J41 Overspeed clacker

[Gregg_Seipp 568]

Just wondering if there was a patch for a J41 overspeed clacker. I've been caught by overspeed a few times...haven't heard any sound. It's in the AOM and with all the other warning sounds and voices, it seems like an important noise. I'm still pretty new to the J41, love flying it and I'll get better at watching it but it would be nice to know that a warning has my back.

[PHXMD-11 86]

Just wondering if there was a patch for a J41 overspeed clacker. I've been caught by overspeed a few times...haven't heard any sound. It's in the AOM and with all the other warning sounds and voices, it seems like an important noise. I'm still pretty new to the J41, love flying it and I'll get better at watching it but it would be nice to know that a warning has my back.

 

There is an overspeed warning. I think it activates if you overspeed more than a few knots.

[Gregg_Seipp 568]

Heh...the only sound that I heard was deafening silence. LOL. I bought it a month ago. Did I need to install a patch?

[BartEnder 2]

What was Your speed? Vne is 250kts, Mmo is 0.52.

I haven't flown this bird for a two months, but I recall, there is a visual-only clue on the speed tape, if You are very close to the limits and a clacker if You exceed the limit

[Gregg_Seipp 568]

Ok...an update. I read several past threads about the J41 overspeed and they recommended that I turn off 'Aircraft stress causes damage'. I usually have my realism settings maxed out but, ok...I changed it. I then hopped in and took the aircraft for a ride, climbing to 8000 ft and setting about 73% torque. Sure enough, at exactly 253KIAS, exactly the speed at which the aircraft breaks apart, I began to hear the little cricket sound.

 

Ok...good enough. Not sure why it overstresses at exactly the warning speed but, in general, I'm pretty nice to airplanes so a real overstress due to other conditions is unlikely. As long as I get the warning and am able to correct it. Seems like, if there's ever a little patch, it'd be nice to have the damage speed be up at 260 below 17,400 ft but, whatever.

 

I then took it up to FL210 and pushed the speed back up. The AOM says Vmo (Mmo way up there) should drop about 6KIAS or so for every thousand feet above 17,400. Sure enough, the red tape had slid down to 232KIAS. Through a LOT of coerssion, I got her up to 235KIAS and, sure enough, the cricket was back. (Not sure if the aircraft would have immediately broken up or not. Since I'm already turning off the 'stress' thing, not much point in testing it, I guess.)

 

As a side note, I got to thinking about the whole J41 overspeed problem last night, and I realized that, for the most part, it's sort of a philosophy problem built into the limits and capabilities of the aircraft. The aircraft doesn't have an autothrottle so there's the limiting factor. The second part of the problem is the autopilot. Since you're, typiically, having the autopilot hold your altitude, it has nothing to do with the power but accelerate. If you weren't on autopilot, it would share the power between acceleration and climbing...overspeeding would be far less likely and when you're flying by hand you're paying better attention and would be more likely to pull power, if you have an aversion to the red tape.

 

Since a quick Google of the J41 safety record didn't reveal any speed related crashes (very little, actually) it seems as though any overspeeds past Vmo/Mmo didn't cause much of a problem in the real world. Truly, the real pilots out there have fabulously more experience with power settings in various conditions that would also prevent it as well (certainly more than a C182 pilot who'd just one the virtual lottery to virtually buy one with virtually unlimited JP4 and zero maintenance cost). Still, it's hard to imagine it not happening from time to time. In any case, just the little experiment I did taught me that there seems to be a sweet spot of level flight overspeed between about 6,000 and, maybe, 16,000 where a slow creep in speed seems to catch up with you. Below that, it doesn't seem to want to do it and above that the EGTs seem to limit speed more. (It was A LOT of work, tuning, to get it to Mmo up high without the EGTs exceeding limits.)

 

Long post, but if someone has the same issue, maybe they'll find it useful.

 

Bottom line: turn off the 'aircraft stress causes damage' and listen for the cricket.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

It's there, even with the option off. At least it's that way on mine. You have to push it a little higher than 250 on the dot, though.

[Gregg_Seipp 568]

Yeah, that's why I did the test...to find out if it would give me the clacker. I figured it would be stupid and unrealistic to be flying along at 260-270-280. I couldn't tell it was there until I turned off the 'stress causes damage', though. I'll just turn it back on for other aircraft if I'm doing manuevers.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

For what it's worth, the stress causes damage is not at all realistic, so you might as well just leave it off.