Aircraft Bits and Pieces

[fliger747]

Aircraft partz, availble to all for the Great race. A good one stop spot to post those last min tuneups, corrections and such!

Tom...

[fliger747]

Donationware F4U-4. This plane, by Gramps includes two dropable 150 gallon tanks. The air-cfg files are my latest revision and should reflect 'true' performance within 1 1/2 percent or so.

Flying hints will be posted on the Hideout.

[fliger747]

AH F4U-5N(Armed).

This great plane by Baz and company represents the fastest production Corsair, making 470 mph. The 5N modeled here has two 150 gallon tanks for range. The goal with this FM was within 1 1/2 percent of top speed with WEP engaged. Many thanks to Baz for allowing me to post these mods to their fine plane!

Flying hints will be posted in the Hideout.

[Moses03]

The air-cfg files are my latest revision and should reflect 'true' performance within 1 1/2 percent or so.



Just so I'm not losing my mind, should this updated cfg read like this?

model=dt

Instead of this:

model=


Thanks-
Moses

[fliger747]

I'll czech it out, but it's stolen right from the plane I fly.

What the deal is that the plane, before Gramps had dropable tanks, had two air-cfg files and two models, one with tanks, one without. The new dropable model file takes the place of the previous two files. If for some reason you don't have the right model file, let me know.

Tom...

[fliger747]

Join Date: Jun 2005
Age: 57
Posts: 1,450


http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/images/icons/icon1.gif
Moses, try this link if you don't have the DT new model. It's in the Hideout F4U-4 thread near the bottom.http://www.donationware.net/gramps/z...ed%20F4U-4.zip (http://www.donationware.net/gramps/zips/updated%20F4U-4.zip)

[Moses03]

I think I have all the right bits cobbled together now.

Thanks Tom-

Moses

[Willy]

Ever wondered why your Spitfires seem to run out of fuel rather quickly? Actually the answer could quite simply be that the your aircraft's Flight Model (FM)doesn't take into account that there's a difference between an Imperial gallon and a US gallon. With all the ins and outs of a FM and having dabbled in the black art of FMs myself, I can easily see where such a matter would easily overlooked and no disrespect is meant to any designers. All of the old period references (Official Pilot's Notes, etc.) that I've read and have in my posession are in Imperial gallons and Microsoft Flight Sims use US gallons. That's 1/5 of a gallon difference with the US gallon being the smaller of the two.

Put it this way. If your fuel capacity is 100gl Imperial, FS will read it as 100gl US which converts to a bit over 83gl Imperial, so you're shorting yourself about 17 Imperial gallons or 20.5 US gallons of "fly juice". Not good for the pilot's morale when the pump is sucking fumes from the bottom of the tank.

Now how does one fix this problem?

First look in your aircraft's folder and open up the aircraft.cfg file with notepad. Scroll down until you find the [fuel] section. This is the section that controls the locations of the fuel tanks and the amounts of fuel held and will look something like this for the Spitfire I:

[fuel]
fuel_type = 1
number_of_tank_selectors = 1
Center1 = 0, 0, 0, 37, 0
Center2 = 0, 0, 0, 48, 0
electric_pump=1

Now to decipher this...

fuel_type=1 means that it runs on Avgas.
number_of_tank_selectors = 1 means you have 1 fuel tank selector
Center1 and Center2 are your fuel tanks. There are a series of 5 numbers/values after the = on each tank. The first three values just place it's location in the airfile and if you muck about with those, you'll bugger up your aircraft's balance which is not highly recommended.
The fourth is that total capacity of the fuel tank which is the one we'll change and the fifth is the amount of unusable fuel in a fuel tank.
electric_pump = 1 means, yes it does have an electric fuel pump

So back to the fourth value in the tanks lines...

In this example (Spitfire I), Both tanks are centrally located with capacities of 37 & 48 gallons. That is the figure you'll want to correct. Going back to the original pilot's notes, those figures match and we now know that it's in Imperial gallons as that's what they used in WWII Britain. (Still do as far as I know) The actual conversion rate is 1 Imperial gallon to 1.20095042 US gallons, but we'll just round that to 1.2 US gallons. Please note that not being a math whiz, I used a conversion program to do these myself.

After converting the Imperial gallons to US gallons, the result is for both fuel tanks:

Center1 = 44
Center2 = 58

Change the fourth value to 44 on Center1 and 58 on Center2. Save and that one's done.


Taken from reprints of the Pilots Notes on various Marks of Supermarine Spitfires these are the original Imperial gallons figures and the corrected values in US gallons for use in the aircraft.cfg for FS 2002 & FS 2004. These are for the internal tanks only.

Merlin engined Spitfire Mks I, II, V & IX & XVI:
Two tanks in front of the cockpit mounted one above the other. The top tank feeds into the bottom one. Therefore, in FS, the top tank as the #2 tank as that's the one that FS will empty first.

