Piston & Turbine Dukes

I'll take to a place I landed last night in Ireland that's grass and kinda bumpy.

MarcKC is absolutely correct as to the cause, solution, and why I haven't implemented it yet. Adding the new functionality from working title drastically upsets the fuel flow, which affects everything from the turbochargers, the gauges, engine performance (performance tables), tablet visualizers, and even the EDM-760. I spent several hours before releasing v1.1 to see if this could be made an easy fix, but every step I took unraveled hours worth of issues. However, hope is not lost. These changes often follow patterns for which equations can be fit to remove the guesswork from the operation, but they can be difficult to see while you're trying to preserve the balance of existing software (noticing a loss of 2-3kts of cruising speed at some altitude necessitates reexamining all the performance tables to ensure the aircraft remains within the envelope and any adjustments are made to restore the original performance). What usually happens is that I will develop a new aircraft from scratch with this technology change, and then, once I have figured out its nuances and created new equations, I will port it back to my previous aircraft when I am convinced that I have caught all the unintended consequences.

In summary, sometimes software problems are easy and affect only one thing, and sometimes they are hard and affect more things than you even know. This one is the latter. I will be using the new fuel flow technology for my future reciprocating engine aircraft, and once it works flawlessly there, I will bring it back into the Duke. Thank you for reading, and thank you for enjoying my aircraft so thoroughly that these details matter to you!

Hello,
As in manual:
"Mixture & Fuel Flow
Unfortunately, the MSFS internal combustion simulation is lacking as it concerns mixture and
fuel flow. Under all but extremely high density altitude conditions, reducing the mixture setting
should always result in decreased fuel flow at the same throttle setting. In MSFS, fuel flow will
fall off as horsepower decreases with an overly rich mixture setting. This is not detrimental to
the operation of this aircraft, but is nevertheless unrealistic. A potential solution is being
researched for future Black Square aircraft, and updates for the Piston Duke."

So @Black-Square did you find maybe some solution for this case and can we expect any changes in next update?

Sorry, haven't focused on the visible effects so not sure. I'll have a look next time I fly.

Side note: having programmed the MD11 and A300 recently, I am totally convinced by the whole "use events to emulate inputs and just read vars for display" scheme. I hated it on the MD11 because it was different, but it removes exactly this consideration around the visual behaviour of knobs in the cockpit. Wish everyone would do it like that.

Just wanted to share my fix with anyone that might be experiencing the same/similar issues. I deleted the tds-gtnxi-gauge folder and re-installed a fresh, updated copy and that did the trick for me...

@Black-Square said in Turbine Duke minor tablet/cabin temp bug:

It's done :) I forgot that the sound was already there, so it was much less trouble than I was expecting. Thanks for prompting me to add this feature.

Awesome, thank you for your quick response! This will be a major quality of life improvement for me in the TBM.

I asked the Turbine Duke owner my aircraft is modelled after, and he confirmed that it often requires differential power lever settings, which is why he prefers not to use the air conditioning at all, since it puts differential wear on the two engines.

Very interesting input, thanks! That's what I was wondering about. I had to taxi with the left engine in beta and the right engine above idle which felt quite odd. It was too hot not to use the AC though.

Can you give me some more specifics on what scenario you have produced where the target temperature does not turn red?

Fortunately I took a screenshot. I was cruising at FL270, -33°C OAT and had the temp mode in auto heat. I played around with the press. air temp/bleed air handles and pushed both fully in. As expected the cabin temp started to decrease rapidly but the target temp did not turn red. I was under the impression that it would turn red as soon as the desired temperature was unable to be reached but if there is a threshold that probably explains it. I only waited a couple of seconds so I don't know how low the cabin temp would've gotten.
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FWIW, my set of files in the Community folder hasn’t changed at all since I thought I had everything running fine prior to v1.1., other than the PMS GTN 750 update.

I’ve done some more testing today, and now I wonder if there might merely be something I don’t understand about the Century IV autopilot. Specifically, it seems that anytime I manually disengage ATT mode by clicking ATT, the autopilot lights up the GA button (which I don’t understand the purpose of) and thereafter I cannot reactivate ATT mode again while GA is lit (the latter just stays lit). But if I instead enable ALT mode while GA is “stuck”, then the GA light goes out, and after that I can reselect ATT mode and have it actually kick in again. Is this the intended behavior, and if so, is there an explanation for it?

Did anyone get this working? Do I have to be in ATT mode?

@Black-Square Does that also apply to the Turbine Duke though? I find it a bit odd that the AC won't work at flight idle. It does in the TBM.

It's amazing how many things can get by you when you have to hyper-focus on a different system every day... My apologies. I found the mistake in my code. Thanks for pointing it out!

I cant seem to get the plane to descend with AP on at all. Climb works fine and as described in the manual, but when I go to descend, lower the altitude selector, and press ATT, the only thing that happens is that it resets the altitude selector to my current altitude? I've also tried turning AP off, starting the descent, then pressing ATT and turning it back on, but it seems to do the same thing, resetting the preselector to the altitude I was already at. In the C414, I have to deactivate ALT mode manually before starting a descent, and I was hoping the same thing would work here, but clicking on ALT does not turn it off.

The standard high quality people models that show up in some add-on airports and also the Milviz C310 are great, I can't understand how some people think they look bad or fake. It's a flight sim, not Grand Theft Auto, they are the best looking people I've seen in any actual flight sim. Other planes like the Hjet have some awful looking fake and polygony people models I've not seen anywhere else. The ones the CJ4 with Woosel Mod are pretty nice too but I haven't seen them elsewhere.

Feels normal to me. I've only taken the plane on two flights but have had to do a lot of hand flying due to issues with the AP, and it flies smooth and steady and feels like it has some weight to it.

I just went looking now. It was a single character error in the XML. The failure triggered from the tablet would have worked correctly, believe it or not. Thanks for pointing it out. It's nice when the problems are easy, but then it takes me ten times longer to reply and document the change than it did to actually fix the problem!

I just saw it. Thanks so much. Fabulous repaint as always.

Toddimus from siminstrumention (https://github.com/Simstrumentation/Air-Manager) is working on this. On the 22 May 2024, he stated it will take a while to complete the project. I am using few free instruments from the AirManger store as a stop gap until the Toddimus's work is completed.

There is a siminstrumention Discord where Toddimus post updates.

I've had the same issue since I first installed, then reinstalled, then cleaned my Community folder and reinstalled. I've never been able to get the frequencies or fuel state to save, or the engine to show wear. I've worked with Simon from JustFlight extensively on it, but we haven't found a solution. On the other hand, we did discover that failures work, and are persistent from flight to flight.

@emmaflic Thank you very much