v1.1 Electrical Discrepancies/Questions
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I was playing around with various bindings and I noticed some things about the electrical system that aren't making sense to me, so I wanted to run them past the community and @Black-Square.
First, the big ticket one. I'm not seeing, at least in the Amphibian and Cargo version (so I assume all of them share it) battery draw when running the starter. Indeed, using the starter runs the battery amperage down to zero, though I'm pretty sure it's still draining because I lost a few percentage points of battery charge according to the tablet. It decreases in a choppy fashion, like I would expect it to based on watching the TBM 850 amps decrease during the start, but that initial jump in draw seems to be missing. The ELEC tablet page confirms this, you can see battery amps decrease.
Actually, running the starter is, uh, charging the battery.
Running around in beta will cause the Standby Alternator to take over from the Generator, but I expect this is known since I've seen Nick mention on here that it's tied to the RPM and not the Ng value. Is this something that's being looked into for a future version?
Speaking of the Standby Alternator, I'm seeing power coming out of the Generator and Alternator AND a whopping amount coming out of the battery at low idle. The generator and alternator are putting out about 9A and 27V and the battery is putting out a whopping 36 or so amps, and that's with nothing but the nav and beacon lights on, no heaters and no avionics. Moving up to high idle will get the Generator up to 18A and start charging the battery, but I feel like there's 20A unaccounted for with these numbers. Where is this phantom draw that disappears once the generator is up to speed?
Actually, this doesn't appear to be a high/low idle thing, while taking these screenshots I had the propeller feathered, and then just moved it out of the feathered position. But you can see in the first one the battery is putting out 32A, and when the RPM is great enough for the Generator to take over, the Generator is putting out 15A and the battery is charging.
While I'm mentioning feathering, feathering the propeller causes the fuel pressure to drop and there is no instrument air.
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I'll look into your first point about the starter load. I think I might know what's happening here, and it might be yet another undocumented change in MSFS 2024. In 2020, a circuit power setting of 0% yielded a current draw of 50% of the maximum. If Asobo changed that so 0% is actually 0% current draw, then that might result in what you're seeing.
For the latter scenarios, this just sounds like the known issue of having the propeller fully feathered, but it's difficult for me to tell without your engine instruments in view.
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I'll look into your first point about the starter load. I think I might know what's happening here, and it might be yet another undocumented change in MSFS 2024. In 2020, a circuit power setting of 0% yielded a current draw of 50% of the maximum. If Asobo changed that so 0% is actually 0% current draw, then that might result in what you're seeing.
For the latter scenarios, this just sounds like the known issue of having the propeller fully feathered, but it's difficult for me to tell without your engine instruments in view.
@Black-Square Sorry Nick, I had to crop the screenshots because 1440 is apparently too big for the forums to handle, and I thought I did a better job describing. And yes, I am in MSFS 2024, which I'm sure I missed saying in the OP.
Yes, I have been starting with the propeller feathered, only for the last screenshot with the battery charging and positive instrument air had the propeller out of feather and in the high pitch position. Incidentally, I noticed with the propeller feathered that instrument air and fuel pressure reached nominal levels during startup, and then fell off again.
I thought I had been keeping abreast of the propeller RPM issue, but apparently I missed how pervasive it is. Sorry about that.
This is the same issue as the generator not being tied to the Ng, and therefore not putting out enough power at lower RPMs?
