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Guest shanwick

Starting the DC-3

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Guest shanwick

I've searched for and read several posts regarding starting the DC-3 in FS2004.The only way that I can start the aircraft is by selecting a default flight as supplied on the MAAM CD and then opening a spot view. Afterwards, if I move the aircraft to an airport of choice and save the situation as a default flight the aircraft will not start if I subsequently select that saved flight.Have I missed a post which solves this problem, or have I missed an important fix from MAAM? I really cannot believe that the developer has left us with such a terrible error when the FS2002 version worked so flawlessly.Thanks for any advice.David

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Guest wji

I can only relate how my MAAM DC-3 works I always start MAAM DC-3 from cold and dark. The PDF MAAM R4D *.PDF manual explains the startup procedure on page 55. It reads in part:"Because you have only one "finger", the mouse, to use, unlike Russ, you can not hold or operate more than one switch at a time. So we have made switches self-center after an appropriate period. This does mean that you can't dawdle before performing the next step, or the start-up may fail. But once you have learned the procedure, you should have no trouble starting the engines just like Russ does (except for that Mixture business, above!) TIP: Hold down the VIB switch until the engine catches."Basically, this means -- once CTRL+SHFT+F4 sets the mixture to rich -- just click the three switches (from left to right) and hold the VIB switch until the engine catches. Do this for one engine then the other. Works every time for me.Good Luck.

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Guest shanwick

BillThank you very much for taking the time to reply to my post. I am disappointed that I have not received even an acknowledgement of my post from the developers as this is the official MAAM support forum - sadly, that sends a certain message to me.Yes, I have RTFM and I have tried what you do to get the engines started more times than I care to remember. I can start any other aircraft I have ever had without any problems, and I have been a MSFS flight simulator enthusiast since Version 1 was released, except the MAAM DC-3 - unless, of course, I follow the convoluted way described in my original post.I have, however, found a fix at last and that is to remove the DC-3 from my hard disk and resolve not to buy from MAAM again. This is a very big disappointment for me but there are other more important things in life to get on with.David

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Guest allcott

>Bill>>Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my post. >I am disappointed that I have not received even an>acknowledgement of my post from the developers as this is the>official MAAM support forum - sadly, that sends a certain>message to me.>>Yes, I have RTFM and I have tried what you do to get the>engines started more times than I care to remember. I can>start any other aircraft I have ever had without any problems,>and I have been a MSFS flight simulator enthusiast since>Version 1 was released, except the MAAM DC-3 - unless, of>course, I follow the convoluted way described in my original>post.>>I have, however, found a fix at last and that is to remove the>DC-3 from my hard disk and resolve not to buy from MAAM again.> This is a very big disappointment for me but there are other>more important things in life to get on with.>>DavidInteresting choice when the problem lies within your system, not the MAAM aircraft. The rest of us have no trouble starting it, with only a couple of exceptions, therefore there can be nothing for the developers to `fix`. It is for you to identify where the problem lies within your computer, fix it, then tell the rest of us what it was and help those who have posted previously.Hope your patience comes back, or else you just cut off your nose to spite your own face.:-)Allcott

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Hi David,Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. The fact is I have been otherwise occupied with health issues and Mark is having some medical tests, too. I'm afraid we are not a bunch of spring chickens - more like old crows ;-) and such nagging physical things seem to be plaguing us this year, in particular.Also, please keep in mind we are all unpaid volunteers and have to squeeze our work for MAAM-SIM in when we can. But please do not feel that we don't care about your problem. Others here at the forum can tell you we take our support responsibilities seriously and usually get back to people very quickly.Now, if you are willing to give us another chance...You have not mentioned anything about your system, but I'll bet you have an ATI video card. We have occasionally seen this problem with some Radion users, but certainly not all, which of course makes the issue hard to diagnose. None of us on the team has been able to reproduce it, though, including me on my ATI equipped Acer.That said, it has been discovered by a customer and reported here on the forum that the cure is to set your target frame rate slider to anything less than unlimited in the Options/Settings/Display menu. This has cured the problem for others. Have you tried that? It's peculiar sounding that such a thing can affect starting engines, and nobody has yet come up with an explanation why this should be so, but FS is a strange animal at times. Believe me, if we could figure out what caused this issue, even though for only a very small number of users, we would certainly fix it!Everything that we know about problems starting the plane has been put into the manual or expounded upon elsewhere in this forum. I think I will try to pull together all the threads and distill it into one which I will pin to the top.Sorry again about the delay in answering and perhaps some of our other customers will attest that such is not SOP for MAAM-SIM.Bill RambowMAAM-SIM http://www.fssupport.com/maam/maamsim_neon.gif


