Floatplane/Amphib problems!

F

Felixthreeone

Charter Member
Ok guys....I seem to have an issue here; Hopefully someone has a solution...

Recently I decided to get into Alaskan bush and floatplane flying; I am a big GA fan, and I normally fly a lot of corporate stuff, so I decided to 'slow it down' a bit...

....So i purchased Misty Fjords, Tongass Fjords, installed the freeware Glacier bay V2, and while i was on a roll i dug out some payware planes I hadnt flown for some time..the Aerosoft Beaver and Supercub, both of which have floats. Then I looked through my hangar and sure enough..there was my Realair Scout amphib, Quest Kodiak floatplane, and FSD Pilatus Porter. I was a happy camper! Until.....I ran into an interesting occurance...

I started a flight from the Sitka floatplane base a29 in Tongass...in the realair scout amphib...and everything went smooth! It was sooo much fun!! took off, flew a pattern...did a full stop at Sitka (PASI)...departed then landed again in the water!!! Cool. Next up...the Beaver. :pop4:Started the flight under the same circumstances as the scout....but as soon as the loading screen was done the beaver was at like 300 feet agl and dropping out of the sky with the stall horn blaring...until it impacted the water and did it again...and again...so i thought maybe it was that plan...changed to the FSD porter and it too behaved the same; Lionhearts kodiak didnt have any problems at the start of the flight, but a water landing away from the field produced the same results as the beaver...like it is 'craching' or something...and despite a complete reinstall of my FSD porter, that one wont work at all!!!! Anyone that can shed some light on this I would really appreciate it. Even if I am just being a moron and overlooking something really simple, please let me know. This scenery coupled with these aircraft is very addictive!!!!! Thanks in advance!
 
Actually, Tom......I think I really am an idiot. See, I just completed a fairly exhaustive test encompassing all of the Amphibs and Floatplanes in my hangar...and, interestingly, it is somewhat self-explanatory now that i really think about it. The aerosoft beaver amphib can only start a flight at a land base, but once the gear is retracted is water capable (as it should be----as i said i'm an idiot). And obviously the floatplanes are water only. I guess my confusion was in the fact that my Kodiak and Porter are called 'foatplanes', but they are really 'amphibs', and despite the fact that the realair scout is an amphib, it CAN start a flight in the water, whereas the others cannot. Humph. sorry i wasted your time, Tom. Thanks for replying!
 
One thing you need to watch out for is whether or not you have Crash Detection activated in the sim.

When the sim starts up, with an amphib aircraft, it positions the aircraft at wheels down position, then the aircraft drops onto the water, the sim detects a crash and into the air you are rocketed.

Then as Tom is referencing (I think), the contact points for the floats can be too low as well as the Impact Damage Threshold.

Some of the older sceneries also had invisible land extending into what appeared to be water, causing crashes. I don't believe that is the case with any of Holgers works though.

Hope that is somewhat helpful.
 
Thanks for the info, Brent. I actually leave crash detection turned off since it tends to be a bit flaky in situations such as this. But yes, the behaviour you describe is correct...so I will most likely just use them in the manner I posted above and that will appease me...this whole bush-floatplane-alaska thing is cool...
 
It's the damage threshold numbers I want to look at. I've seen a few that the dev's left at zero and it caused "issues" to say the least.
 
I have a rather largish collection of float/amphibs (or I did before I lost 5 installs of FS9....no big deal they can be redownloaded). I have run into a few amphibs that would not start on the water, but it was easy to fix that problem....as Tom Clayton mentioned, the damage threshhold was set too low or the float points were set to low, or the scrape points were set too low. All it takes is some adjusting to these areas and the amphibs will be able to start on the water.....and all amphibs have their gear down when starting on water....just how the sim does things.

OBIO
 
Besides checking the contact points you can do the following.
At that point where the plane loads too high above the water, bear with me here, hit P to start the sim but then hit Y immediately after. Now that you are in slew hit F1 to plop yourself in the drink. Now here is the silly part. You will now rapidly hit P and Y back and forth until the plane looks settled. Basically this eases the plane down so the 'impact' is not such that you get warped up to 1000ft.
The contact points vary from plane to plane as far as initial height when loading. If you finish with one that has that as 5ft, and grab another that has that as 2ft, the plane will, on loading, react like a flea on a hot plate and quantum leap you up to some high place. This was your 300agl. You can't really recover at 0 KTS from that so my trick deals with that.
And if you don't have crash on, the scrape points will will react with the ground in amusing ways.
 
Yep. All the Aerosoft Beaver/Piper amphibs and floats run a threshold damge of 1600. So does the Kodiak and I believe the FSD Porter, also. I'm not sure on the Realair Scout, but the LIC Scout's floats are at 3000.

I have all the above, except Realair, and do waterstarts in the amphibs all the time. I will admit, that on rare occasion, I get rocketed into space, causing a near panic situation until I remember to thump the Num Lock key and Y (for slew), then lower myself back to the water.
 
Ok so where exactly are the damage threshold numbers in the config? Under contact points? If you want, Tom, I can post those sections for the aircraft in question....
 
FelixThreeOne

Here's a copy of the float points from the [contact_points] section of the Alphasim T-50 Bobcat float version. The damage thresholds are in bold.

point.0 = 4.000, 3.661, -6.300, -7.000, 1800.000, 1.000, 1.100, 0.000, 0.350, 2.500, 0.700, 0.000, 0.000, 2.000, 0.000, 0.000
point.1 = 4.000, 3.661, 6.300, -7.000, 1800.000, 1.000, 1.100, 0.000, 0.350, 2.500, 0.700, 0.000, 0.000, 2.000, 0.000, 0.000
point.2 = 4.000, -6.217, 6.300, -6.141, 1800.000, 2.000, 1.100, 30.000, 0.350, 2.500, 0.700, 0.000, 0.000, 3.000, 0.000, 0.000
point.3 = 4.000, -6.217, -6.300, -6.141, 1800.000, 2.000, 1.100, 30.000, 0.350, 2.500, 0.700, 0.000, 0.000, 3.000, 0.000, 0.000


Check 5th number in each line of the contact points list....well, those with a 4 as the 1st number after the = at any rate. See where they are set. Increasing these numbers very well could get the planes to start on the water...make a back up of the stock aircraft.cfg just in case....

OBIO
 
Ok you guys nailed it!!! The 5th entry (as Obio stated) is the culprit. Changing that value (in all 3 offending aircraft) from 1600 to 2600 cured the problem!! Now even the amphibs can start fron a water base!!! Thank you to everyone who responded....I never would have figured that out without help!
 
If you like GA bush flying, look out for Bill Lyons' aircraft. The Tiger Moth, Cub, Waco and Stinson all include floatplane versions which are a lot of fun to fly.
 
Other great amphibs/floats:

Milton Shupe and Crews' D-18 series has float and amphib versions

Brian Gladden's Cessna 120/140, Volpar Amphib, and Norseman are all nice

John Woodward's Beaver comes in a float version.

Eric Dante (I think) did up the PZL Otter....1000 HP float plane...seriously nice

PAD (Premier Aircraft Design) has a nice collection of Twin Otters and Turbo Prop floaters and amphibs

Bill Lyon's Swift also comes with an amphib version...sporty little amphib

Wozza (Warrick Carter) has done up a float version of the NAA T-6 Texan which is very interesting.

OBIO
 
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