Kodiak fuel management stupid question . . .

[Killbilly]

So, I RTM and have searched the entire cockpit, but I can't find a fuel selector or figure out how to crossfeed fuel. I've been flying version 2.6 of Lionheart's excellent Kodiak (my current favorite plane) for a while now, but I've always done fairly short hops. Recently, I did a couple of long hauls, and I noticed that I was draining only one tank (with the obvious resulting trim problems). I tried turning off the fuel from that tank, but both tanks turned off when I clicked on one switch, and I had to restart the engine. I know I'm probably being blind or stupid (I'm good at both). Can any of you experienced Kodiak drivers help me out?

[Lionheart]

Hey KillBilly,

First, the overhead panel has two fuel selector switches, each is LH On/Off, RH On/Off. But......... FS in its awesome wisdom, does not feature the ability to actually do left tank on/off, and right tank on/off with a single engine. I searched for every way around doing this, including custom codes, and the best way was found to just do 'both on, or both off'.

The reason, if you are interested, is that a single engine template aircraft in FS cannot have two 'seperate' (key word here) fuel switches that turn fuel on and off. The DC3, Ford Trimotor, and other twins 'do' have this feature, but a single engine cannot.

One moment please..

:bangs head on the desk for why this doesnt work also for single engine templates:

So, what I did was create both switches to work with on/off. Working with an exotic code (which we made perhaps 3 versions) ended up causing confusion and people who are extreme simmers would have been freaking out. So the basic super simple system was selected to keep from having people confused.

Now, the bad news. You shouldnt be able to drain fuel from one side. Thats interesting. If you are doing a cold start from another plane and you transferred it over to the Kodiak, and you had one tank selected, then it may have saved the command 'one tank selected' into the Kodiak, and the Kodiak doesnt have this feature.

On the template airfiles for the Kodiak it is a single valve system, on/off, (technical side, unseen in the panel area) where there should be no ability to turn one side on and off. Only both.

This is similar to saving a flight from one plane, into another (boot up another plane in a cold start stage, hit save, and its from another planes cold start), and if it had a switch for say battery, and your new plane doesnt have a battery switch, then what happens is the new plane save will not have a way for you to switch your battery on. So you would have to reset your cold start save point with things like both tanks selected, and with battery on.

What you might try doing is switching fuel selectors off, then back on again. This should clear the fuel selectors to 'both'.

I hope that helps.



Bill
LHC

[Killbilly]

Thanks. That does clear it up for me. I have been switching from another plane. I'll try loading the Kodiak clean. Thanks for your help.

[Lionheart]

Hey KillBilly,

Roger that.

Man, I wanted so bad to have the 'real' fuel system in this rig, but there was no way to 'code-wire' it. Aces made single engines to have one set of fuel valves, so I had my hands tied. I dont like to give in, so I tried alternative routes, hiring 2 gentlemen that are gurus in the gauge industry to code a work around, but it didnt work in the testing, so it was axed. It let me down as I thought anything was wire-able in FS, but this didnt seem to be the case.


Bill

[Killbilly]

Yeah, someday we'll have a sim with unlimited engines, combination engines, realistic rocket engines, real fuel management, etc. etc.

Just FYI, the problem was solved by loading the Kodiak fresh or from another plane with the engine running. So you were totally right. Thanks for the help and especially for the great planes (I have and love your Viking, too).

[n4gix]

There is a way to have separately controllable tanks, but it involves using the aux tanks rather than the main tank(s). It is definitely not intuitive, nor is it actually addressed in the SDK.