Dozer

Oi, Morten - you've been posting updates in other forums but not this one. What's that all about? Don't forget us here!

Music to my ears, Mr Kyler, music to my ears. I think you can join Nils Daniellson in my list of Authors Whose Products Can Be Purchased Unseen!

WOW - I did not know that about the Falco! 2d stock gauges on the panel notwithstanding, it is possibly becoming my all-time favourite simulated aircraft!

I have no idea how useful it is to have working circuit breakers in a simulated plane, unless perhaps if the rest of the electrical systems are modelled in enough depth that they can fail in violent ways and blow the circuit breaker. What do real pilots do with the circuit breakers? There's only 4 on the Pitts S-1 as modelled anyway. The AVSIM reviewer really liked that aircraft; he says he was doing a Hammerhead, and stamped on his rudder pedals so hard they physically jammed full left. And his reaction was to see if he had enough height to recover, and then start going through his real-world glider-pilot 'about to bail out of an aircraft' drill - released stick, prepared to release canopy, and looked down to make sure he was reaching for his non-existent harness release and not the parachute ripcord! I would love to see what he'd make of Nils' Yak-55M...

I'm completely guessing, but the missing systems are probably the circuit breakers and audio-select panel functions. The Falco is the only simulated aircraft I've come across with working circuit breakers, and even that doesn't have a 100% complete audio select panel (and nor should it given that most of its functions are redundant in a desktop simulator. Would be nice if its power switch could turn it off though.) Regarding that FS9/FSX Pitts S-1 - the screenshots speak for themselves: http://www.addictive.it/Pitts/ (that's the developer's own website) 2d gauges stuck to the '3d' cockpit panel, X-Plane 8 style. Post-BK117 I cannot put up with that edit: for some reason, that Pitts S-1 features an autopilot. And I've just realised it's published by Abacus, whose products I found underwhelming in terms of depth back in my MSFS days, unfortunately

Hi all, I've uploaded my PilotView presets for the Duchess to the .org. By installing Sandy Barbour's PilotView plugin and binding keys to its presets, you can move the camera instantly to key points in the 3d cockpit. First preset is the default position, 2nd is on the centreline so you can see the DME and adjust the radios, 3rd shows the lower part of the panel, 4th the autopilot panel and basic 6, 5th the fuel and heat controls, 6th the passenger's view. I don't like moving the X-Plane camera so much; perhaps it's because I grew up on MSFS 2d panels... http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=12291

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...

Thanks Goran!

I know the answer to this one! There's two rows of buttons on the audio panel. Regarding navaids, the top row is 'on' and the bottom row is 'off'. For some reason (almost certainly a limitation of X-Plane) if you're halfway through listening to the ident and press the off button, the sound continues until the ident's finished playing.

OK, thanks for the reply. I thought it was (what I now have learned is called) a Turn Coordinator, which indicates rate of heading change (not angle of roll). With a turn coordinator, if you line the wingtip up with the mark, you're doing a Standard Rate turn (2min for a complete 360° turn) which is used in some instrument flying procedures such as holding patterns and instrument approaches. And also useful if your compasses are all broke - you can make heading changes using the TC and a stopwatch.

Excellent! Works nicely, I was able to write the comment I wanted to write. Thanks Jack!

Another minor bug: the turn indicator doesn't seem to indicate turns greater than rate 1. I'm in a very tight spiral dive here, but the turn indicator still shows I'm doing a standard turn (180° per sixty seconds, I think). The aircraft symbol surely should be able to move beyond the marks that indicate a standard turn, or how do you know you're turning too tight? (hope this doesn't come across as nit-picking, but IFR is what I like, so I'm mostly looking at all the instruments...)

There's something weird happening to my HSI: There's a bar of texture that doesn't seem to rotate with the course needle. When the course needle is pointing straight ahead, it fills a hole in the face of the instrument, but otherwise a gap is visible. The HSI seems strangely constructed: Surely the aircraft symbol should be on top of the course deviation bar (I think that's what it's called), etched into the glass on the face of the instrument?

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

Hi Jack, I wanted to comment on the Carenado Saratoga review but can't. There's a blank space near the bottom of the page, where I'd expect the comment box to go, but it's only showing Facebook's loading symbol - three pulsing vertical blue bars. I have disabled platform applications on my Facebook profile and really, really, really, really, really loathe the idea of using Facebook to comment on blogs and reviews (it's too Orwellian for me). I like your site otherwise!

Turns out I was still using PilotView 1.55 from last year's attempt to get into X-Plane. PilotView 1.60 has the ability to assign keypresses - I've got my Duchess set up now that pressing 1-4 will move the camera to the default position, a view of the whole panel from clock to DME, the switches under the yoke, and the autopilot panel. That's essentially what I needed (and the same system would suit three-crew flightdecks just as well). All sorted now!

