Lockheed P-2V7 Fire Bombers?

[BillgjCook]

I would be happy to give the flight model a go for you. Send me the specs if you have them and I will get on it right away. I will need a copy of your model as well, panel, gauges, and sounds not necessary. I have plenty of twins to cover those things. :-)

EDIT: As a requirement for doing the FM if you want me to do it, I would like the following:

1) Aircraft placed (in design program) at 25% MAC longitudinally, at the thrust line vertically, and centerline horizontally. (To be the FS reference point and CoG start point);

2) Measuments for distances (X, Y, Z coordinates) to the following:

engines (prop hub);

bottom of tires (select a vertice on bottom center of main gear tire and nose gear tire) at frame 100 and frame 200; (for effects, contact points and suspension calcs)

wing tips (lights);

All other lights;

tip of nose and tail;

location of pilot's nose sitting in seat;

3) Performance data if you have it

4) VSpeeds if you have them

5) Capacity of retardant tanks

6) Weights: empty, weight with fuel load for typical fire flight without retardant, and with retardant.

7) A copy of the model folder (I will provide the rest).

8) You willingness to test as progress is made.

9) other things as required to improve accuracy of the flight model.

Thank you Milton I will get all that together for you in the next cupple days.

Don't worry yourself on that score Bill, few of us realise what sort of effort it actually takes to get a model fully done until we do it. I've been hacking away on mine for years and am only now nearly finished with the VC - mapping all the bits now. I'd really recommend taking Milton up on the FM offer, I had a similar offer from another FM specialist and it's saved me a ton of effort. I also have a red-hot skinner who offered and has done a beautiful paint job for me.

A certain amount of bloody-mindedness is needed in this hobby.

Thankyou for your kind words hairyspin, I should have never started developing forfsx and stayed in fs9, not as complicated

[Cag40Navy]

Thank you Cag40Navy, I am glad I haven't lost you as a supporter. I feel that taking so long on a project like this has turned some people away. It is hard to make so many models like this, have a fulltime job, fulltime life and keep everything striate. So in other words I just wount to thank you for keeping me motivated on this project. I still need someone to help me with the flight model and aircraft.cfg and also need some help with panel lines and all to do bump maps.

You will not lose me a supporter on this project.


(Just make sure she makes X.) :D

[Milton Shupe]

Gentlemen,

I have started work on the flight model using the FDWB and much of the data needed is hard to find.

I ask that you download the attached zip of screenshots, review the data, and validate the info I have entered.

Speeds listed in the top section are critical to the flight model.
Because most of the data available on the web is for the paired engine sets (radial and jets), trying to decide what to use for just the radials is guesswork. So, any help with speeds would be useful.

Other key areas are fuel tank capacities, range with your fuel tanks, flap settings and speeds, stall speeds at typical landing weights, typical loaded weights with 2000 gallons of retardant, fuel consumption at cruise, cruise speed, use of spoilerons or not, use of supercharger, WEP capabilities, propeller diameter, prop reduction ratio, service ceiling with your engine setup.

Please just edit the attached screenshots in RED with any new data you can provide and post it back here or email me.

Thanks

[Milton Shupe]

billgjcook,

Given the weight of this aircraft and its size, I would like to see the suspension given more animation.

From key frame 100 to 200, the current main gear oleo animation gives me .196m or about 7" of oleo suspension. My sense is that this needs to be more like .35m to .4 m or 12-16".

This would improve visuals and landing abilities for a heavy aircraft that is probably 55000 lbs minimum in landing.

Not essential but if you can help with at least a little more suspension, that would be nice. If you do this, please extend the nose gear animation a proper proportion as well.

Otherwise, I will make this work.

Thanks

EDIT: You may ignore the request. I think I can live with this as is. The suspension seems to be working fine on landings. Thanks

[Milton Shupe]

Setting up the WB and generating the aircraft.cfg and .air file has worked well.

