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    Southern California
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    Airplanes, electronics, computers. Yes, I've talked to Bill Gates one-on-one.

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About Me

  • About Me
    Former Flight instructor. Certified A&P Mechanic. Electrical Engineer. Well into my dotage now, I like flying the PMDG 737ng on my modest 2500k @ 4500KHz. Does well.

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  1. Same concern. I bought an Oculus 2 recently, but it is just setting in the box. Facebook account is not something I will do. Unless I fine a way around that requirement, it gets Ebayed. There was some promise by Oculus/Facebook in October to do away with the Facebook requirement, but no info since that I have found.
  2. Quick reply to question 1 Wind direction and velocity (wind vector)is generated in the air as the difference between true airspeed vector and ground speed vector. That mechanism would not work in real life on the ground.
  3. Hate to see VHF nav fade. I know 'er well. DME IS the replacement for the marker beacons. All or most ILS's now have a DME associated with the ILS freq, or will have. A standard low powered DME transponder was developed for airports and has a cost advantage over the marker systems, since no off airport real estate is necessary and the hardware and installations are simple. The ground box is actually less complicated than the corresponding airborne units needed to complete the system. However, it is my opinion that the FAA pulled the plug too soon on the marker beacon system. Most general aviation aircraft do not have DME, and affordable new designs have not been developed. This leaves the function to a GPS position. Legal GPS nav boxes are $5000+ and the install needs to be certified. And if you do have the GPS system, then both ILS and GPS approaches are gone on GPS jamming. No GPS, no approach. I know there are practical work arounds, maybe some one current can comment. ILS is not going away in the USA, though. It is still the primary approach system for larger airports. It is the official redundant and necessary approach backup for GPS if GPS goes toes up. Ron CPSMEL
  4. Well, I am glad that this was only a Senior Moment on my part. Thanks. Hoped it wasn't a repeat of a past event here with a cock-of-the-walk that could not be challenged and became abrasive. Wry humor is my usual stock and trade, not anger. So, egg on the face is OK considering what I had for breakfast this morning.
  5. Yes, my posts are gone as well. There were many posts in the thread, 20 or so. The OP was SIM-something and maybe the title included the words "flight engineer". I received a rep point from another thread poster for my last of several posts about 6 days ago. That is gone too. A fair amount of research went into that post - hate to see the the thread "disappeared" due to maybe annoying someone with mod privileges. A similar thing happened a few years ago, and I gave up posting here. I know you are a salt-of-the-earth guy. You might look into this. ron
  6. A thread addressing an anomaly of DC-6 engine simulation in MSFS seems to have been purged including my posts. Is the an explanation for this? Maybe it was moved - can't find it. ron
  7. +1 An opinion that syncs with my own on this subject. I consider Mr Ainscough an expert in this realm, and while "proof by authority" is not valid, an opinion from Rob carries a lot of weight. In fact, the dynamics of this sim were so far off initially, that I was very discouraged. However, as the OP notes, the latest update seem to be going in the right direction. The planes I briefly tried seem much more realistic. I have been immersed in aviation and engineering much of my life and have flown a shatload of various aircraft IRL . The problem has been the faulty dynamic response of nearly all of the FS2020 aircraft initially. The injected somewhat unrealistic turbulence or the control sensitivity is another subject.
  8. Bosco19 - Bob-Lo boats? Maybe you are of a similar vintage as me. I made a few trips on those steamers. The most fun for me was below deck studying the big triple expansion steam engine. A Detroiter, Joe's hobby shop, Strathmoor model club. An RC pioneer. Just a kid. Long ago. Yeah, the scenery is marvelous. The flight modelling is a train wreck. Ron
  9. If you go into developer mode in the general menu I think, you will get a lot of data re GPU/CPU. In complex areas, I am CPU limited Ryzen 3600. Otherwise I am limited by GPU 1060.
  10. Most of my ~5000 hrs IRL I was paid to fly. I flew so many different kinds of a/c at one point, they began to all seem the same. I am not that fussy about how an a/c handles. But I know what is normal airplane behavior and I can easily get into a "real" sense of flying with most sims. That said, I have found most of the a/c in MSFS2020 that I have flown to be weird, quirky or unrealistic in one respect or another. I do know how real aircraft handle. My considered opinion is the same as Robert's. The a/c are not satisfactory as delivered. His observations resonate with my own experience with these flight models . Of course, the scenery is absolutely wonderful. Maybe they tried to make engineers out of artists for the a/c dynamics. Whatever the reason, they fell into the Dunn-Kruger effect of not knowing what they didn't know. I will have to just park MSFS2020 until the a/c are improved.
  11. The PERF INIT ISA number is the deviation from standard ISA, so if standard ISA temp at sea level is 15 C and the probe says 10 C the ISO dev is -5 C.Re takeoff speeds, you move the computed speeds to the right hand column in the TAKEOFF REF page. Then the speeds will appear on the tape. if you then change any runway, weights, etc., the speeds are erased and have to be re-applied.Hope that is what you are asking.r
