A little puzzle

[Roadkill]

I prefer low and slow flying and one of my favorite models for putt-putting around was John Van Voorhis' little Aeronca (aeronca_a.zip). Two weeks ago I had to reinstall FS9 after screwing up my files. When I reinstalled the Aeronca I could not get the gauges to show up. This has not occurred before on the Aeronca or any other plane and I would welcome suggestions as to what the problem may be. (P.s. I remembered to copy the gauge folder, which eliminates the most obvious explanation.)

[Jim Robinson]

It looks to me like this one uses gauges from the default Lockheed Vega, Spirit of St. Louis, and J-3 cub but since those gauges are in each aircraft's panel folder instead of the main gauges folder the panel.cfgs just aren't written correctly. There's 3 ways to fix it:


1. Place copies of "Lockheed_Vega.cab", "Spirit_of_StLouis.cab", and "Piper_J3Cub.cab" into each of the Aeronca's panel folders.

2. Open up each of the Aeronca's panel.cfgs in Notepad and change each reference to these default gauges to make it look in the default aircraft's panel folders. (most sanitary way, but probably the hardest) You'll just need to add "..\..\[Aircraft Folder]\panel" to the beginning of each gauge callout like this:

before:
gauge00=Lockheed_Vega!altimeter, 890, 676, 100, 100
gauge01=Lockheed_Vega!vsi, 509, 605, 81, 81
gauge02=Spirit_of_StLouis!spirit_asi, 627, 666, 110, 110
gauge03=Spirit_of_StLouis!spirit_rpm, 751, 580, 126, 125

after:
gauge00=..\..\Lockheed_Vega\panel\Lockheed_Vega!altimeter, 890, 676, 100, 100
gauge01=..\..\Lockheed_Vega\panel\Lockheed_Vega!vsi, 509, 605, 81, 81
gauge02=..\..\Spirit_of_StLouis\panel\Spirit_of_StLouis!spirit_asi, 627, 666, 110, 110
gauge03=..\..\Spirit_of_StLouis\panel\Spirit_of_StLouis!spirit_rpm, 751, 580, 126, 125

Only do this to the gauges associated with the 3 aircraft listed above. Looks like there are 18 gauges per panel.cfg you'd have to do this to.

3. Probably easiest, just move "Lockheed_Vega.cab", "Spirit_of_StLouis.cab", and "Piper_J3Cub.cab" into the main gauges folder. Move, don't copy.

Jim

[Roadkill]

Jim, Thanks so much for the reply! A lot of work went into that and I appreciate all your effort.
Bob

[Roadkill]

Jim,
Just as a little feedback...I tried Option 2 first even though it was the hardest and most time-consuming (and held the greatest danger for error). Ultimately it was Option 1 that worked, although not at first. I had to restart FS9 twice before the changes "took" and the gauges appeared. Go figure!! But now everything is fine and I am enjoying the Aeronca once more. Thanks again! Bob

[Jim Robinson]

Well I'm glad you got them working. When I downloaded that I have a program that lets me download only parts of a .zip file so I only downloaded the panel.cfgs in this case (I'm on dial-up, 11 megs takes almost an hour to get, gotta love it). It could be that I missed something with option 2 by not having the whole airplane and testing it in the sim. Anyway, thanks for the update and have fun :) .

Jim