US Flying Boats

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Steven KLein

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Installed the Kingfisher and Catalina quite a while ago. Can fly both in Free Flight with the starting altitude above the water or land and can takeoff with the Catalina from land. My question is can you take off from water in Free Flight with either plane? I read somewhere that you have create a mission to do a catapult launch with the Kingfisher and can't use Free Flight to do a catapult launch. Any insight is appreciated. Thanks.
 
Whilst the default Sim doesn't have any water-start runways you can pick as a starting point in Free Flight, lot's of add-on scenery packs include seaplane/floatplane runways you could start a Free Flight from.
 
I'll check it out,but a lot of the scenery packs I have do have seaplane bases but I can't do a water start from them in Free Flight. When I try to , the plane sits on the water momentarily then pops up in the air. Also, when I try to start at 0 elevation at a seaplane base location, the plane sits on the water and pops up again. I have a location where the plane does stay in the water, but I can't get it to takeoff even though I follow the procedure to takeoff that I read. Just kind of weird. How do you know if a scenery pack that has a seaplane base has a seaplane/, floatplane runway if the readme doesn't mention it? No big deal if I have to start flying seaplanes in Free Flight in the air. Just would like to know what be the to going on. Thanks.
 
Just tried to do a water start with a seaplane in another install and had no problem. The other install
Could have some bad files or something. I'll keep on investigating.
 
It's a CFS2 thing.

Captain Kurt explained it best back in 2013. His explanation was so comprehensive I saved it as a textfile for future reference.

Because of the bobbing up & down movement on the water, sometimes the aircraft's static cg height can be beneath the water surface when it loads for a Free Flight. When this happens, the Sim will default to give you an air start instead.

Raising the CG height by 1ft usually fixes this.

Two caveats:

Raising the CG height often results in aircraft placed as static objects in missions riding "high" in the water. This can sometimes look odd. As your primarily concerned with Free Flight it's probably not a concern.

Even when you do this CG Height mod, occasionally CFS2 still loads and defaults to an air start. In these cases I just exit the flight & have it load it again, which usually fixes things.

CFS 2 can sometimes be a bit "contrary" - that's just the way it is 🤡.
 

Attachments

  • Floatplane notes CaptKurt.txt
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Another one I must have missed when it first appeared. Thanks to CK for the original explanation and to UT for highlighting this. I am adding it to my archive.
 
Appreciate all the help. I found out at least for me that most of my add-on scenery does not have water runways. The scenery that does have them does allow water takeoffs with seaplanes. The scenery packs that I have that have seaplane bases don't mention if water start runways are present in the readme.. it's trial and error for me to find which packs have them. Just thought I'd mention what I found out. I'll check out CKs text too. Thanks.
 
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