  12. Yeah, thats about it. Slats will not increase lift at a given AOA, they only prevent leading edge stall ( the worst kind) and increase the CsubLmax a little by themselves.Given the planform of most jets, they are an absolute necessity, though. All of these swept, pointy winged a/c would be deathtraps without them. For example, a snap roll on rotation by a DC9 at KDTW a few year ago attempting a no flaps (and therefore no slats) TO.ref. Abbott & von Doenhoff ( slat perf.)r
  13. My FSX is also crashing on exit lately. Did some tweaking and assume I did something to cause it. Similar setup as the OP with FSX sp2.I'll pass along any related info I find.r
  14. mgh's view that there are only local effects by an object in the flow field of a wing system is very common. But it is incorrect.If you wiki lifting line theory, which I am sure you have, you will notice that to derive the circulation and thus lift at any one point on the span, you have to consider all other points on the span. In other words, there is interaction from tip to tip in a wing system. This interaction does not occur just on the lift line or lift plane, but a considerable distance above and below the wing, roughly 1/2 a span. In fact, the basic equation for induced drag is based on the energy required, and thus the drag produced, to propel a cylindrical mass of air with a diameter of one wingspan, downward, the reaction of that being lift. That diameter is properly thought of as the domain of the wing. So, any object which causes a velocity change (thrust/drag) within that diameter will change the circulation and change the wing lift to some extent. The proof of the pudding is that doubling the drag of most a/c by lowering the gear produces surprisingly little trim change because the gear drag couple is compensated for by the circulation effects I have mentioned. The airtanker drop effect is well known. I have personally experienced it and dealt with it as a pilot. Since I was well acquainted with wing theory then, I recognized it for what it was. It is quite different from a load separation, say dropping a streamlined object such as a bomb of equal weight. Dispensing retardant produces an ADDITIONAL large, but transient lift pulse because it radically increases wing circulation until well clear of the a/c. Since it is a liquid or slurry, it violently exchanges momentum with the surrounding air and becomes a larger aerodynamic object than what is apparent.Nothing other than circulation effects explain these observations. BTW, interaction distance with a wing is related to span, and little else, so 15 feet away from a 130 foot wing is close enough to have a strong effect on circulation. The onset of ground effect is span only related and is a circulation effect as well. On the foreplane/aftplane loading biz:Every practical example of a statically stable system will yield a more highly loaded fore plane than aft plane. The rule applies to conventional, canard, tandem, or whatever layouts. At normal aspect ratios, if loading differences are large enough, this will yield dL's to overcome wing section moments and other destabilizing factors and produce static longitudinal stability. One might be able to violate this rule by using a very lightly loaded low aspect ratio foreplane, say AR<.5 and still have stability because the low aspect ratio of the foreplane will produce a very low dL/dAlpha at modest angles. At high angles, however, the system would be expected to become unstable in the worst way - divergent. Evidence of static stability can be demonstrated by increasing positive stick forces to maintain steady level flight throughout the a/c's speed range. This is more elaborately stated somewhere in FAA part 23, 25 as a requirement for certification. Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful responses. This all seem to be good therapy for some recent clusters. :) r
  15. Well, I don't think a lifting wing's horseshoe vortex system was derived from potential flow theory. It was in fact one of the first things that was discovered about wing lift long ago. The vortex system seemed reminiscent of magnetic induction to scientists of the day, so the resulting forces where called induced lift/drag as I remember. Prandtl and others refined the details.While there is a strong effect close to an object in a flow of course, there is also a more general effect. The skinny inner cord of a sailplane substantially effects the general flow 30 feet away. This is why wings are powerful and their gift of flight seems almost magical to many including me. Regarding the extreme pitching tendency induced by a retardant drop, the jettisoning of weight is a very small part of it - as well as obvious. Four or five seconds after the drop, with the load well clear, the plane is back to "normal" and only a small trim change remains. So, the big surprise is produced by the load damming up the flow under the wing increasing lift and downwash on the tail.Another thought relates to an airtanker tragedy that occurred not long ago. A converted C-130 had a wing spar failure just as it was dropping its load. Relieving the a/c of weight would not break a wing, but a lift pulse produced by a dispensed load would. It was recorded on video by some one and may be on youtube somewhere. Re a comment that as an a/c accelerates flies faster?, the nose goes up. This is produced by the angle of the wing and tail. The forward surface must have a greater effective positive angle than the rear plane to have positive static stability. All a/c I know of are like that ( and have to be to be certified FAA part 23 , 25). And finally, If a previous commenter was referring to me about about some one taking a college course, Aero 101 maybe. No, all this stuff was installed in my head years ago. Much of my background is engineering study, collaboration with experts, and even long conversations with John Thorp (Sky Scooter, Piper Cherokee, t-18) as well as contributions to the development of the Stevens Acro, conversion of the Navy S2F to airtanker service and a few other things. I looked a the calender recently and realized I am now definitely a geezer not a college guy, but I'm still learning.
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