Bill Rambow

MAAM-SIM

www.maam.org

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Guest shanwick

>Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. The fact is I have>been otherwise occupied with health issues and Mark is having>some medical tests, too. I'm afraid we are not a bunch of>spring chickens - more like old crows ;-)Hi BillThank you for replying to my post. I didn't know that you and Mark have been taking care of health matters - please forgive my impatience.Yes, you are right about my video card - it's an ATI 9800XT. Any, yes again, I do have my fps set at less that unlimited - its permanently locked at 40 fps.Could this have anything to do with ATI driver versions do you think?I installed the DC-3 again this afternoon and tried for about an hour and a half to get the engines going again. I did succeed a couple of times and documented the procedure I used, but trying to repeat it brought only failure and frustration - especially as I have just bought Rick Searle's excellend one hour video from the cockpit of a real DC-3 and can't simulate it :( Your proposal to collect together all of the posts about engine starting and pin them to the top of this forum is an excellent one. There are a lot of them, I know, and I don't suppose I have found and read them all :-) When I get a few free moments again I'll re-read these posts and see if there is something that I have not fully realised.David

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Guest shanwick

>Interesting choice when the problem lies within your system,>not the MAAM aircraft. The rest of us have no trouble starting>it, with only a couple of exceptions, therefore there can be>nothing for the developers to `fix`. It is for you to identify>where the problem lies within your computer, fix it, then tell>the rest of us what it was and help those who have posted>previously.AllcottThank you for your reply, but I don't think I can agree with what you say.David

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Hi David,Until I get time to drag everything together, here is a long thread where this maddening ATI Radeon issue is discussed. http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...91&mesg_id=2591I hope you can glean something useful from it. If so, please let us know what works for you.This Acer Ferarri 3200 laptop I am using at the moment also doubled as one of our demo machines at MAAM's World War II Weekend this year, hooked up to a 21" monitor and aux keyboard. It is an AMD 64 equipped with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 AGP (0x4E50)with 128MB of memory. The driver is 6.14.10.6422 dated 1/27/2004 and it has performed flawlessly. As you will read in the thread, some ATI cards/drivers seem to suffer starting problems and others, like this one, do not. It's all very peculiar!Bill RambowMAAM-SIM http://www.fssupport.com/maam/maamsim_neon.gif


Bill Rambow

MAAM-SIM

www.maam.org

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Guest shanwick

Hi BillThanks for the link - I hadn't come across this one before. Most of the posts describe exactly my situation so in some ways it's good to know that I am not alone :-) There are a couple of things that I can try out but I'm not holding my breath. I did, however, think that the post about the corrupted .flt file was interesting as I have been able to start the engines using the default BEA cargo flight but not any of my saved flights, so I'll give that one a try when I have a spare moment.I was beginning to think that changing from an ATI to an NVidia card might be an option - until I read the last post from someone who did that and now has the problem :-( I suppose I can try and get the engines running and then never shut them down when I save a flight, but that would take away a lot of fun as well as realism. We'll see.David

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>I was beginning to think that changing from an ATI to an>NVidia card might be an option - until I read the last post>from someone who did that and now has the problem :-( DavidI have about 500 hours on the MAAM-SIM aircraft, at first using a GeForce2 card and more recently a GeForce4. Although both these cards are much older than the average keen gamer uses today, I have never experienced any problems. This is, ironically, frustrating as a developer when I am unable to help those like yourself who have problems with the product, as I am unable to replicate them.Anyway, Nvidia rocks, in my book at least.MarkMark "Dark Moment" BeaumontVP Fleet, DC-3 AirwaysTeam Member, MAAM-SIM[a href=http://www.swiremariners.com/cathayhk.html" target="_blank]http://www.paxship.com/maamlogo2.jpg[/a]

