CH-53

Someone on MP today asked where he could find a CH-53 model. I looked around and found one at simviation.com that would make a great project. Anyone looking for a project? I won't be working it, mainly because I don't know a thing about choppers.

Elevon mixing?

Does anybody know how the elevon panel deflections on delta airplanes (like F-106 or Mirage III) were mixed? Did the inner and outer elevons move together, or was there some differential there? How much did each panel deflect for roll and pitch?

I just guessed for the Mirage model, and could do the same for the F-106, but I'd rather get this right if I can.

Sea Fury, DavePack updates

The Sea Fury model is updated. It's in a usable state now, but still needs a lot of detail work.

DavePack now has an Air Force and a Navy pilot figure, both untextured at the moment. There is also a regular gear indicator (three green lights) and a navalized indicator (with additional holdback and hook lights).

T-38 and Sea Fury

I worked on some old models today. These are two of the older one's I have. The T-38 is very low-poly, and I wouldn't bother doing a conversion on it today, but it filled a niche when I first built it, and it looks good enough to keep around. Note: this is the only model in my hangar that uses the JSBSim capability to model a modulating afterburner. The first half of the throttle range maps "mil power" from idle to 100%, and the second half of the range maps the afterburning range. This might be the preferred method for you depending on your throttle hardware.

The Sea Fury is one of the first Alpha Simulations conversions I did. I put it aside a couple years ago, and it hasn't been kept up, until now. It's posted at the hangar as a project, and I'll be bringing it up to par with the other airplanes.

fgo, launcher app

I just downloaded Robert Leda's python-based launcher app called fgo. It's fun to play with, and looks more lightweight than fgrun. It can be found here. Note: you'll need the PIL (Python Image Library), as well as a fairly modern version of python.

New drag 'chute testing

User "someguy" discovered a bug in the new drag 'chute system, so I've put in a fix (I hope) to the F-4E model, which is now posted at the hangar as version 2.6. If all tests properly the new system will:

1) make chute animation visible over multiplayer
2) cause the 'chute to rip off if deployed above 200 kts.

A note on fuel tank priority

One limitation on the use of the "priority" tag for fuel tanks: The priority number can't be greater than the number of tanks. For example, the Thunderbirds F-4E model only had one fuel tank defined, and it had a priority of 2, which resulted in it not feeding. One solution is to change the priority to 1. A better solution is to add the external tank definitions, as in the other F-4's. It's not necessary that the tank definitions in the FDM match the tank models actually installed on the model, so if the airplane might carry a certain external tank, go ahead and add the definition for it.

I'll be adding tank definitions for the external tanks that N-SCOT made for the A-7E , even though they aren't installed on my current A-7E model.

New F-4E

The F-4E is now set up so that the drag 'chute should be visible over multiplayer. As soon as I get a chance to test this online with someone I'll add this to all the models with drag 'chutes.

I also switched the weapons release key from 'space' to 'e'. While testing this I saw that some of the bombs appeared to impact each other after being released. I'd rather not increase the bomb release interval in an attempt to fix this, so we may be stuck with this for a while.

I had previously used the 'e' key for 'eject' in the OV-10 model, so I'll now need to look for another 'eject' key. Maybe 'F1'?

New DavePack

User "jano" found a bug in DavePack, another leading slash bug, so I've fixed that. I also fixed the wingtip vortices so they stop emitting when the airplane is crashed. In this case "crashed" means the JSBSim system called crash-detect has detected a crash.

I've also tried to standardize the usage of generic multiplayer properties in my models. Here's what I have so far:

float[0] - rotating beacon 1
float[1] - rotating beacon 2
float[2] - nose (tail) wheel steering angle
float[6] - drag 'chute unfurl

int[0] - tail numbers
int[3] - gun smoke
int[4] - wingtip vortices
int[5] - contrails
int[6] - drag 'chute deploy
int[7] - smoke
int[10] - afterburner plume, engine[0]
int[11] - afterburner plume, engine[1]

Soon I hope to have all the models meet this standard.

Starting a turbine

I made a recent change to the turbine code that allows you to abort a start properly. With this change the default FlightGear key binding for the 's' key won't work for turbine engines. I'll be adding a new binding definition for the 's' key to all my turbine-powered models. The new binding is a simple toggle, which sets the starter valve to true (open) or false (closed).

The procedure for starting the turbines is: 1) make sure the cutoff property is true (it should be by default), 2) set the starter property to true, 3) when N2 reaches at least 15% place the cutoff property to false. The turbine will accelerate to idle and the starter will automatically set itself to false.