Baron B58T Left Alternator low voltage Annunciator permanently on
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@Black Square are you able to assist me to solve this little problem with my Black Square Baron B58?
All was working well in FS2020 and then one day the enunciator light for the left alternator came on and has been on ever since (about 6 months now).
I have checked that "Failures" are disabled in the sim.
I have searched for a circuit breaker popped out but there doesn't seem to be one.
Do you have any suggestions about trouble shooting this issue?
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Since you only mentioned the simulator's failure menu, did you check the failures screen on the weather radar display?
That's a lovely looking home cockpit! I hope you're looking forward to the Baron Professional. The new visuals, huge system improvements, tablet visualizers, and easier hardware binding is befitting a setup like yours.
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I just checked the code, and there are only two conditions that can cause that annunciator to illuminate. Either the alternator voltage is low, or the alternator is switched off. What does the loadmeter for that alternator indicate?
Regardless, I would suggest to anyone else that this sounds like a hardware binding issue, as if the hardware is spamming the ALTERNATOR_SET event, preventing the aircraft's code from working properly; however, I suspect you are quite familiar with hardware binding. The only other thing I can think of is to check the the L:Var "L:var_alternatorFailure_L", if you have a convenient way to do so. Let me know what you find, and I will see if I can think of anything else to try.
Here is some information on the Baron, Bonanza, and Caravan Professional, if you haven't searched for them already. Don't miss the links at the bottom of the page to see what new features I've added to each aircraft.
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@Black-Square - The first thing I should say is that I wrongly stated which alternator light was on. It is the R-ALT annunciator.
The load meter shows zero volts on the Right circuit.
I have cycled both the left and right alternator switches and I can see that the virtual cockpit's switches act with matching movement correctly and immediately.
Your mention of spamming resonates with my thinking too, so I have searched through the FS2020 Controls Settings and there is nothing in there that refers to either alternator.While I was testing things just now I noticed that with the engines idling, MAST BATT switch ON and both ALT switches ON both alternator annunciators are lit up. The slightest increase of engine revs immediately turns the L-ALT light off while the R-ALT light stays on.
I have checked through the entire FS2020 Options/Controls and similarly through my SPAD settings for every individual item of hardware and not found the ALTERNATOR_SET event assigned anywhere.
I turned on Devmode in FS2020 and searched for the L:Var "L:var_alternatorFailure_L" and found it and the L:Var "L:var_alternatorFailure_R". With the aircraft cold and dark the Lvars were set to "0". The moment I turned on the Mast-Batt switch I saw L:var_alternatorFailure_R change to "1". So you have put your finger right on the issue. Can you help me find a way to stop that happening?
I read through the information on the Baron that you pointed me too and it looks good - especially the new sounds. :)
You commented on my sim-pit. I retired from my work with an airline in Papua New Guinea (I was not a pilot. But they need suitable housing. That was my job.) However I did fly occasionally and my favourite aircraft was the Baron D55 that was reserved for the GM's use.
Faced with retirement I decided I needed a project. So I set about recreating the Baron experience in my garage.
I knew what I wanted it to look like but I had not the foggiest clue how to do it.
It went through 12 iterations (13 in all) before it looked as in the photograph below. Embellished by the inclusion of many of the actual parts (such as the central control console) from the cockpit from that particular Baron. Replete with three data projectors on the ceiling with a 3.1m diameter curved screen for 229 FOV. I cut the sim right down for the final, 13th iteration. Anyway this what it looked like then.
Kind regards:
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Thank you for the excellent description of your investigation. Indeed, I would bet on L:var_alternatorFailure_R being the problem. I looked through the code, and there is exactly one place that can set that variable, and it is the failure system. Furthermore, since it's an L:var failure, it's completely contained to the JavaScript.
Looking through that code, the only way that an L:var can be set is if the failure is saved from a previous session and then recalled when the aircraft is loaded. It should be impossible for this to be the case and not have the failure also show up on the active failures screen. I assume you've tried pressing the weather radar softkey for "Reset All Failures"?
Something else you could try to get some more information: When you have developer mode open to inspect the L:vars, try setting the L:var_alternatorFailure_R to zero. If it says zero, I will have to think about what that means. If it resets to one in ten seconds or less, then we know the failure system thinks that it has a legitimate failure.
Thank you for sharing your home cockpit. That's exactly the scope of the setup that I aspire to have someday. I hope my software has only improved your experience, as it is a privilege to contribute to such an immersive experience. Getting photos of home cockpits (and sometimes the cats or dogs currently napping in them) is possibly my favorite part of conversing with my users from all over the world. From what I've seen around the world of aviation, real estate is the best part of the business!
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@Black-Square thanks again for such a swift response.
I went to the Weather Radar and pressed the softkey to "reset all failures" while observing the value of the Lvar in the Devmode console.
It remained set to "1".
Then I noticed in the Weather Radar window that Active Failures was highlighted in red. I had never noticed this before so I selected it and saw a few items list. "alternatorFailure_R" was one of them.
I found out that I can clear each item from the list and while watching the Devmode console window I saw the value change to zero. I waited for more than 30 sec and it did not revert to 1.
The R-ALT annunciator went off.
It looks like we have resolved the issue.
I do appreciate your help.
I am busy tonight but I will go for a flight tomorrow afternoon just to check it out.
Thank you very much.Regarding your hopes of having a setup like this I invite you to have a chat with me first so that I can explain why I stripped it down to a much smaller simple 3 screen pit.
Kind regards
David -
Well, I'm glad you have a solution, but it does strike me as odd that the Reset All Failures button did not work. It's a very simple operation in the code, so I can't imagine why one method would work and not the other. Luckily, I will be getting away from that failure interface with all of my future aircraft using the tablet interface.
Please let me know if there is ever anything else I can do for you. I have a soft spot for cockpit builders, since I have always wanted to build one myself, meaning that I have implemented a lot of custom code for them over the years. Any advice you have on cockpit building is very welcome!
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Up to this point of time I have not initialised any failures. Intentionally anyway. So I don't know how it ever did happen in my sim. In PNG, with the dangerous mountain weather there, we wouldn't fly any aircraft that we thought had even the remotest possibility of anything failing. So I always disable "failures" in my sim.
Thank you for the invitation to ask questions in the future too.
For discussion about cockpit building, direct private communication via email might be better.
djw4250@gmail.com
