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Out of curiosity, as you seem to be sitting on some solid documentation, how much power does the switch to second stage blower suck out of the engine in the modelled version? Cheers, Fred

It's the way I started out. About one quarter to a third of the price for a PPL I think - may be different in the UK of course. Great fun, great way to get started. Glider pilots seem to make better powered pilots as well, which is hardly surprising considering the relative time actually spent manoeuvring an aircraft. Do look into the practical arrangements in your local club(s) beforehand though. It can be a real time thief, taking a full day to get an hour in the air. Bringing aircraft out, waiting for weather, helping others get airborne, flying, cleaning aircraft, helping others, putting everything back in the hangars... Other operations are more commercial in nature. Get there, fly, pay rental, land, go home. More expensive, of course. I dropped my license a few years ago due to time constraints and only fly powered today. Still miss real flying though. Now the local club just bought a self-starter, so I'm badly tempted... Have a few trial flights and see if you get hooked! I think you will... :) Cheers, Fred

Five degrees above ISA means the altimeter will underread about 2%. When you are at 5000' MSL, as indicated by your radio or radar altimeter, with a correct QNH for a sea-level reference point you would read around 4900' on your baro altimeter. You compensated for this by adjusting your altimeter setting for the altimeter to match your radalt. At 500' radalt, the same error is reduced to a mere 10'. Your dialed in adjustment is still 100', so you should be 90' high on your baro altimeter. In other words, it's pretty much as it should be, but still a good catch! :thumbup: Actually, no. ;) For MSL altitudes, local geoids are used. That's why you should have the corresponding geoid undulation specified for every MSL altitude given in aeronautical publications. In other words, MSL altitudes are relative to a theoretical model of what the sea level would be at your current location, had the planet been covered with water. If it wasn't, you'd end up with interesting phenomena such as theoretically level water surfaces flowing, as they would not be perpendicular to the local gravitational field. An interesting side effect of this difference between ellipsoid and geoid is that you can find places where you can follow flowing water downstream and read an increasing height, as measured in your GPS. Your GPS probably gives height relative to the WGS84 ellipsoid rather than the geoid, at least on default settings. :) (To actually see this, you'd need survey-grade corrected GPS receiver though... and probably do a fair bit of walking.) Cheers, Fred

A glide path antenna can be very small, so should be doable.

On/off road issue?

Allright, this had to be verified. I set up two missions, one on a very hot summer's day at ISA+30 (45°C on the ground) and one on a cold winter day at ISA-50 (-35°C on the ground). Otherwise, the missions were identical. As I wanted to verify that nothing is awry with the GPS height, I monitored the GPS height and flew right over the top of a significant peak. QNH for Batumi, so essentially no difference between QNH datum and sea level. [TABLE=head]|Hot day|Cold day GPS height|11160|1150 Altimeter reading|10280|13100 OAT|14°C|-42°C [/TABLE] Running the hot day figures through the CR-3 gives a true altitude of 11,100'. The cold day figures give 11,500. Very much in the ballpark, I'd say. Done right enough is my verdict. I suspect it will be even better using more exact methods than the CR-3*, which is probably stretched to its limits by those extremes. Well done, ED! It is also very satisfying to see the performance difference. On the hot day, with a rather heavy plane, the far end of the runway at Batumi was approaching at quite a rate by the time I reached lift-off speed. At 3500 feet/200 KIAS I got around 2000 fpm. On the cold day, I had plenty of runway to spare and screamed through 3500 at 5000 fpm. :pilotfly: Cheers, Fred *) Got that software on the laptop, but didn't feel like fetching it tonight.

Rotor blade tip speeds and loads on the blades and the rotor hub would be reasons for limiting your RPM. No, the blades are most efficient at a given AoA. As you approach the stall angle, drag increases drastically while lift remains the same (or even decreases). As you approach the zero-lift angle of attack, lift (and I'm probably being Captain Obvious here) decreases towards zero while the drag of course does not. Somewhere inbetween is the best lift/drag ratio. As for flying higher, keep in mind that the speed of sound decreases with increasing altitude. Also a factor when considering the tip speed of the advancing blade.

Normally, all headings (in charts and on your instruments) are in magnetic, meaning you don't have to worry about variation while flying, except for when getting headings from your map. (The exception would be wind reports, which are normally in degrees true, again with the exception for the winds given by tower prior to landing which are kindly given in degrees magnetic.)

I did check runway (and localiser) alignment back in B4 and they checked out OK, so it shouldn't be the true alignment at fault here.

FWIW, I investigated same subject in the maintenance manual. Nothing definitive said and the drawings are not clear, but my final conclusion was that I'd guess at direct linkage between aileron and rudder trim knobs and pointers, with gearing (of unknown ratio) on the elevator trim. I'm also interested in data on the implementation!

Earlier runway heading: 121 Current runway heading: Approx 119.0-119.5 (see screenshot) Difference: About 1.5 degrees. I didn't alledge anything. I did substantiate though! :thumbup: I have a rather good grasp of the pre-1.1.1 situation, as I did extensive verification of the geographical alignment and properties of the ILS and same runway back during the beta. B4 IIRC. Also of possible interest: The whiskey compass and HSI didn't align before (if that particular forum source is to be trusted - I'd be careful!). Now they are both off by the same amount.