The issue is that the air file is not getting the 1101 table (and a few others) generated. The table is in the Updates.txt but does not appear in the .air file. The AirUpdate utility seems to work fine after selecting the air file and the updates file from the same folder.

I need some ideas as I have tried all that come to mind here.

EDIT: Nevermind; found my issue. Missing AirEd.ini file. :-)

[Milton Shupe]

Hes doing all the fire fighting variants of the P-2....

Cag40Navy,

Do you have specs for a firefighter, specifically need info in previous post plus typical weight when loaded with retardant.

[Cag40Navy]

Cag40Navy,

Do you have specs for a firefighter, specifically need info in previous post plus typical weight when loaded with retardant.

Yea, let me dig them up and ill PM you.

[Milton Shupe]

Yea, let me dig them up and ill PM you.

Thanks ... really needed to get this FM zeroed in. :-)

[BillgjCook]

Wow you guys are on it. Thank you all for helping, I am still trying to get all the gauges coded with the right xml's, as soon as I get that done then I can move on to other areas that need some help.

[Milton Shupe]

Wow you guys are on it. Thank you all for helping, I am still trying to get all the gauges coded with the right xml's, as soon as I get that done then I can move on to other areas that need some help.

Happy to help on the FM. I have her flying and handling well but I need better data to ensure I can hit the numbers. Once I have that in place, I should be able to get you a nice flying aircraft here.

Testing today and making progress with what I have. She actually flies very nicely and deals with all phases of flight predictably.

Some shots from a test session.

[BillgjCook]

Happy to help on the FM. I have her flying and handling well but I need better data to ensure I can hit the numbers. Once I have that in place, I should be able to get you a nice flying aircraft here.

Testing today and making progress with what I have. She actually flies very nicely and deals with all phases of flight predictably.

Some shots from a test session.

Thats ausome, I will try to find some more info for you. It is hard to find and getting harder by the year as these tankers die off and are replaced with something new. That is one of the reasons I am trying to build these big boy tankers like this to gather as much info on them befor they are all gone, just wish I started a little sooner when the info wasn't as hard to find.

Thank you

[ktmdudeone]

Milton,

I read through the pictures that you posted of the FM data. I would just like to point out that all of the P2s have reversible props. Now I don't really know if FSX can do reversible props on a piston engine but I just wanted to point that out. Also I did some research on the retardant weights. P2s and SP2Hs with jets carry 2082 gallons a load. The SP2Hs without jets have a tank capacity of 2000 gallons but normally carried 1500-1800. The only other tanker weight I was able to find was the weight of the tank itself in the SP2Hs without jets and it weighs 700lbs. Here are the break down on what the weights would be, these weights are just the retardant payload. I've included the weights for both retardant types that are the most common. D75F retardant weighs 9.4lbs per gallon. The new P100 Retardant weighs 8.5lbs per gallon.

Gallons of retardant	D75F Retardant	P100 Retardant
2082gal	19,570lbs	17,697lbs
2000gal	18,800lbs	17,000lbs
1900gal	17,860lbs	16,150lbs
1800gal	16,920lbs	15,300lbs
1700gal	15,980lbs	14,450lbs
1600gal	15,040lbs	13,600lbs
1500gal	14,100lbs	12,750lbs

[Milton Shupe]

Thank you very much for that data.

As FS treats these as fuel drop tanks and uses fuel weight, I will increase the empty weight to add the fuel tanks' weight, and increase the capacity to compensate for the difference in fuel weight and retardant weight.

I greatly appreciate that you shared this data. Thank you

[BillgjCook]

I found out why some of my animations for the gauges have not been working with g-max, when I did a compleet computer reload and did my FSX and FSXA install with all the sdk's I am not getting the right modeldef.xml. I have the one without the p-51 and eh-101 xml's, I thought that something was missing from my animation list. Could the sdk sp2 be my problem or maybe something didn't install right?

[N2056]

I think those are part of the Acceleration SDK.