Pitot Heat Response (FS2020)
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Overall the Starship is a jewel in the area of systems management and response. However, the Pitot Heat response in FS2020 appears to be incorrect or managed improperly in the checklist.
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When I follow the checklist and activate Pitot Heaters at the recommended time I get an almost immediate "pitot over-heat" response. In order to keep this from happening I no longer activate them prior to flight.
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Once in the air, I try to remember to activate the heaters. The interesting thing is that I have forgotten to activate them at all on a couple of flights (due to not being in the following checklists). Even though heat was not applied at all on those flights I cannot recall that there was any issue with airspeed indications.
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By "almost immediate", does two minutes sound about right? The pitot overheat message works on a fixed timer of two minutes, as specified in the aircraft's manuals.
Did you fly though visible moisture? The pitot failure that would affect airspeed indication is handled by the simulator's icing simulation in all my aircraft.
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It's been a while since I used the checklist timing for turning on the heaters - I've simply not turned them on until airborne for some time. I'll run a couple of flights following normal procedures and see how long it takes for the warning to appear. I know that the warning appeared before I could become airborne and have all checklist procedures finished - I figured it was not a "good thing" to have over-heating before I was airborne.
I believe I forgot to activate the heaters on two flights - they may not have had moisture prevalent those days. I'll test this in the future by turning them off purposefully when entering moisture under freezing conditions. I'll keep my eye on the ASI and let you know what happened.
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I can now verify that the "Pitot Overheat" warning appears at exactly two minutes after activation. The problem with that is I was just preparing to taxi onto the active when this happened. I move thru the checklist fairly quickly, but that pushes my average on the last before-takeoff checklist and I would rarely make it. Also, that is sometimes impacted by clearance delivery delays.
With that in mind, I am amending the checklist (for my purposes) to include the pitot heaters just prior to the takeoff roll.
As for their actual performance, I did experience icing today descending over Germany, but the period of icing was fairly brief, I turned off the heaters but the airspeed indicator didn't fluctuate after reactivation. There may not have been enough time to create an impact. When I get a period of continuous icing in a future flight, I'll test them again and will pass on the results.
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YMMV but when I fly the King Air and Starship, I don't activate any of the pitot heat or those other heater switches until I'm waiting to depart/lining up.
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The cool thing about it is that the Starship requires a bit of intuitive thinking. If you're departing from a regular temperature airport, delay the pitot heat until lined up. Heck, if you're flying on a clear Caribbean summer day, why not leave it off and save the filaments and prevent their MTBF to creep up.
For example, when I depart before sunrise from an airport, or from a small airport, I simulate the lack of a GPU. I also don't import plans. I always plan in the cockpit, in the CDU. If I follow the checklist to a tee, I can quickly drain the battery. So, to save the battery, I pull the circuit breakers of the PFD and ND on both sides. It makes quite a difference. Then, when the time is right in the sequence, I pop them back in one by one.