I'm on the road and on a dumbphone, so I can't find the thread now, but I believe I verified the runway alignment from threshold coords and it checked out OK. I'll make sure it is indeed verified later today when back home. Doing my job on my day off... :) Edit: But I'm not a tester, so I will let it rest... ;) (Nah, just kidding, but I am getting tired of the "nothing to see, move on and don't talk about it" replies us non-testers get when finding issues. We ARE trying to help.)

A degree and a half, and someone has been doing work on the issue rather recently. What do you win by not updating? Why are you so reluctant to add things to the bug tracker? There's no cost associated by keeping the devs with the most complete and updated information. There are potential savings when they do get around to the issue. When I have people testing my software, I want them to give it all to me - big and small. I can sort the chaff from the wheat myself, and the small things may point me in the right direction when looking for the big issues. Are you certain that the person who worked on the magnetic variations is aware of the fact that whatever he or she did caused this change? Perhaps something else was changed, and they never thought that this would change as well? That's rather common.

So what I posted here wasn't exactly a known issue then, as you weren't aware of it? Would seem it is time to update that error report then.

And the report includes the fact that the error changed?

Impressive effort. Didn't by any chance tabulate the data, comparing in-game with real-world? It would be interesting to see if it is the same all over or if there are variations (pun not entirely unintentional :D).

Correct = corresponding to real life, yes.

We've got a MagVar folder in the Data folder now at least, with world magnetic model coefficient files dated June 2011. :thumbup: Here's a good read - how hard can it be? :music_whistling: (Most people will get dizzy after the first page of equations, so the answer is: Rather easy to mess up. I certainly wouldn't have that in my release code - I'd just tabulate the data and look it up. Looks like someone made a serious effort at thwarting this one.) Edit: The Georgian CAA are, like all too many CAAs, using old magnetic data. They last updated in 1995. According to the world magnetic model it is currently 6°3'E, so we should be seeing 125 degrees. Perhaps that accounts for the change and is a clue as to where the bug is? Perhaps there's an erroneous static subtraction of five degrees somewhere in the code. The correct subtraction was initially by the AIP specified five degrees, making us see 121 where we should have seen 126. In June 2011, the correct subtraction was improved to using WMM data, bringing it up from five degrees to six degrees and creating the current 119 degree reading?

Neither indication cares about the set course. Centerline will mean centered indicators, regardless of course. The HSI course setting only makes life easier for the pilot while trying to align.

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but isn't the mag var issue supposed to be fixed? (Additional reference) The runway heading for rwy 13 at Batumi should be 126 degrees, as per current approach charts. Unfortunately, in-game it is now barely 120 degrees, as shown below: The indication used to be 121 degrees, so something has changed - it has actually gotten worse! The published magnetic variation is 5 degrees E, so it is subtracted twice and then some from the true runway heading of 131 degrees. Known issue? It is certainly no help if you try to shoot an ILS. Cheers, Fred

First off, you are probably better off leaving the command bars stowed. These are your ILS indicators: Second, the correct runway heading is 126 degrees. It would, however, appear that they have managed to bug the magnetic variation even worse with this release so the in-game rwy hdg is 119.5 at the moment. Arrrrgh....!

If I understand the question correctly, you're asking what would be considered heavy winds? The answer is, of course, it depends. Mainly on aircraft, and on the wind direction. A steady wind blowing down the runway can get up to quite hight wind speeds before it is an issue. A gusting wind, or a crosswind, or a gusting crosswind... that becomes a problem much earlier. The flight manual crosswind limitations are between 25 and 35 knots, to give you an indication. Around 20 knots is probably what you'd consider a windy day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale Cheers, Fred

Are you using the speed brakes? I found out while doing some other testing that the aircraft is very wheelie-prone unless you have the air brakes open. Probably Not Quite Right, but no biggie IMO. Cheers, Fred

Now, ponder this: Every aircraft has an altimeter which conforms to the specifications for altimeters, meaning they read the same and are all affected by non-standard atmosphere conditions. This ensures that aircraft flying at 4000 feet on their altimeters are 1000 feet apart from aircraft flying at 5000 feet on their altimeters. It's not exact altitudes above ground under non-standard atmospheric conditions, but the errors are the same for all aircraft so separation is ensured anyway. Now you are suggesting that aircraft with ADCs will have those errors taken out and fly more correct altitudes, as far as height above ground goes. Non-ADC aircraft maintaining their assigned 10,000 feet on a cold day would be at 9000 feet AGL. Then ATC gets an A-10 through the airspace and assigns it to 9000 feet to make sure there's 1000 feet of separation to the other traffic. Only the A-10 has an OAT probe and an ADC so it swiftly corrects and flies 9000 feet AGL... I think you need to try thinking that one through again. It would appear you were unlucky on the first attempt. Must be all that riding in convertibles with the wind through the hair... :music_whistling: If you dig into the literature, you'll find that the OAT isn't exactly without other uses. For one, it enables you to correct your altimeter reading for non-ISA temperatures. There's INS height to use, which would indeed be unaffected. That's not what you will see on the altimeter though. Edit: Last but not least, even with OAT, the ADC don't know how to correct unless it has the reference elevation for the QNH source. And where do you tell the ADC whether you are flying QNH, QFE or QNE?

A real altimeter is affected by the temperature, and will overread when it is cold. That is why you need to correct for non-standard temperatures.