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Guest wji

"I did, however, think that the post about the corrupted .flt file was interesting as I have been able to start the engines using the default BEA cargo flight but not any of my saved flights, so I'll give that one a try when I have a spare moment."I consider it prudent to ALWAYS use the default startup flight in FS9 when testing anything related to the simulation. With computers, it's gabbage-in-garbage-out. Many of us using Flight-One (F1) products have learned these aircraft will ONLY LOAD using the FS9 Default Flight (and, default 2D panel view ONLY).Hope this helps you get your MAAM DC-3 to start the old-fashioned way :-)P.S. Asus V9280/TD Ti4200-8X Nvidea G-Force4 Video (not quite as old as the DC-3 but still works -- with every FS9 slider maxed)

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Guest shanwick

Well, having read Bill Rambow's post about problems being experienced with some ATI cards I removed my ATI 9800XT and replaced it with a brand new NVidia 6800 Ultra - but I might just as well have not bothered.With the NVidia in place I can only start the MAAM DC-3 using one of the supplied start up flights and with a spot window selected as well. So, OK, I did that - but I don't always want to start my flight from the same default start up location.So, having started the engines as above I moved to an airport of my choice, shut the engines down and saved the flight. I re-started FS2004, selected my saved flight and guess what - the engines wouldn't start. I can only start them from a default MAAM start up flight.Frankly, I could already do that with the ATI card in place. It seems I have just wasted a whole load of money.I really don't know whether I should ask for help or just put the whole exercise down to experience, put the DC-3 back in its CD case and move on.David

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Hi David,I'm really sorry to hear you are still having trouble. I have exactly the same Nvidia card you just installed in my main machine and have never had any starting problems. This is a real head-scratcher! I hope you don't give up, because I sure would like to see you solve the problem for your own sake and that of others.Don't consider that money lost, though - it's a great card. I used it to fly and make the 'Briefing Time' video I just released and it did a super smooth job.Remind me - are you able to start from the 2D cockpit if you open an aux window showing spot view?Bill RambowMAAM-SIM http://www.fssupport.com/maam/maamsim_neon.gif


Bill Rambow

MAAM-SIM

www.maam.org

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DavidI tried hard to replicate your circumstances tonight ... shutting down, saving cold, going elsewhere, then selecting the cold flight, starting up ... to no avail. She starts every time for me, so it's hard to help.Just one thing, on the offchance that sometimes the obvious is easy to overlook in one's frustration: I'm sure you have the starting sequence right (you must have practiced it enough!) but you are moving the mixture levers up to full rich, presumably?Given that they are hard to see when pulled right back, I mention this as one possibility in trying to sort you out here, albeit unlikely in your case. I've heard of others overlooking this and she won't start with the levers in Idle Cut Off position, of course.MarkMark "Dark Moment" BeaumontVP Fleet, DC-3 AirwaysTeam Member, MAAM-SIM[a href=http://www.swiremariners.com/cathayhk.html" target="_blank]http://www.paxship.com/maamlogo2.jpg[/a]

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Guest shanwick

Hi BillThanks for your response.>I hope you don't give up, because I sure>would like to see you solve the problem for your own sake and>that of others.I was initially just very disappointed as I thought the NVidia really would do the business. I'm kinda warming to this problem :-lol I'll keep cracking on so long as you don't mind helping.>Remind me - are you able to start from the 2D cockpit if you>open an aux window showing spot view?I've got so used to always using a VC that I have to admit that I haven't tried starting in 2D. I'll start up again using the default BEA cargo flight, move myself to another airport, shut the engines down and save the flight. I'll then try and start the saved flight in 2D and see what happens. I won't be able to do this until this evening but I'll report back later.Thanks for your continued help - gotta be an answer here.BTW, I also live in Reading - but Reading, Berkshire, UK :-) David

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