At the Hangar

[Ivan]

There were some discussions recently about Merlin P-40s, so just after screwing up a flight test for my A6M2, I decided to look over my own Merlin P-40s that were done a few years back. The P-40F was pretty much as I remembered with RAF type markings.



The US Army Air Forces version was just a little different from what I remembered. It is shown in the directory listing as a P-40F-5 and the description shows a much later ""In Service" date than the plain P-40F.



That wasn't the unusual part. The surprising part was that it was a long-tail variant and I didn't remember building one though I must have done so.
I had to take a look back at the RAF version just to confirm the difference in the length of the tail. The easiest way is to note where the leading edge of the vertical fin meets the fuselage. If it is a short tail, it will meet at about the same place as the horizontal stabilizers. If it is a long tail, it will meet quite a ways back.
The next switch back to the USAAF version confused me even further. It kept the paint scheme of the RAF aircraft. I have seen this happen when the models were identical in differently named aircraft in the directory, but had not seen it before when the models were different as they clearly are in this case.



The next screenshot is just to show in one image that it is both a long tail variant and a Merlin P-40 with the odd Radiator exhaust area.



How often do you build something and then forget all about it? I must be getting really old and forgetful.
I can tell from the state of the instrument panel that this particular aircraft never finished testing.

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

This is a project that I do remember though I thought it was lost with the disk crashes.
The P-40M was an interesting model in that it never served with US forces. It was only used by Allied air forces.
This model carries RAAF insignia but no specific unit markings yet.

- Ivan.

 

[hertzie]

"I must be getting really old and forgetful"

Please don't give up, we need you here !!



hertzie

 

[Ivan]

Thank you Hertzie.
I actually found quite a bit on this restored Game Machine. Unfortunately, I have not found what I was actually looking for, but I did find a lot of other stuff. Apparently I also did an update to the Long Tail P-40K at some point.
It isn't even worth posting a screen shot of that because realistically, most P-40s pretty much look alike. The real differences are internal and that would be reflected in the Air and DP files which don't really screenshot well.

If I build the Short Tail P-40K with a fin fillet and reconfigured the Long Tail P-40F to be a P-40L "Gypsy Rose Lee", I believe I will have every major production P-40. Funny thing is that I never really wanted to even start the first P-40 except that I wanted a target for the A6M5. Pity that I didn't know at the time that those two aircraft probably seldom or maybe even never met.

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

This was something else I found a day or so ago. This was Eric Johnson's P-38J and didn't really have much on it when I started.
I used it as a "Proof of Concept" before deciding whether or not to spend the time on my own P-38 design from scratch.
There were two things to test.
The first was whether or not my idea of a flight model for the two outboard rotating propellers on the P-38 would work as I was expecting. Turns out that everything there pretty much worked as expected.
The second test was whether or not it was realistic to try to build a good P-38 within the limits of AF99. Indications were that there were not. Yes, I know others have built fairly nice P-38, but my build methods are a bit on the resource intensive side.

This is not a particularly pretty aeroplane, but isn't horrible as far as CFS projects go.

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

This evening I figured I would see what I could do about configuring a panel for the P-38 with the gauges that I had been programming the last couple years. Of course, it needed a background. As you can see, the background is a bit of a cheat and the lower left side really didn't come out quite as expected, but that isn't hard to fix.

I started with the configuration of the stock P51D panel and just replaced gauges as far as I could. I used sizes as close as I could get to the stock gauges. That is suggesting that I change some of the default gauge sizes to avoid having to always resize.
Some things worked and some did not. The things that did not do not seem like very difficult problems though.

Also need to do a little more research on how CFS handles fuel tanks.

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

The P-38 usually had 4 fuel tanks.
The two Main Tanks were located in the wing center section aft of the main spar.
They were usually around 90 US Gallons capacity each.
The two Reserve Tanks were located in the wing center section but ahead of the main spar.
These were usually 60 US Gallons capacity each.

Proper use would be first to draw from both Reserve tanks to have some room for any extra fuel returned from the carburetors as the engines ran. THEN, the Main tanks were to be expended before the Reserve tanks.
Of course for single engine operation and other emergencies, it was possible to transfer fuel from one side to the other and cross-feed to the opposite engine. The full selection of options for these two fuel selectors (one for each engine) could get complicated.
Programming a set is a non-trivial task and beyond the capability of Ivan's Gauge Factory at this point.

