Saturday Morning Surprise

[OBIO]

Today started out with a nice surprise....an early test copy of Pstrany's Lockheed L-14 Super Electra. Man, is that solid nose PRETTY! There are still several areas that Paul is working on, but as the plane is right now...she is wonderful. The flight dynamics are, to the best of my knowledge, spot on. Jerry Beckwith did the flight modeling...and he nailed it! The plane has wonderful stability in terms of pitch, but has a weak spot in lateral stability. This is not a plane that you are going to be able to trim out for pitch, go to the bathroom, go to the kitchen and leave to fly itself. A gust of wind under one of those big wings and this baby begins to roll and wants to keep on rolling....and from what I have read, this is how the real Super Electra behaved. This lateral instability is worse the closer to stall you get.

I will be assisting Paul in getting the Super Electra fully FS2004 ready. Gauges, effects, lighting, giving him feed back on interior setup and such. I am highly honored that he felt that I have been a big enough pain in the butt to warrant this job LOL.

Wish I could spend more time flying the SE right now, but I have to shower, shave and get going...got a number of things to get done early today...like driving out to Amish Country to buy more cheese and fresh brown eggs and baking supplies for the holiday cookies and cakes. But I will spend more time with this plane today....and begin working on the 2D panel and VC panels, lighting, effects and fuel and weight set ups. Sure am glad that I have ACM...makes this work so much easier.

OBIO

[smilo]

congrats OBIO,
sounds like fun.

now, stop talkin' and get those errands done
so you can get back to work on the SE.:icon_lol:
there are a lot of people drooling all over themselves
patiently waiting for this one.

[bpfowler]

way to go, OBIO. Man Amish country treats, that sounds good....

I was plunging around trying to find instrumentation images for the SE last night; let me know if you need any research pix, I can always try.

brady

[Volker Böhme]

Hi,

sounds great, looking forward to it.

Best regards,
Volker

[gribouil]

These are great news OBIO! :jump:

[Drzook]

OBIO, you are one lucky sumbich. Good news to hear; couldn't happen to a better person. :ernae: Looking forward to your progress.:jump:

[OBIO]

OBIO, you are one lucky sumbich. Good news to hear; couldn't happen to a better person. :ernae: Looking forward to your progress.:jump:

Actually I think it could have happened to a better person..but lucky for me, he was on the toilet and missed the phone call!

Didn't do anything sim related at all today....took the day off and enjoyed the sun shine, ran errands and took our big dog, Brutus, out for a much enjoyed session of fetch. That 12 pound pooch tore up the field and ran around with his newspaper toy like he was the king of the universe. Poor little Hazel, our 8 pound Chihuahua, has some pretty nasty grass allergies so we have to be careful about how much exposure she gets...luckily she is small enough that I can play fetch with her in the house and ensure that she gets her daily exercise.

Tomorrow I will roll the SE into the garage and begin adding new fuel tanks, new lights, start working up some basic payload configurations.....I won't go into too many details as I don't want to spoil Paul's reveal of the finished plane...but there will be a number of variations.

OBIO

[OBIO]

New 2D panel bmp has been created....not the most spectacular panel bmp the world has ever seen, but it is pretty decent. Now I am trying to populate that new panel with gauges....and doing so on very very very limited info. I found a few pics on which I can make out the placement of a few gauges, but most I can not make out what they are....and a lot of the panel is not shown...so I am using some creative licensing and setting up a very usable pilot friendly panel. The DC-3 gauges are looking to be the gauges of choice...they look nice, I can set the entire panel up out of that cab file.

There will be a number of pop up windows in this panel set up. Radio, Sperry Auto Pilot, Engine Management, Fuel Management, GPS for those like me who can't navigate their way from the gate to the runway without the aid of satelite guidance...and possibly a CD player for a touch of modern comfort.

Tim

[bpfowler]

hi Super Electric team,
first the TCA SE cockpit,I like the art deco pyramid feel with the whiskey compass at top.
http://www.aviation.technomuses.ca/brushstrokes/images/paintings/huge/24936.jpg

Then, found this at flight archive in PDF, couldnt figgger how to get the url so I snapped it.
British airways SE, 1937. the descriptive text is fun.
[edit] yo, found the url: http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1937/1937%20-%200874.html
it's a pdf, zooms up to 300%. lower panel switch details very good in this one.also descriptive text... :- )

[wombat666]

My version of a 'Sunday Morning Surprise' is way different!!!
:jump::jump::jump: