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Are there some I don't fly? Sure...after several flights, I just cannot get used to the Rutan's cunard aerodynamics while landing, and it has become frustrating to me. Or, the DA Piper Cheyenne which while absolutely beautiful, has way too many bugs for me to give it further hours. The bugs are mostly related to the Trimble, and I'm just kinda 'done with it'. But these cases are actually few. Some simply get ignored, and deserve more time. One of the great things about simming is we get to enjoy all these various experiances which would be impossible in real life.
Don't give up on the DA Cheyenne just yet. I also went thru the 'I'm done with this junk plane' mood almost a year ago, but in the last week I started working on the Cheyenne panel again and found with just a couple of small mods the plane's Trimble nav unit starts working again, and I've not managed to crash the sim since I fixed the panel.
Firstly- buy the simflyer GPX-SX pack and extract the kmd-550 and the toggle_id150 gauges from the pack with panel studio and put these 2 gauges in your main fs9 gauge folder.(I used the KMD-550TCAS)
Now restore the SP2 panel files to the A/C your working on (I used the 1A vfr/ifr panel for my tests) as well as all the gauge files for the DA Cheyenne from SP2 to the main fs9 gauge folder.
Search the internet for a file named "pa31bk.zip"- I found it on DA's website (I believe), they're a set of alternate panel config files I used for 'ideas', open the file for your panel from this pack and keep it open in notepad. If you use these panel 'as-is' note the author removed one of the transponders from the secondary radio panel, you'll need to change the last number on the component line from '2' to '1' as the author removed transponder #1 by mistake.
Now open up your cheyenne panel your working on, and copy from the pa31bk.zip config (the donor file) the line "Window14=KMD550 Popup" and paste it into your 'real' cheyenne panel file under the 'windows titles' section making sure the window number is changed to reflect it being the last window in the list.
Now copy the entire 'window14' section from the donor file and paste it into your Cheyenne panel in the same position as in the windows list, and rename it to 'windowXX' (XX=whatever number you gave it in the windows section above). Insert into this window whatever GPS unit you desire. </snipped>I used the stock Garmin GPS-500 unit.
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Now in window 5 of the 'real' cheyenne panel you want to add:
gaugeXX=kmd550, 0,9,328,210
gaugeXX=toggle_ID150, 45,30,200,150
</snipped>Remove the file directory name "SFGPXSX!" from both lines in this section (Both gauges are extracted and are in the fs9 gauge folder). I had problems using these gauges in their recieved state, and extracting them to individual gauges made them work properly.
<snipped> >>You're covering the faux GPS display with the working KMD-550 you extracted, and hiding the 'pop-up toggle' behind that. Fill in the XX with the next two sequential gauge numbers for that window.
Add or remove NOTHING more to the panel- it will cause the sim to crash.
Thats it !
Operation: Before flight load a flight plan and after the Trimble unit warms up hit 'aux' and 'enter' and the trimble will be setup with your flight plan, Alternately you can open the second radio stack, click on the KMD-550 unit and your GPS unit (whichever one you chose for the popup window) should appear- in my case the GPS-500, select my goto dest on this unit, then go back to the trimble, hit 'aux', then enter and my picked dest will be loaded into the trimble.
The trick with this Trimble unit and the stock autopilot is getting it to follow a GPS route, but simpler after you do it a few times: take off as normal but notice the GPS nav mode won't engage- bring up the second radio stack and fly the plane manually over the GPS track (on the kmd-550 display) or use the heading bug. As soon as the plane crosses the GPS track-engage GPS nav mode, and the trimble unit should lock to the track and otto will fly the route. If another destination is desired choose one in your 'popup window', then hit 'aux' and 'enter' on the trimble and the otto will turn to intercept the new track.
18 months I've been working on this headache, but I've finally got the DA Cheyenne stable and predictable, and it has become one of my favorite planes of any payware product I've bought in the last 2 years. If with this config it's still not stable (CTD's, ETC) try studying my panel CFG file. ALSO- if it's not working correctly try removing your FSUIPC registration key from the 'modules' folder- for some strange reason my registration of FSUIPC cause many glitches, running unregistered FSUIPC cured many issues with this plane. Make sure you do this on an un-edited copy of your original panel file, I've had nothing but bad luck with any other gauges that are not part of SP2's gauge file set and the
EXTRACTED simflyer files.
AWW NUTZ ! Just noticed this was the FSX forums- disregard the above unless someone wants to test it in FSX. Attached is my working PA31T 1A VFR/IFR panel.
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