FSX
Not much of a military bent with this one but anyway thoughts and input on some aspects would be appreciated.
Background - I have always liked the DC-10, it actually was a pretty good looking aeroplane and despite its original problems in the real world which gave it bad press only two major accidents were caused by design issues the first the Turkish accident near Paris and the Sioux City turbine blade failure accident, the rest were the usual cluster of weather and poor flying, bombs etc. CLS originally made this for MS2004 then did a portover for FSX. I bought it to get the DC10-30 and the Tanker version the Extender. While it was ok it was not great and after a time I parked it and forgot about it. I had also forgotten about the rebuild by CLS for JustFlight as FLite version and after a preliminary look thought for $20 why not.
What can I say, still a good looking aeroplane and the rework has actually done wonders, a more functional VC and it now included a FE position that worked as well (to a point) they obviously reworked the interior model because the window frames and general layout are now spot on in terms of visuals and the texturing work I thought was pretty damn good. The HD paints are also pretty good as well. The upgrades to the VC - Pilot and FE are substantial and about 80% of it is functional. Then I did well attempted to do some runs and flying to see how it went - ummm, in a nutshell, very disappointing.
The acceleration on takeoff was more like an F18 not a 300 ton airliner especially at max weights. Pitch control was poor and trim responses very slow as well.
Major issues - the FMC while looking great is only about 10% functional and would only work it a flight plan was loaded first and then only partially. The Autopilot and speed control were completely out of sync and fluctuated badly. The Autopilot would fail to hold a VS mode properly either and around 25,000 foot despite being at 98% N2 the speed would decay and it would stall. Regaining control by AP disconnect and after substantial height loss waiting for the appropriate pitch down to recover (woeful control response!) you could get it back up to about F300 but only at about 500 fpm in very cold conditions (ISA -10). Not sure what the FD is supposed to do but whatever it is it it does not do it. Basically something was seriously amiss with the engine data configuration and it basically would not develop power above F180 or manage a reasonable rate of climb as a result, this was not the way a DC-10 behaved. They were pretty damn good.
The fuel cut off controls on the pedestal while moving if activated via the 2D pop up would not work by mouse in the VC despite indicating they should. None of the comms control panel on the pedestal work either, only for show.
A lot of close investigation of data, gauges, configuration and air files has been going on ever since because there is no support forum of any worth and no responses to issues either. Please take note those interested. My impressions, CLS did a lot of really good work and that is obvious from the VC and new interior model, textures etc, but it is full of basic errors that are carried across the various variants in the files and after a while you realise that this was a rush job and the outcome is basically what had the potential to be a very good sim model has been stuffed up badly, why I have no idea, it is almost like they got so far, stopped and just put it out there anyway.
So far I have fixed the following:
Actually put the correct light data and points into the cfg files (they were missing nearly all of them)
Corrected all the turbine engine data, fuel usage values and other critical variable and values so it is now correct for the CF6-6 etc. (For example the inlet area was so totally out of whack no wonder it ran out of puff at F180).
Corrected all the fuel tank quantities and values.
Corrected the performance data (They did not seem to know which was which at one stage and had them mixed up, DC-10-10 or DC-10-30 or DC-10-40)
Finally grafted in the freeware Honeywell FMC which now works as intended and does work with the AP properly now.
If anybody has any ideas how to make the fuel cutoff switches work if they are modelled in 2D and operate in the VC once operated in 2D your thoughts would be appreciated.
If anybody is interested I do intend to make available via uploads probably here, the new aircraft and panel config files with all the changes and fixes, simply because I hate to see such good work as was done go to waste or hit the dustbin of history. Still a way to go while I sort out to my satisfaction what needs to be done and what can be done.
Anybody else tinkering or trying to fix this one up?
Originally Posted by Bjoern
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