If the CFS 525, 526, 527, and 528 tanks are used (L & R Main, and L & R Aux), the default usage pattern without a selector is predictable. Both Aux Tanks will be used simultaneously and when they are expended, both Main Tanks will be used.
With this pattern and without a selector, the AIR File Aux Tanks must represent the P-38 Main tanks and the AIR File Main Tanks must represent the P-38 Reserve tanks.

The AIR file for this P-38 pre-date the creation of the gauges on the panel so it uses the more intuitive setup of Main = Main and Aux = Reserve. The gauges were created after the usage pattern was observed so they reflect the more correct matching of AIR file fuel tanks to actual aircraft fuel tanks.

The attached screen shot shows these updates and some minor spacing and size adjustments.

- Ivan.

 

[Ivan]

This is an old project aircraft I found last night. It is a first cut at editing Alex Simon's FW 190D.
It seems like around 90% of the Dora's for CFS1 are based on some modification or repaint of this AFX from Alex Simon.
I used it as the start for my "Experiments to Learn" thread.
Unfortunately it appears that what is left here has none of the actual modifications that were done for the experiments and is so early in the process that even the supercharger intake has not been moved to the correct side. I believe this line of development was really lost with the HDD failures.

- Ivan.

 

[hertzie]

Hi Ivan,

As they've always told me that there are no dumb questions, maybe you have an answer on something that has always wondered me: the stock CFS1 planes have acceptable VC's, but I never managed to get working instruments in VC's of others, not even the models that are in CFS1 originally.

So that makes me wonder if the P-40 and the P-38 you're working on have a VC with working instruments or only a 2D ?

Hope you do not mind me asking,

Erik (hertzie).

 

[Ivan]

Hello Hertzie,
The answer is going to get a lot more complicated than you probably were expecting.
First of all, the model format used by CFS is version 7.0 I believe. It has a lot of hooks into the simulator that make the AI model propellers actually work and the landing gear deploy. It also allows for bomb loads and the like.
There are also hooks for V-cockpit gauges but the actual configuration of those gauges is specified in the PANEL.CFG file.
If you look at the very bottom of the stock PANEL.CFG files, there is a section that seems to be a duplicate. The VC is what that section is for (as I understand it).

Most of the time, the tools that we are using to build models for CFS are actually intended for FS98. That means that they build to an earlier MDL format (6-something) which lacks a lot of those connections into the CFS simulation engine. Thus a lot of features don't work. Some people have suggested pulling the visual display code from a AF99 (FS98) MDL and pasting it into a CFS style MDL wrapper to gain the MDL 7.0 features.
I choose not to do that at this time because I don't see that as enough of a gain to be worth the possibility of errors and because I don't like the idea of switching to SCASM as the reference baseline. I like my baselines to be something I can look at and SCASM is something I do not have that much experience or confidence working in.

There is another thread about MDL file formats that might have more detail. I wrote it years ago but it was basically about the same subject as this discussion.

So, as a simple answer, no. My models won't be having working instruments in the V-Cockpits anytime soon. I am still just at the stage where I am learning how to program instruments and gauges and that is enough for now.

Attached is an image of one of the later series Dora from the "Experiments to Learn" thread. This is from a screenshot I posted on a different forum years ago. I am fairly certain this MDL is gone unless it is one a flash drive used for transport between machines.
It is a pity. They were getting to look pretty nice by this stage.

- Ivan.

 

[hertzie]

Hi Ivan, sorry for my late thanks for your explanations, had caught a cold.

It is as it is.

Wish you lots of succes with your learning curve

hertzie.

 

[Ivan]

Hello Hertzie,
The "Experiments to Learn" actually proved successful very early. As I have stated before many times, I learn something new with just about every project I work on, no matter how simple it first appears to be. I just didn't have a chance to incorporate that particular lesson into anything other than the A6M2 before my Development Machine finally died.

The latest learning curve issue is how to program a throttle. Should be simple, but never did one before.

As for my explanation about the MDL differences, I don't know if you have more questions.
If you have flown missions with the stock aircraft as opponents or as a wingman, you probably have noticed the things I was describing such as landing gear that are down on other aircraft as they gather for take-off, propellers that appear animated instead of just disappearing with AI opponents, etc.
The default is for any of the animated engine parts (propellers, spinners, cooling fans, etc.) to disappear on AI aircraft. I tried to get around that by putting in multiple copies of things that could not be completely missing. A propeller spinner that is not animated is acceptable.... sort of, but one that is completely gone looks kind of silly.

- Ivan.

By the way, this is what an actual P-38 with deployed flaps looks like. Compare this with the screenshot upthread.
Fowler Flaps look strange, don't they?