DHC-4 Caribou

Rallymodeller said:
Same. It's such a delight to fly I can forgive a lot. I've used it on two complete Misty Moorings tours now, and it's quickly become my go-to bird. Only real crab is the lack of power above about 8000' ASL. The ceiling should be over 20,000', so something is wrong. I had to abandon a flight over Mt. Denali because I just couldn't make it higher than 10,000'.
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I got up to 22,000 ft this morning, over England. climbing out of Duxford...were you leaning as you climbed?
Maybe icing?
 
Ok, stupid question. I’m trying a repaint, of the Ansett-MAL caribou that was flown in PNG during the seventies.

How do I move the registration from it’s spot on the empennage? It should be on the tail for this paint job.
 
keithb77 said:
I got up to 22,000 ft this morning, over England. climbing out of Duxford...were you leaning as you climbed?
Maybe icing?
Click to expand...

So here's what happened, after I thought about it a bit. The real plane has auto-rich and auto-lean settings on the mixture levers, as would be expected from a Stromberg-equipped R2000, and the gates are even marked as such. A/R is full forward, A/L is about 50%. What I failed to realize, and this was made worse after a lot of flying the AH DC-3 that has it (and the PMDG DC-6 that has a flight engineer), is that ORBX didn't bother to enable those particular settings. I had been flying the plane according to the POH, and was super confused as to why I was getting no altitude power.

I tried it again today playing with the mixtures like it was a Cessna and got well into oxygen-needed range. Live and learn.

Another thing added to the list of This Really Needs To Be Corrected along with the lack of an autopilot, the power-setting gauges, and lack of window de-icing and wipers.

Still well worth it, though.
 
The window heaters do work, but the switch is disabled. I just added a key mapping.

I can’t find a command for windscreen wipers, though.
 
How to engage auto-lean on the caribou?

Rallymodeller said:
So here's what happened, after I thought about it a bit. The real plane has auto-rich and auto-lean settings on the mixture levers, as would be expected from a Stromberg-equipped R2000, and the gates are even marked as such. A/R is full forward, A/L is about 50%. What I failed to realize, and this was made worse after a lot of flying the AH DC-3 that has it (and the PMDG DC-6 that has a flight engineer), is that ORBX didn't bother to enable those particular settings. I had been flying the plane according to the POH, and was super confused as to why I was getting no altitude power. I tried it again today playing with the mixtures like it was a Cessna and got well into oxygen-needed range. Live and learn. Another thing added to the list of This Really Needs To Be Corrected along with the lack of an autopilot, the power-setting gauges, and lack of window de-icing and wipers. Still well worth it, though.
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Can you be a bit more explicit on how to auto-lean the caribou and at what altitude this should be done?
 
Burnhaven said:
Can you be a bit more explicit on how to auto-lean the caribou and at what altitude this should be done?
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It doesn't have autolean, sadly. In real life AR is full-forward on the mix levers and AL is at about 50%. The mixture gates are marked as such, but the algorithm for auto-rich and auto-lean don't seem to have been implemented. I just use "automix" in the assistance tab for the Caribou.
 
Rallymodeller said:
It is, and it's not a perfect solution as the mixture is always set for peak power. There's no way to lean out for fuel economy.
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There is a key binding in controls that is something like "set best mixture," I'm going to see how well that does. But even with a supercharger, engines are going to produce less power at altitude. I'm beginning to think the Caribou was really built for under 10k ft.
 
Set best mixture

azflyboy said:
IIRC, Asobo broke that binding about a year ago (it just forced the mixture to cutoff), and I don't know that they ever fixed it.
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I did notice the mixture levers move just a bit when I set that binding. Time will tell if it's doing enough but I'm beginning to think the Caribou was designed for under 10k ft altitude, especially when operating on shorter fields.
 
Burnhaven said:
I'm beginning to think the Caribou was designed for under 10k ft altitude, especially when operating on shorter fields.
Click to expand...

That's absolutely the case.

Unlike turbine engines, piston engines don't burn appreciably less fuel at higher altitudes, so an aircraft like the Caribou would have been optimized for lower altitude performance, with altitudes above 10,000ft or so only being used for things like ferry flights (where the higher true airspeed and favorable winds would come into play) or situations where high terrain was involved.
 
Service ceiling listed is for very specific situations

azflyboy said:
That's absolutely the case.

Unlike turbine engines, piston engines don't burn appreciably less fuel at higher altitudes, so an aircraft like the Caribou would have been optimized for lower altitude performance, with altitudes above 10,000ft or so only being used for things like ferry flights (where the higher true airspeed and favorable winds would come into play) or situations where high terrain was involved.
Click to expand...
Makes sense:

service ceiling:
7,560 meters (24,800 feet)
 
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