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The Staff of SOH
c-46 service pack
- Thread starter avedis
- Start date
warchild
Charter Member
Welll, I'm a bit torn over the new fde, or rather the difference between the fde's. You see, I consitantly fly out of Kunming, which was an eastern terminus for the hump route. It's altitude is 6300 feet. Now, the original fde could barely get the plane off the ground there due to the barometric pressure experienced at those altitudes, and high hot chinese weather.. Obviously, flying the hump required that planes be able to take off and land, but the original fde, didnt provide for that at that airport, and therefore airports throughout tibet and pakistan of which some are over ten thousand foot in altitude.
This new fde fixes that, but does it go too far?? Takeoffs are easy. Speed is a dream; perhaps too much of a dream. It seems to me that in acquiring functionality, its lost some of its reality.
In all my years of crunching numbers, balancing operational components making certain that each part of the flight model played nicely with each other part.
I learned something..
I learned that although reality was the goal, that it couldnt always be achieved with real data.
Because fsx is very set in the way it deals with everything, you have to work within those constraints that it sets. Whereas in the real world you can simply add more power to overcome an obstacle ( numerically of course ) in fsx you sometimes have to fudge things a bit. In this case I believe adding more power appears to have been a mistake, when what was needed was more lift. The plane now has too much power to match reality, and becomes rather unstable in turbulent skies.. More lift and weight could provide the plane with whats needed to match reality while remaining stable in turbulent conditions.
I do hope ive made some sense. Things arent always so clear to me any more..
Pam
This new fde fixes that, but does it go too far?? Takeoffs are easy. Speed is a dream; perhaps too much of a dream. It seems to me that in acquiring functionality, its lost some of its reality.
In all my years of crunching numbers, balancing operational components making certain that each part of the flight model played nicely with each other part.
I learned something..
I learned that although reality was the goal, that it couldnt always be achieved with real data.
Because fsx is very set in the way it deals with everything, you have to work within those constraints that it sets. Whereas in the real world you can simply add more power to overcome an obstacle ( numerically of course ) in fsx you sometimes have to fudge things a bit. In this case I believe adding more power appears to have been a mistake, when what was needed was more lift. The plane now has too much power to match reality, and becomes rather unstable in turbulent skies.. More lift and weight could provide the plane with whats needed to match reality while remaining stable in turbulent conditions.
I do hope ive made some sense. Things arent always so clear to me any more..
Pam
I tried that too, I'm used to having to start the C-47 with throttles cracked, in fact this C-46 is one of the few I have that starts with throttles at idle.
Nothing, absolutely nothing I tried would get the engines to start. I tried selectively removing all the changes from the aircraft.cfg one at a time, and ended up with the old .air file and just a few lines from the old aircraft.cfg, and it works fine now.
I feel it's just a bit under powered out of the box at this point and adjusted the piston ratio a bit so that I could climb at the recommended speed of 105 knots and cruise at the expected speed of 150 knots with a 50% load. As distributed, I couldn't get it much above 120 with a 50% load. Also the CHT is off, like in most simulated pistons, and I adjusted the CHT record in the .air file to give more realistic temps (oil temps are fine, which is unusual, most sims get that wrong too.) I'll be happy to share these small easy changes with anyone who cares that much about it.
I enjoy flying the airplane. It's a nice simulation, and I appreciate the fixes in both SPs. Now I can read the glideslope/VOR in daylight, and the beacon switch is correctly labelled now
Dutch
Dutch please do share your changes as i trust your work after the payware you have worked on and seeing the end result
maybe, but ive worked with dutch in the past on a payware package and know his talents and im interested to see what he has come with with
Hi Jeansy,
I really don't have much time to do anything extensive, I'm too busy with payware projects. But I do like this C-46 and it's a fine Air America aircraft. I have an Air America career I pursue in FSCaptain, mostly as a test bed for the new missions system, but I'm a sucker for any airplane that matches a historical Air America plane. So far I have the PC-6 from Tim, C-45 from Milton, C-46 (this), C-47 (Jahn), T-28 (Ant's) and of course the UH-1 (Milviz). I would *love* a C-123, H-34, or C-7 but haven't found a high enough quality one of any of these. I'm spoiled by the ever higher quality of add-ons, freeware and pay, we have nowadays.
