Engine shuts off after a while

[OlaHaldor]

It's becoming kind of a ritual now. I fly between my two airports I'm developing. It's a nice 10-15 minutes flight with a pretty straight forward flight path.

After taking the Duchess for a spin around Muchamiel I went to bring the plane to Alicante. That was a no go... I was a few miles away from landing, when both engines suddenly died. I couldn't get them going again. I watched the replay, and as far as I can tell, there was nothing wrong with any instruments. Power, oil and fuel, no problem.

Goran, care to give me a killer hint what I'm doing wrong ?

[Goran_M]

It's becoming kind of a ritual now. I fly between my two airports I'm developing. It's a nice 10-15 minutes flight with a pretty straight forward flight path.

After taking the Duchess for a spin around Muchamiel I went to bring the plane to Alicante. That was a no go... I was a few miles away from landing, when both engines suddenly died. I couldn't get them going again. I watched the replay, and as far as I can tell, there was nothing wrong with any instruments. Power, oil and fuel, no problem.

Goran, care to give me a killer hint what I'm doing wrong ?

Was your mixture correctly set for your altitude?

Have you modified the acf file in any way?

If you were descending, were the engines at idle for a while before the engines died?

Did you have enough fuel?

I'm guessing you answered "yes" to question 3 and your warnings were switched off in the x plane settings.

You most likely got Carb icing and the engines eventually died.  Carb heat is on the centre console under the throttle and above the cowl flaps.

As you are descending and if your engines die, turn on carb heat, leave ignition on (DO NOT CRANK THE ENGINE AGAIN) and make sure all levers on the throttle console are full forward.  The constant speed prop will crank the engine and eventually start.

Alternatively, check your emergency procedures in the manual.

[OlaHaldor]

You... You mindreader, you..  : I got the "carb icing" warning, but I couldn't spot any switches or buttons to solve my problem. I guess there's a manual for a reason, but you know - men.. They really don't read manuals unless they have to.

Will check tomorrow. It's been sleepy time for over 4 hours now and I have not yet met Mr. Sandman. Doh!

[Goran_M]

No Problem, Ola.

Hope you're having fun with it.

If you have any other questions, please let me know. 

BTW, very nice landing in the video.

[Richard]

Hi Goran,

Thanks for  a brilliant a/c. I did my CIR in a Duchess with RQAC in Archerfield. Lovely bird to fly.

Since you were asking for feedback, I would also like to comment on the Duchess' ground handling. I have the feeling that she skids and slides very easily, even with slow to moderate taxi-speeds. Above a certain speed, steering becomes almost impossible, like being on ice despite the ground being dry. I also have the floating nose-wheel issue (and am using Chase View deluxe) so I'm not sure if that could be the problem.

I have tried with rudder pedals and flying mouse only as well. Could this have something to do with the "roughness" setting for the asphalt and dirt at YMUL in Voz' scenery or is there a friction setting for tires in planemaker. I am not an aircraft / scenery developer so I might well be talking nonsense.

If everyone else is getting normal ground handling then it must be a problem here.

Cheers!

EDIT: sorry, posted to the wrong forum. This was supposed to go into Tech support. My aplogies.

[Goran_M]

Hi Goran,

Thanks for  a brilliant a/c. I did my CIR in a Duchess with RQAC in Archerfield. Lovely bird to fly.

Since you were asking for feedback, I would also like to comment on the Duchess' ground handling. I have the feeling that she skids and slides very easily, even with slow to moderate taxi-speeds. Above a certain speed, steering becomes almost impossible, like being on ice despite the ground being dry. I also have the floating nose-wheel issue (and am using Chase View deluxe) so I'm not sure if that could be the problem.

I have tried with rudder pedals and flying mouse only as well. Could this have something to do with the "roughness" setting for the asphalt and dirt at YMUL in Voz' scenery or is there a friction setting for tires in planemaker. I am not an aircraft / scenery developer so I might well be talking nonsense.

If everyone else is getting normal ground handling then it must be a problem here.

Cheers!

Hi Richard

Thanks for the comments.

The very first time I loaded up the Duchess and released the parking brake, it would start rolling forward under idle power.  So I had to adjust the friction coefficient to make sure it stopped doing that.  However, apart from a concrete runway (where I set the friction), I have absolutely no control over the runways friction that the aircraft is positioned on.  I let X Plane determine that.  I'm not a scenery developer so I don't know of the settings that can be used when making a runway.  It could very well be the roughness.  I have taken a number of flights from YSSY to YKAT (Dirt runway) and she takes a while to take off because of the roughness of the runway.  I'll have a look at the skidding that you are describing.  I can reduce it but I'll have to double check it first. 

Re the nose wheel being slightly off the ground, that has since been fixed. 

[Richard]

I did notice the change in performance on the change of surface e.g. sluggish acceleration on dirt. I just found it was not possible to steer. I could see the nose-wheel and rudder moving but there was no change in direction. I know you said you'd fixed it but just for information anyway, I disabled the Chase View deluxe plugin and also checked the nosewheel in normal outside views. It was still above the ground. Could that explain the lack of steering control in my case, or is the appearance of the wheel simply cosmetic and X-plane treats the wheel as if it was actually on the ground.

In any case it might well be fixed now with your changes to the nosewheel.

Again, thanks for the Duchess. It really is a work of art.

[Goran_M]

I did notice the change in performance on the change of surface e.g. sluggish acceleration on dirt. I just found it was not possible to steer. I could see the nose-wheel and rudder moving but there was no change in direction. I know you said you'd fixed it but just for information anyway, I disabled the Chase View deluxe plugin and also checked the nosewheel in normal outside views. It was still above the ground. Could that explain the lack of steering control in my case, or is the appearance of the wheel simply cosmetic and X-plane treats the wheel as if it was actually on the ground.

In any case it might well be fixed now with your changes to the nosewheel.

Again, thanks for the Duchess. It really is a work of art.

X plane does treat the wheel as if it is on the ground.  What you are actually flying is the flight model itself.  What you are SEEING is the visual representation of that flight model.

All I had to do was adjust the length of the nose gear slightly so the visual representation of the nose gear more closely matches the flight model nose gear.

[Richard]

OK, thanks, I didn't know that before.

[Dozer]

This is awesome. I was wondering why the engines were dieing whenever I selected full flap on approach. Seems it is a coincidence, and carb icing is the culprit!

In about a decade of on-off simming, this is the first time I've fallen victim to carb icing :-D

[Goran_M]

This is awesome. I was wondering why the engines were dieing whenever I selected full flap on approach. Seems it is a coincidence, and carb icing is the culprit!

In about a decade of on-off simming, this is the first time I've fallen victim to carb icing :-D

When I was training for my GFPT, and learning procedures for descent, I was told it is very important to "cycle the engines" (push the throttles to full power for about 3 seconds then bringing them back to idle) every 1000 feet while descending to get rid of any ice that can form.  It's actually more common than people think.  

Try it when descending in the Duchess in sim.

[Dozer]

I will do. At the moment I just put carb heat on before starting descent, but I haven't read the manual yet to find out what I'm supposed to be doing...