Air speed gauge

R

robert41

SOH-CM-2016
Looking for an air speed indicator that reads in True Air Speed. Something for my prewar aircraft, an old needle gauge, that I can use as a 2d popup. Or if I could modify an existing gauge, that would be great. Have found many digital gauges, but would like a vintage looking gauge. Any ideas?
 
Do you mean one that reads in miles per hour rather than in knots?

If so, go to FlightSim or SimV and look for Paul Clawson's CFS-2 Grumman FF-1. It has a set of vintage gauges that includes an air speed indicator that should serve your purpose, and they work fine in FS9.

You'll probably find that you'll use more than just the ASI.

This gauge package was included in a number of Paul's CFS-2 and FS2002 planes, and if you check out some of the others you might get some additional gauges that aren't in the FF-1.

I must admit that I'm not certain that the ASI reads in MPH, and it's too late at night to boot up the sim and check, but I believe I recall that it reads in MPH. That would certainly be appropriate for a vintage instrument.

BTW, no instrument measures true air speed; it doesn't work that way. The instrument can only measure indicated air speed (that's why the term says "indicated.") To get true air speed you have to start with indicated air speed and the barometric pressure, and do the math. Or read the chart, or something... (I suppose today computers figure it out for you, but not in vintage times.) But you knew that, right...?
 
Hey Mick, actually Iam looking for something like this, but in a vintage looking gauge. I read that some German WW2 aircraft ASI showed TAS above a certain altitude?
 
Well, I doubt there really was a good IAS/TAS gauge until postwar research showed it could be done and was worthwhile. I can't remember seeing one. Bomber and Transport crews usually had a navigator to do the calculations from tables. Fighter pilots only worried about IAS. At lower latitudes ( below 8000 ft) it was probably disregarded by most 1930's aviators.

As for the more modern ones, I have yet to find one in FS9 that either works properly or is legible. The default C172 and Baron seem to work OK/sorta. Most others I've tried won't allow sufficient correction or aren't easy to read (you have to set Temp. against altitude in that little sub-scale at the top).

180px-True_airspeed_indicator-FAA.SVG.png


There's a reasonable explanation of an ASI in Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airspeed_indicator

"The true airspeed can be calculated as a function of equivalent airspeed and local air density, (or temperature and pressure altitude which determine density). Some airspeed indicators incorporate a slide rule mechanism to perform this calculation. "

If all you are looking for is an approx TAS then you can use a rule of thumb -- add 2% of IAS per 1000 ft of altitude. Or it can be calculated using an E6b computer (not the common online emulator)
or an online calculator found here
http://www.luizmonteiro.com/Altimetry.aspx

To me, the easiest and non-intrusive way is to use FSDat or AFSD - besides they show so much more data you can use.

Rob
 
And of course, in the FS9 Realism Settings, you can change it to read and display True Air Speed.
 
Correct Milton,

but then it gets confusing when you have to monitor IAS to stay below Vne (Never exceed), or above Vso or Vsi (Stall cean/dirty), because these are measured and published in the a/c data as Indicated Air Speed. --esp. at altitudes (even as low as 8-10000 ft) where the IAS/TAS difference can be significant.

Rob
 
Ground speed includes differences in speed from the wind. Whether you've got a headwind or tailwind can make a lot of difference in GS.

I've got a digital gauge installed in some of mine that gives both TAS and GS. It's part of the RKS fuel status gauge set.
 
I dimly recall that some of the German jets may have had a Mach Meter, which is a TAS of sorts, the speed of sound varying with the temperature and Mach being a percent of the speed of sound.

t
 
Hi,

Manuele Villa's great G12 has the ability to show on it's ASI, depending on where you hold the mouse arrow, TAS, in both Knots and Kilometres as well as the IAS in Knots; the dial itself shows IAS in Kilometric measure.

So, for example in the G12 today over the Andes, for an IAS of 109 Knots the ASI showed a TAS of 160 Knots and the GPS showed a GS of 220 Knots. There is quite a heavy wind in Microsoft's world .

Quite a difference. Thanks for pointing out the wide margins possible.

Andy.
 
Thanks guys. I totally missed the ASI in Manuele's G12 reads both IAS and TAS. Much more appropriate for golden age aircraft.
 
lemonadedrinker said:
Hi,

Manuele Villa's great G12 has the ability to show on it's ASI, depending on where you hold the mouse arrow, TAS, in both Knots and Kilometres as well as the IAS in Knots; the dial itself shows IAS in Kilometric measure.

So, for example in the G12 today over the Andes, for an IAS of 109 Knots the ASI showed a TAS of 160 Knots and the GPS showed a GS of 220 Knots. There is quite a heavy wind in Microsoft's world .

Quite a difference. Thanks for pointing out the wide margins possible.

Andy.
Click to expand...