Warchild is right in that the main problem is it's a little under powered. It can't get to any of its typical speeds with a typical load. After tinkering a bit I found a boost of the piston power scalar to 1.27 gets the numbers about right between sea level and 6000 feet. With FSX/P3D you can't get everything right at every altitude, you have to pick and choose. I try to get the numbers right for the airplane's typical environment, which for the C-46 is NOT way up high.
I find like most pistons the CHT is too low. No matter what you do you can't get the cylinder temps anywhere near red line. Not true in reality, of course. To fix this you have to edit the air file. Record 541 is Engine CHT. Make the tuning constant 1.29, the cooling constant 0.75, max temp 960, and rate of change 0.015 - this will get it in a more realistic range. Abusing the engines can now get you over red line. Of course, there will be no consequences unless you have some external code like RealEngine to monitor these things. I have some XML I moved over from the old DC-3C I did long ago and I've put that into just about every piston I have, and changed the red line numbers.
All this is really just easy tinkering to make things a little more realistic.
Dutch
Its all good dutch i have custom fde i made up, im happy with what i have, i just wanted to see what you have done
Im happy now i can climb to 8000ft without stalling even when my climb rate is 100 fpm unlike the fde it was shipped with
warchild
Charter Member
Hi Timmy. Yes there is.. Open the aircraft.cfg file and scroll down to where it says [Contact Points]..
Checheck line one and make zure its not the same s line two, then move over across the line to entry 7. In a castoring setup that muber will usually be 180, showing that wheel rotate 180 degrees. Change that to something lower. I prefer 34 myself but other people use other angles.. save and have fun,,,
BendyFlyer
Charter Member
Warchild and Jeansy - are these changes for the SP2 version of the C-46 or the first one? I have had time to have a look at this one again as I have been fiddling with another product the HS748.
warchild
Charter Member
BendyFlyer..
The changes I recommended are for the initial release. The update, which we just got, actually fixed a number of major errors. which i wont go into. the changes i recommended will allow a person to adjust the original flight model to behave in line with the description of the planes behavior given above. The corrections in the updated model, follow documented datum from the manufacturers. They arent exact however, but pretty close..
The changes I recommended are for the initial release. The update, which we just got, actually fixed a number of major errors. which i wont go into. the changes i recommended will allow a person to adjust the original flight model to behave in line with the description of the planes behavior given above. The corrections in the updated model, follow documented datum from the manufacturers. They arent exact however, but pretty close..
BendyFlyer
Charter Member
Got it. I have not had a chance to run the updated version about yet. I have most of the relevant technical data on the C-46 (some useful stuff from the USAF) and the FAA. It was clear when you had a close read of the data this was not a hot and high aeroplane but worked fine at low altitudes but was not a great performer which is hardly surprising given its size and weight (should have had 4 engines not 2). The notes about engine specs, AIR file data is spot on, amazing how so many developers get this wrong, which I guess is down to a lack of understanding of how piston engines work and the FSX engine which makes it happen.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Fading power in cruise
Hi all,
I picked up the Commando in the JF pick and mix sale that's on right now, and I'm generally impressed with it. The plane 'feels' heavy, if that makes any sense at all.
But I think I found a bug, unless I'm doing it wrong.
Several flights now, I've taken off, climbed to altitude slowly, with supercharger on 'low' and got there easily enough. Cruising at various altitudes between 4,500 and 14,500ft.
What I find is that after about an hour, the engines slowly lose power and there's nothing I can do about it. Plenty of fuel in the tank, supercharger on 'low' cowl flaps closed, no overheating, carb heat on.
This happens in different weather conditions and has happened in 5/7 flights so far.
Is it me, or a bug? I'm running P3D4.1, and have applied all the service packs.
Mike
Hi all,
I picked up the Commando in the JF pick and mix sale that's on right now, and I'm generally impressed with it. The plane 'feels' heavy, if that makes any sense at all.
But I think I found a bug, unless I'm doing it wrong.
Several flights now, I've taken off, climbed to altitude slowly, with supercharger on 'low' and got there easily enough. Cruising at various altitudes between 4,500 and 14,500ft.
