folder names are what you see in the ME list so just find the folder for that skin 23rd TFW England AFB (EL) for example (since it's my favorite stock skin) And just rename it with a one followed by a space preceding the existing name 1 23rd TFW England AFB (EL) Now that skin will appear first on the list in the mission editor and be selected by default when you create an American A-10C group. As near as I can tell this does not break anything but even though I figured this out a while back I just tried it today so there is no track record. Anyway, I remembed seeing this thread so here is an answer.:) EDIT: Now of course this will only work for missions that you create and it will probably break any missions that call for the skin by it's old name.
    1 point
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