Hi Friends,
I remember You that the G.12 is a Stefano Meneghini's work, I made only the skins.....
The ASI gauge code also isn't mine, Stefano rewrote the code and used an ITALIANWINGS bitmap modified by me.
:jump::jump::jump::jump:
 
Hi,

An omission on my part, and my apologies to Stefan. Made worse by the fact that I only seem to fly the G12 and the G18v. Well, and the S73. Oh, and the S81 and the S79.

Thank you, Stefan, for these wonderful aircraft models and to you Manuele for painting them:ernae::ernae:

Andy.
 
lemonadedrinker said:
Hi,

An omission on my part, and my apologies to Stefan. Made worse by the fact that I only seem to fly the G12 and the G18v. Well, and the S73. Oh, and the S81 and the S79.

Thank you, Stefan, for these wonderful aircraft models and to you Manuele for painting them:ernae::ernae:

Andy.
Click to expand...

Hi Lemonadedrinker,
Stefano has made the G.12, the S.73 and the S.81, all their skins are mine. The G.18 and the Ansaldo SVA 5/9 are mine, the S.79 is a conversion I made of the ITALIANWINGS/Luca Festari/Alex Biagi original CFS3 model.
:jump::jump::jump::jump:
 
Modifying an existing gauge should be easy... I think;Have not tried though.
Modifying a gauge for personal use shoud be ok I guess.

Example for Vega asi gauge.

1. Open fs9 folder..\Aircraft\lockheed_vega\panel\lockheed_vega.cab (doubleclicking should open the .cab file, otherwise use winzip or another decompressor)

2. Copy the files
asi.xml
asi_background.bmp
asi_needle.bmp
to a new folder. Call this folder "TAS gauge" for example.
(You probably have to extract these from the .cab to some place first.)

3. Rename asi.xml to TAS.xml (just for the looks) in this folder.

4. Open TAS.xml with notepad and edit the following lines:

a) <Gauge Name="asi" Version="1.0">
change to
<Gauge Name="TAS" Version="1.0"> (just for the looks)

b) (A:Airspeed select indicated or true, mph)
change to
(A:AIRSPEED TRUE, mph) or
(A:AIRSPEED TRUE, knot)
(Parameters in the "Parameters.doc" in the Panel and Gauges sdk.)

Note the images referenced by the gauge (within the <image> tags, in italics below). These have to be in the same folter as the .xml file.

Save and you're done.
Control the TAS file has extension .xml, otherwise manually change extension to .xml.

Code: 
<[B]Gauge Name="asi"[/B] Version="1.0">
[I]<Image Name="asi_background.bmp"/>[/I]
 
  <!-- ======================= Airspeed Needle ===================== -->
  <Element>
    <Position X="56.4" Y="57.4"/>
[I] <Image Name="asi_needle.bmp" PointsTo="North">[/I]
      <Axis X="4.39999" Y="47.4"/>
    </Image>
    <Rotate>
     <Value Minimum="0" Maximum="300">
[B]       (A:Airspeed select indicated or true, mph) [/B]
      </Value>
      <Failures>
        <SYSTEM_PITOT_STATIC Action="0"/>
        <GAUGE_AIRSPEED Action="Freeze"/>
      </Failures>
      <Nonlinearity>
        <Item Value="0" X="57" Y="5"/>
        <Item Value="40" X="93" Y="21"/>
        <Item Value="60" X="104" Y="37"/>
        <Item Value="80" X="108" Y="57"/>
        <Item Value="100" X="104" Y="77"/>
        <Item Value="120" X="93" Y="94"/>
        <Item Value="140" X="77" Y="104"/>
        <Item Value="160" X="57" Y="108"/>
        <Item Value="200" X="20" Y="93"/>
        <Item Value="240" X="5" Y="57"/>
        <Item Value="300" X="37" Y="10"/>
      </Nonlinearity>
      <Delay DegreesPerSecond="25"/>
    </Rotate>
  </Element>
  <Mouse>
    <Help ID="HELPID_GAUGE_AIRSPEED"/>
    <Tooltip ID="TOOLTIPTEXT_AIRSPEED_MPH" MetircID="TOOLTIPTEXT_AIRSPEED_KILOS"/>
  </Mouse>
 
</Gauge>

5. For the looks a few changes to the .xml file are possible like adjusting the help popups ect.
The "asi_background.bmp" image has a marking as "mph". If you display knots you may want to edit the .bmp file.
But all this is optional.

6. Put the "TAS gauge" folder into the main \Gauges folder (for the gauge to be available for all acft)
or
into the panel folder for the gauge only to be available to a specific aircraft.
(No need for cabbing the folder.)

7. Add the gauge to your panel.cfg in the normal way.
Note native size of the gauge is 114x114 pixel, the size of "asi_background.bmp".
e.g.
gauge00=TAS Gauge!TAS,0,0,114,114

I believe this should work.

Gunter
 
A big thanks to Stefano Meneghini for the G12. Also to Teson1 for his tips on gauges. I modified the default DC3 ASI to read in TAS.
 
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