Real life in Imp gallons:
Top tank = 48gl
Bottom Tank = 37gl

FS in US gallons
Center1 = 44gl
Center2 = 58gl


Griffon Engined Spitfire Mks XIV, XIX(19), and 22.
Similar set up as with the earlier Merlin Spitfires, but the larger tank is now on bottom and wingtanks make their debut.

Mk XIV

Real life in Imp gl
Top Main = 36 Imp gl
Bottom Main = 49 Imp gl
Each Wing tank = 13 Imp gl
Note: On F.R. Mk XIV aircraft an extra 31 Imp gal fuel tank was fitted behind the cockpit.

FS in US gallons
Center1 = 58gl
Center2 = 43gl
LeftMain = 15gl
RightMain = 15gl
Center3 = 37gl (F.R. only)

Note: When flying a XIV FR with the additional center tank, it's highly recommended to empty that tank first to prevent any handling problems due to the change in COG.


Mk XIX(19) (Photo Recon)
All Mk XIXs had 79 US gl main wing tanks in the wings' leading edges. Later Mk XIXs used a Griffon 66 and pressurized cabin. These also carried smaller auxilary internal wing tanks of 24 USgl capacity in addition to the leading egde tanks. These late versions of the XIX can be externally identified by a small air intake scoop for the cabin pressurization on the left side of the engine cowling under the exhaust stacks (The Aeroplane Heaven/Just Flight is a late XIX with the Griffon 66). Earlier Mk XIXs without cabin pressurization used the Griffon 65 and didn't have the auxillary wing tanks.

Top Main = 36 Imp gl
Bottom Main = 49 Imp gl
Each Main Wing tank = 66 Imp gl
each Aux Wing tank = 20 Imp gl

FS in US gallons
Center1 = 58gl
Center2 = 43gl
LeftMain = 79gl
LeftAux = 24gl
RightMain = 79gl
RightAux = 24gl

Mk 22
Similar to the Mk XIV, but with fuselage differences.

Top Main = 36 Imp gl
Bottom Main = 49 Imp gl
Each Wing tank = 13 Imp gl

FS in US gallons
Center1 = 58gl
Center2 = 43gl
LeftMain = 15gl
RightMain = 15gl



I sincerely hope that this information is of use to the pilots of vintage British aircraft. I'm attaching a text file with corrected fuel tank sections of the Aircraft.cfg for the Aeroplane Heaven/Just Flight Spitfires. I can't recommend or guarantee their use in other designers aircraft due to COG/Handling issues.

[bazzar]

Aeroplane Heaven, as designers and copyright owners of the afformentioned aircraft, hereby officially recognises the efforts made by Willy and others to apply necessary changes to flight files to make these aircraft race suitable.

We have no problem whatsoever in Willy or anyone else for that matter, wishing to publish the files for public use and happily recognise the files as officially authorised upgrades, thereby making them race legal.

As the FMs are originally the I.P. of Jerry Beckwith, AH/JF cannot and will not vouch for any change in the performance or flight characteristics for Aeroplane Heaven models that have been adapted in this way and race entrants using modified AH craft do so at their own risk. Any queries arising out of adopting these files must be addressed to the editor of the file.

Good luck and be careful out there.:engel016:

[Willy]

Thanks Baz! I'll do me best not to prang up that pretty blue XIX.

[Gnoopey]

... P-47M-1-RE v2 base pack and some addon textures are out to all major sites including this one :)

Mike MacKuen got the final 'release candidate' quite a while ago and x-changed emails with me just recently. That'll raise the probability, that this release will be 'race eligible' to about 99.9999% :)

Got get them while they're 'hot' :)

base pack v2 (now only one base texture included in base pack)
==> http://www.sim-outhouse.com/index.php?lloc=downloads&loc=downloads&page=info&FileID=5755
revised PRE-RELEASE textures
==> http://www.sim-outhouse.com/index.php?lloc=downloads&loc=downloads&page=info&FileID=5757
Kevib's team SOH livery
==> http://www.sim-outhouse.com/index.php?lloc=downloads&loc=downloads&page=info&FileID=5600

[Moses03]

... P-47M-1-RE v2 base pack and some addon textures are out to all major sites including this one



Sorry about the late reply, I have been knee-deep in F4U-1's & 4's of late. Thanks for all your work on the v2 pack. :applause:

Looking forward to a little flight testing this weekend.


Moses

[Ace_Hyflyer]

Gnoopster, thanks for this wonderful release. I'll check it out, and with your permission release my repaint to the community!

This and the Howard 500 (as well as Milton's other releases) are my favorite airplanes (plus the B-29).

I have been dragged into the jet mania as well (I found some Hawks and F-5/F-20s on netwings) and found some carriers, but I love flying the old props as well!

Thanks so much,
Chris