Baron Fritz

Hello JMIE, by looking at the image you posted, it seems like your nose gear is still a bit off the ground. You can use ACM to locate each tire precisely on the tarmac. On that particular aircraft, you should have only 10 contact points, one for each tire, unless the extra points are crash damage on the engines. wing tips or fuselage. In that case, they should be renamed "scrape"points in ACM. With a little patience you should be able to get your flying machine straightened out in no time!

Sorry, I just got back from Mars and I may have missed some critical detail, but if I might put in my two cents worth.... Have you tried Aircraft Container Manger? This free program allows one to see what could be going wrong with your aircraft and correct things like contact points, without a whole lot of guesswork. It sounds like this could be of benefit to you. It is available here -simviation.com/1/search?submit=1&keywords=aircraft+container+manager&x=17&y=7

No charge....!

Hi DDP The file is still available at Avsim. Over there they identify it as runwayroll.zip, Runway Roll Gauge v 2. https://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=68781 Happy tweeking!

Hello DDP, As you are discovering and correcting errors in your aircraft's behaviour, which is a problem all too common in many FS aircraft, you may find this gauge of interest, rwyroll.zip. This gauge allows you to easily compare the take-off. / landing performance of your aircraft against "book" figures. I install it as a pop-up in my aircraft as a matter of course. You may very well be in for some surprises! I downloaded the file here some time ago, before FlightSim got "improved", with luck it should still be available.

I have gone ahead and downloaded Model Converter X. My first impression is that the program was aimed at users with a far higher level of skill than I, people like Mr. Gibson for example, who have a Master’s degree in developing, (and there are many examples of his outstanding work out there!) While it is still very early in the examination process, I intend to continue monkeying around with MCX , though it seems to be a very daunting undertaking so far. At this point, ACM seems to be the program of choice for me, if only because it allows one to "see" what you are changing as you go on a schematic of the actual aircraft. Model Convert X may be capable of doing something similar, however I have yet to discover it

Hello Hans! You really should look into Aircraft Container Manager and Aircraft Airfile Manager, I find them virtually indispensable for precision tweaking! They are free and if you have any spare time, learning to reconfigure a wayward aircraft will certainly take care of that problem.

While I can't lay claim to expert status by any means, I can share my experience in "fixing" misbehaving aircraft. This is roughly what I would do: The first and probably the most important thing on the list is to obtain an operating manual for your intended victim, if that is not possible, try looking up a copy of Jane's All The World's Aircraft for the year of your aircraft. These year books are very detailed, though you may have to hit the library. Next on the list, obviously, is to make a backup file before you do any work. I would highly recommend installing Aircraft Container Manager and Aircraft Airfile Manager. I have AirWrench, however, like you, I have never gotten acceptable results using it. It seems as though when one item is changed, this program adapts the entire flight envelope to accommodate the change you made, whether wanted or not. Usually you wind up chasing your tail trying to achieve one simple change, so I just gave up on it. Also, you will need a sea level, standard day, no wind airfield as you will be using it when you conduct flight tests. The theory being, once you get your aircraft performing properly here, it will perform properly everywhere else. Last, but no less important, put on a fresh pot of coffee, the aircraft rehabilitation process has a sneaky way of eating up an afternoon. Using ACM, first check the basics of your plane, such as making sure that gear location and spacing matches up with the diagram, quite often it does not, and that in itself is one cause of weird behaviour. Check the contact points also, however you may have to fine tune these later on the basis of a taxi test. You mentioned that you were experiencing problems with fuselage angle. That can be corrected by adjusting the angle of attack in the Geometry section, many aircraft use an angle of 3 degrees, and that is a good setting to start with. It is also a good time to check the placement of the wing itself. Often the wing is incorrectly shifted fore or aft, resulting in mysterious behaviour issues. The horizontal tail is usually set at a zero degree incidence, though there may be exceptions. As for wing and tail areas, that info can be found in Jane's, and checked against the data listed in the Geometry section of ACM. Now you are ready for your fist taxi test! While taxing, do some heavy braking and bouncing tests to observe suspension behaviour. The suspension can be adjusted in the Contact Point section. I recommend that you only adjust one parameter at a time such as nose gear or main gear. Only adjust one thing a few percentage points at a time, based on the original data, do not forget a taxi test after each change you make. It helps to have ACM running in the background in order to flip between it and the sim. It is a pain in the butt, however, don't forget to reload your victim after each change and before a test. Like all good test pilots, it is best to be slow and methodical, this approach will reward you in the end. I do not believe in crunching through a massive column of numbers to achieve real world results, as quite often this is not the case. Adjust each section only a few percentage points at a time. Remember, be patient..... coffee not brewskis!

Have you guys considered Aircraft Container Manager? This was formerly a payware program, however it has been freeware for some time now. ACM presents the exact aircraft you intend to work on in a detailed schematic form, which eliminates much of the guesswork you are now experiencing. The area of concern which you are presently interested in is addressed under the "parameters-contact points" section. Here you will be able to examine and modify items such as gear location, compression, damping ratio, steering angle and many others. Even the wheel size can be adjusted. A word of caution is required at this point. As ACM permits a great variety of adjustments to your aircraft, it very likely that you will become sidetracked and find yourself spending much more time as, what started out as a simple gear adjustment, has morphed into a complete fine-tuning of the entire aircraft! Be sure that you allow extra time to accommodate this phenomenon. I downloaded Aircraft Container Manager at Simviation, though it may be available elsewhere.

Hmmmm.... at my end, I get an intermittent message saying that they are not available. I had originally intended to post only the gauge, however obviously, I don't know how to go about it. Or maybe there is zero interest in any case?

Apparently one is not allowed to post attachments..... sorry about that.

JGF, this may be the ice warning gauge of which you speak; IceWarning.xml. I tried to attach a folder containing the complete gauge, however that doesn't seem to be possible. I have also attached an article on airframe icing, which may be of interest. sa11.pdf icing.txt readme.txt

John, both FSGRW and PILOT2ATC are working perfectly fine in FS2004, Win 10. The only problem I've encountered was a very minor glitch in the P2ATC metar window ,regarding precipitation display, however this was expeditiously addressed by their support. With the help of top-notch programs like this, I think FS9 will continue to evolve forever-well, maybe not forever, would you believe for a long time yet?

I was having an issue with Pilot2atc occasionally not displaying precipitation correctly in the metar window.is It came to my attention after I installed FSGRW, and would probably have gone unnoticed otherwise. While it was only a very minor irritant, I brought it up with Dave at customer support at admin@p2atc.com. I was pleasantly surprised when they addressed the issue immediately - Pilot2ATC Update 2.6.4.2 Beta 6 . In this day and age of declining, or even no, customer support, Pilot2atc is in a class of its own. Outstanding support is only one more reason you should seriously consider Pilot2atc. .https://pilot2atc.com/

Mike, sad to say, but Hi Fi has pulled the plug on Evolution, they've "upgraded" their servers and Evolution is no longer supported. Some die hard fans are able to continue using Evolution by manually importing weather or using archival files. As I don't care to monkey around that much, I have reluctantly switched to FSGRW, and it seems to have superior depiction of meteorological conditions than Evolution had. For more information on the Evolution situation, have a look at the posts in the topic R.I.P Active Sky Evolution here in the FS2004 section of the forum.