Autopilot Question

[rjdahlen]

I recently acquired the Carenado Piper Archer and really enjoy flying this aircraft. I normally do 2 to 3 hour legs and so there are times I need to walk away, like to get more coffee or to get rid of some!! I was a bit dismayed to find the aircraft did not have an autopilot. In the System.cfg file the autopilot available is set to 1 and all the other numbers in that file are similar to the autopilot in the Skyhawk. My key bindings for the autopilot  work perfectly in the Skyhawk but have no effect on the Archer. I've done a bunch of looking and find no reference to another place that the autopilot needs activation. I'm just wondering if anyone knows of a setting that prevents the autopilot from work other than in the system.cfg.

 

Thanks in advance for any helt!!

[Nels_Anderson]

I don't have an answer, but I really hope someone else does! I've been flying the Archer a lot too and I miss having the basic autopilot that my real world Archer had...

[tiger1962]

4 hours ago, rjdahlen said:

I'm just wondering if anyone knows of a setting that prevents the autopilot from work other than in the system.cfg.

 

There needs to be an ai.cfg as well as a sytems.cfg, you could try copying the ai.cfg from the Skyhawk if the Arrow doesn't already have one.

[rjdahlen]

Thanks for the input Tim. The Archer did have an ai.cfg file, but I tried the one from the Skyhawk as well. Still doesn't work. For comparison, I changed the autopilot in the C152 Aerobat from 0 to 1 and everything works fine. There seems to be something in the build of the Archer that keeps the autopilot from engaging. I'm looking, but no joy yet!!

[rjdahlen]

On 3/27/2023 at 8:18 AM, Nels_Anderson said:

I don't have an answer, but I really hope someone else does! I've been flying the Archer a lot too and I miss having the basic autopilot that my real world Archer had...

Found it!! After a couple days exploring and trying to find an answer, I decided to compare files between the Archer and aircraft that have functioning autopilots. What I found was that the working ones used the same power source as the audio power. I made the following change and now I have autopilot using my keyboard:

 

Go to systems, then electrical. Scroll down to autopilot, go across the page to power and it should look like this!

 

power:5, 10, 10.0#

[Nels_Anderson]

3 hours ago, rjdahlen said:

Found it!! After a couple days exploring and trying to find an answer, I decided to compare files between the Archer and aircraft that have functioning autopilots. What I found was that the working ones used the same power source as the audio power. I made the following change and now I have autopilot using my keyboard:

 

Go to systems, then electrical. Scroll down to autopilot, go across the page to power and it should look like this!

 

power:5, 10, 10.0#

 

Very glad to hear you found it!

 

This will be my first attempt at editing an MSFS 2020 config file...hopefully it goes well.

 

[Nels_Anderson]

OK, so I tried doing this and something got lost in your description...what file is it that needs editing?

[rjdahlen]

2 hours ago, Nels_Anderson said:

OK, so I tried doing this and something got lost in your description...what file is it that needs editing?

Open the carenado-aircraft-pa28-archer-ii file. Open the aircraft by going to sim objects, airplanes and and then the archer folder. You'll get the list of files in the aircraft folder. Scroll down until you see the systems file toward the bottom of the list. Open that and then scroll down until you find the heading electrical. In there, circuit # 33 is the one that needs to be changed. Move across the page until you find the power item  (it's something like 40, 40, 40.0#) and then change that to match the power item right above it=  5, 10, 10.0# than save before closing. That is what allowed my autopilot to work. It appears that the way Carenado sets it up the autopilot has no circuit breaker and therefore no power. This gives it that power!!

 

Good luck!

[RyanbATC]

8 minutes ago, rjdahlen said:

Open the carenado-aircraft-pa28-archer-ii file. Open the aircraft by going to sim objects, airplanes and and then the archer folder. You'll get the list of files in the aircraft folder. Scroll down until you see the systems file toward the bottom of the list. Open that and then scroll down until you find the heading electrical. In there, circuit # 33 is the one that needs to be changed. Move across the page until you find the power item  (it's something like 40, 40, 40.0#) and then change that to match the power item right above it=  5, 10, 10.0# than save before closing. That is what allowed my autopilot to work. It appears that the way Carenado sets it up the autopilot has no circuit breaker and therefore no power. This gives it that power!!

 

Good luck!

I don't have a systems.cfg in my install.  I only have ai, cameras, cockpit and gameplay.cfg

[rjdahlen]

2 hours ago, RyanbATC said:

I don't have a systems.cfg in my install.  I only have ai, cameras, cockpit and gameplay.cfg

Something is missing there. All of my aircraft have many more than those 4. Seems like without the other files the aircraft wouldn't work. Might want to try another install. Can't think of anything else to recomment. 

[Nels_Anderson]

I don't have a system.cfg file in my Archer install either. A quick check of the SDK says that system.cfg is an optional file and my install certainly seems to work OK without it.

 

Is it possible during your experimenting that you copied a system.cfg from another plane you were looking at?

[rjdahlen]

18 hours ago, Nels_Anderson said:

I don't have a system.cfg file in my Archer install either. A quick check of the SDK says that system.cfg is an optional file and my install certainly seems to work OK without it.

 

Is it possible during your experimenting that you copied a system.cfg from another plane you were looking at?

Nope. Until I started looking for an answer I didn't know I'd need a system file. It was already there.

[Nels_Anderson]

Is your system.cfg file small enough that you could post it so the rest of us could see what's in it? Or maybe post it as an attachement?

[rjdahlen]

5 hours ago, Nels_Anderson said:

Is your system.cfg file small enough that you could post it so the rest of us could see what's in it? Or maybe post it as an attachement?

Let's see if this works. If you open it and resave it as systems.cfg you should be able to move it into your aircraft folder.

 

 

archer systems cfg.txt

[Nels_Anderson]

OK, I installed the systems.cfg file.

 

It doesn't seem to have caused any harm as the plane still works as before. But I cannot find any evidence that it did anything either. I believe you said you just used the keyboard commands to control the autopilot. I tried that, but to no apparent effect. How were you able to tell it was actually working?

[rjdahlen]

1 hour ago, Nels_Anderson said:

OK, I installed the systems.cfg file.

 

It doesn't seem to have caused any harm as the plane still works as before. But I cannot find any evidence that it did anything either. I believe you said you just used the keyboard commands to control the autopilot. I tried that, but to no apparent effect. How were you able to tell it was actually working?

I figured out it was working by seeing it maintain altitude and course , both by vor tracking and gps tracking. I use what I think are the preprogramed keys, ie: On - alt+z, Off-shift+alt+z, altitude hold- ctl+a and Nav hold- -ctl+n. They all work as advertised! I have noticed that I have to hit the keys solidly to get the to work.

[Nels_Anderson]

OK, that's what I was doing but I did not see any effect. I'll have to try it again...