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Learned something about glider tow planes today.

Paul Anderson

Paul Anderson

Charter Member
When checking out a new glider at Avsim today, the text info suggested using Aerotow.
That rang a bell, remembered it was included in a folder in the LAK Geneses 2 glider I downloaded a while back but never tried it.
Probably because it mentioned would not run on all computers.
Tried it, runs on my XP.
I selected a left turning tow and the AI PA28-180 Cherokee.
These are the entries it added to to FSX.CFG in the [SIM] section.

TowPlaneTitle=Piper Cherokee 180
TowPlaneMinTurnAltitude=1000
TowPlaneClimbPitch=-7
TowPlaneTurnFrequency=120
TowPlaneTurnDeltaHeading=-179

So if you've tried it and in doesn't work on your windows platform, the main thing to be gleaned from this is the tow plane title.
I keep most of my addon planes in a separate folder, so they don't show up as selectable planes when running the program.
Just looked in the aircraft.cfg and copied/replaced the title from an AG truck, worked fine.
Obviously (as stated in the text file), you want to try a suitable aircraft (eg. not an F16, boat, car etc.)
There was a post I looked at long ago with many gyrations to go through to change the tow plane, this is much simpler.

p.s. I tried the Alabeo Tomahawk, a bit under powered for towing, it bounced a few times off the runway but eventually got the Geneses aloft.
Looks like there is more fun to be had with glider launching.
 
Hi Paul,

Aerotow was indeed a very nice program, but it was also quite unstable on some computers. For a lot of people, when selecting one of the circle patterns, the program would make just the first 180° trun, but then it wouldn't send any addiotional instruction to the towing aircraft, which would continue flying straight forever.

However, there's an alternative now, called F-SHLEPP. Same thing, but works better. I haven't tried it yet.
http://lucas.sichardt.net/index.php?Seite=F-Schlepp
 
Thank you for the reply, will see if I can get by the language difference.

Edit: seems to make the same entries in fsx.cfg with different values, will use the aerotow program I had until an English version of your suggested if ever becomes available.
Again, more fun to experiment with the values.
 
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