Question reg Iris Battlefield Airflifter

[Flapsfull]

Hello everyone,I'm thinking about buying the Iris Battlefield Airlifter addon ( which is on sale for -50% right now at their homepage) ,however I have one question before buying.Maybe someone who already owns this addon can answer me this:

Is it possible to switch off the magenta flight directors in the PFD in order to fly raw data on instruments?

Because every screenshot I've found of the Airlifter panel seems to have them displayed in center on the PFD.
I downloaded the product manual from Iris but even that is vague.It mentions them as being shown whenever the FD is on ,but there is no mention of an FD button.It would be nice if someone could tell me if its possible to remove the FD needles from the PFD completely.

Thank you very much in advance,


Regards,Oliver

 

[jmig]

Many autopilots have a flight director button (it is usually labeled FD) that will allow you to turn it off. If you have FSUIPC (paid version) and an extra joystick button or key stroke sequence, you can find the L:var that controls the flight director and then assign your joystick button/keystroke to that L:var.

Lastly, a more drastic measure would be to go into the xml file that controls the FD and modify it to remove the FD functions.

 

[mal998]

If the FD is enabled it can easily be shut off in the aircraft.cfg under autopilot. Simply replace the 1 with a 0.

 

[jmig]

If the FD is enabled it can easily be shut off in the aircraft.cfg under autopilot. Simply replace the 1 with a 0.

That certainly is a more elegant and simple solution than my suggestions.

 

[Flapsfull]

Hello Jmig and Mal998, thanks to both of you for your replies. Thats good to know, that there is the option to completely disconnect the FD either via L:Var or directly in the aircraft.cfg. Then I simply hope this is not one of those few aircraft which (wrongly, in my opinion) center the FD bars in middle of the PFD/ADI when they are switched off. I think this would normally only happen, if the electrical power is lost and not when the FD is simply switched off. Thanks again to both of you, Kind regards, Oliver

 

[StormILM]

The model has custom gauge coding for the A/P and Flight Director and on my example the F/D is already set to 0 in the aircraft config so editing it will not remove the F/D bars on the PFD. As far as I can tell, there is no switch on the model panel to enable/disable to F/D bars on the PFD but in reality, you can simply fly from the raw data on the PFD or simply use the HUD display and completely ignore the PFD. I would discourage disabling the F/D bars via any modification to the gauges as you will likely loose the ability to navigate as well as being able to shoot an ILS approach on either the PFD via the Auto Pilot APP mode or hand flying the ILS. You could also consult IRIS and see what they say about the F/D bars and maybe there is a function to turn it off that I've overlooked or if not, maybe they can create a patch to add an F/D on/off switch on one of the unassigned clickable buttons on the display.

 

[jmig]

Extract the gauge cab that contains the ADI or PFD. In the xml file you will see the names of the jpg or bmp files that represent the FD bars. They may be several for the different positions. You can look at all of images and actually see the bars. Then change the names of these files. I usually just add a 1 or 11 to the end. Now the gauge may not be able to find the image files and they will not show up on the gauge.

If the gauge craps because it can't fine the images. Go back and restore the original file names.

There are many ways to finesse a file.