What I find is that after about an hour, the engines slowly lose power and there's nothing I can do about it. Plenty of fuel in the tank, supercharger on 'low' cowl flaps closed, no overheating, carb heat on.
This happens in different weather conditions and has happened in 5/7 flights so far.
Is it me, or a bug? I'm running P3D4.1, and have applied all the service packs.
Mike
thunderstreak
Charter Member
Service Pack 3 is out now.
I have uninstalled the AH C-46 and installed the latest version 106. I still have issues with how the engines and propellers behave in P3Dv4.1. The relationship between manifold pressure and RPM seems incorrect. During run up a lot of MP is required to increase RPM. Over 40” to get more than 1000 RPM. Propellers set to 100%, mixture and supercharger changes don’t help. Take off, full throttle 60”, superchargers low or high, propellers 100%, mixture auto rich, RPM is still low until part way down the runway, then it seems to come to life. 2500 RPM climbing out and I can reach 2700 straight and level. During climb and cruise it behaves as it should. During decent though if you cut the throttles to far, again props 100%, auto rich, etc. the RPM will drop again to around 1000. A bunch of throttle is necessary to get the RPM up again. Has anyone else experienced this?
I have recently flown MJ C-47 v3.14, FR DC-4, A2A Connie, Milviz Baron, Carenado C-185.............
All of which the engines and propellers perform as they should.
Real world pilot as well, so hopefully I have a reasonable understanding how this should all work
I have uninstalled the AH C-46 and installed the latest version 106. I still have issues with how the engines and propellers behave in P3Dv4.1. The relationship between manifold pressure and RPM seems incorrect. During run up a lot of MP is required to increase RPM. Over 40” to get more than 1000 RPM. Propellers set to 100%, mixture and supercharger changes don’t help. Take off, full throttle 60”, superchargers low or high, propellers 100%, mixture auto rich, RPM is still low until part way down the runway, then it seems to come to life. 2500 RPM climbing out and I can reach 2700 straight and level. During climb and cruise it behaves as it should. During decent though if you cut the throttles to far, again props 100%, auto rich, etc. the RPM will drop again to around 1000. A bunch of throttle is necessary to get the RPM up again. Has anyone else experienced this?
I have recently flown MJ C-47 v3.14, FR DC-4, A2A Connie, Milviz Baron, Carenado C-185.............
All of which the engines and propellers perform as they should.
Real world pilot as well, so hopefully I have a reasonable understanding how this should all work
Thunderstreak, I was about to recommend that you visit the Just Flight C-46 forum, but I see you've already posted there. To my knowledge, the C-46's flight dynamics have been altered at least twice since it's initial release, once by Aeroplane Heaven ( the developers ) and then by publisher Just Flight's own in-house team, in an attempt to answer user's complaints. Just Flight did what they could, but it was a compromise, and we now have something more useable, but less than perfect. If it's any reassurance, your experience with MP and RPM matches mine.
thunderstreak
Charter Member
Thanks Paul, I appreciate the reply. Since I now know this problem isn’t unique to me I can stop wasting time trying to figure it out.
I assume there’s a good chance this will never get resolved.
I have a bunch of JF/AH payware addons and many have issues, some perhaps only noticeable if you want to fly by the “book”.
They seem to quit after a few service packs regardless if all the issues are fixed.
Buyer beware I guess.
I assume there’s a good chance this will never get resolved.
I have a bunch of JF/AH payware addons and many have issues, some perhaps only noticeable if you want to fly by the “book”.
They seem to quit after a few service packs regardless if all the issues are fixed.
Buyer beware I guess.
bazzar
Charter Member 2018
Your comment is unnecessary. Many here know we will continue to work on these issues until we find solutions. We do not build products to "study-sim" level and do not pretend to. Neither are they priced that way. When we have fixes you will be notified of the issue of service packs for this and all our products. Thankyou.
In fairness to Thunderstreak, Bazzar, how long should it take to arrive at the solutions you allude to ? The C-46 is a fine model, inside and out, but the FDE has been problematical from day one. I don't wish to appear rude, but it's now been at least five months since the release - I bought it last October. Given that elapsed time, surely people's doubts about a prospective solution are understandable, don't you think ?