Is there a way to disable the scroll-wheel throttle control? I really don't like it. I have a seperate throttle! It would be supremely awesome if the scroll-wheel could be used to manipulate whatever the cursor's on, like in that other sim. Rather than click&drag to turn a knob.

Ah, thanks Goran! The problem for me is, using the X-Plane default camera controls (or should that be stock camera controls), if I'm in your upcoming 742 cockpit and I want to look at the overhead panel, I'll have to carefully pan the camera upwards to get the camera into the position where I can the relevant switches. Depending on where my default camera position is, I might have to slew the camera too. This takes time, and it's a feedback process where I have to think about moving the camera (even if it soon becomes subconscious). And to look at the FE's panels or the pedestal is even more involved. Go back six years to the best of the FS9 2d panels, in this case the Dreamfleet 727. To look at the overhead from the main panel, click on the clickspot at the top of the windscreen and it appears straightaway. Or press Shift-3, or click on the 'overhead panel' icon on the concealable array of panel shortcuts on the main panel. To get back to the main panel, click on the 'close overhead' clickspot in the upper right of the overhead panel or press Shift-3 again. It is easier and quicker to make one keypress, or click on a large concealed clickspot, than it is to labouriously pan the camera around a 3d flight deck. I've tried using TrackIR in X-Plane (an antique first-generation unit). But it is difficult to precisely click on small switches while your head is still panning the camera! What I'm meaning to do is to learn how Sandy Barbour's PilotView plugin's camera preset positions work, and if they can be called with keypresses. Then it would be simple to, say, move the camera to the best position for viewing and manipulating the 742 overhead, save that camera position, and bind Shift-2 (for example) to bring the camera to that position. Then, when I need to use the overhead, I can press Shift-2 and instantly do whatever it is I needed to do, then press Shift-2 or another keypress to revert the camera to whatever position it had been in before. I'm just thinking aloud here, I'm not even suggesting that you should be working on camera controls. This is something I've been meaning to look into myself for some time now!

Great to see you're enjoying it. Feel free to leave a review on the X-Aviation web site. ;D If you like the Delco Carousel INS, you're going to love my other project that we're going to continue after the Saab is finished. http://forums.x-pilot.com/index.php?topic=426.msg14248#msg14248 I think I will :-) My favourite FS9 plane was the Dreamfleet 727. I can't use it any more though; after seeing Nil's BK117's 3d gauges, everything I'd loved in FS9 looked like a bunch of sprites bumping together at 16fps over a 1024x768 bitmap (which is exactly what the FS9 2d panels are). Unfortunately haven't got the hang of bludgeoning the X-plane camera around a 3d cockpit fluidly enough to be able to reach all the parts of a modern high-quality X-plane cockpit (which was easily done in FS9's 2d cockpits with clickspots and key shortcuts to display the various auxillaries). By the time your 742 is ready though, I should have it figured out!

Looks beautiful! I think there's a few typos on the texture though; the panel between the throttles and the inertial navigation unit say "Climb/Decend", which should be 'descend', and there's a reference to 'alerion' trim on the trim panel at the rear of the pedestal. Yep I know it's WIP...

And I'm not disappointed! Absolutely lovely aircraft :-D :-D :-D

Yep I accept that! It's just a weird personal preference of mine to have no electronics more recent than the Delco Carousel IV-A inertial navigation system (which I spent hours installing into various MSFS9 aircraft, back in the day...) I'm purchasing the Duchess now. Thanks for the reply!

Nevermind, I just found the manual. It does have a DME gauge, but only for VOR1. Not sure how I missed it in the screenshots - it is quite small I suppose! Makes me all the more keen to shove the G430 off the panel though...

I'm thinking of buying the Duchess, as the panel looks amazing. I used to spend hours in Microsoft FS2004 flying around in aircraft like the HS.748, flying IFR on VATSIM along the airways, but that was years ago. Would like to get back into that kind of simming, using X-Plane because FS9's 2d panels look awful now. But I have a reservation: Does the Duchess have a DME gauge? It's quite important, because without one you can't really fly IFR. And I haven't seen anything obviously resembling a DME output anywhere on the panel from the screenshots I've seen. Does the Garmin 430 unit have DME functionality? Also, is there a way for the end user to remove the Garmin device from the panel? I don't like simulated computers much; I have some unexplained desire to make the panel look like it's from the 1970s/80s and big blue glowing simulated TFT screens detract from that a bit! Very new to X-Plane so this is probably a newb question...