Electrical power issue

[Reset XPDR 1,271]

Hi,I bought the PSS Concorde a couple of days ago during PSS's spring clearance sale, and have been happily flying this wonderful aircraft ever since.In order to familiarise myself with the aircraft, I've been through the tutorial a couple of times, but found that when I got to the radio tuning bit they wouldn't respond. Similarly, after say 20mins on the ground with ground power all of the lights would stop working. This was only rectified by either starting an engine or reloading the aircraft.One flight in particular, everything seemed to go OK, but when I tried to engage AT and AP at 4000 ft after takeoff, they would not turn on. I had to reload the aircraft in flight to get the AT/AP to work.Interestingly, I find the times I am most successful in maintaining 100% electrical operations throughout the flight is when I just start an engine right away, well before the checklist says I am supposed to.I've tried a few different combinations of flight initialisation, including loading the default cessna KSEA flight first then my concorde flight, cold and dark cockpit both enabled and disabled, or loading my concorde flight, swapping to baron 58, ensuring master avionics, battery and alternators are on, then switching back to concorder. So far none of these combinations allow power to remain on the concorde for more than 20 mins without engines running.Aside from the electrical power issue mentioned above, I find the aircraft an extreme pleasure to fly. I am currently on the seventh and last leg of an RTW flight with Concorde to allow me to familiarise myself with the aircraft. If anyone is interested, I've flown YSSY-NFFN-PHNL-KATL-LEMD-LLBG-VTBD-YSSY. The world just goes by so much quicker in the Concorde! The longest leg is 4200nm (VTBD-YSSY) and I've been able to stretch the normal 3900nm range limit by flying the first couple of hundred nm sub-sonic, then only using AB to push through the transonic region.I did have a loss of engine power issue whilst in supersonic cruise between KATL and LEMD whereby the engines would produce no more than 64% N2 and I had to descend at over 2000fpm to keep the airspeed above stall. Turned out to be an activesky dud metar reading, that was causing ridiculously low outside temps and thus affecting engine performance. Loading up FS default weather (yeuckk!) resolved the issue and I was able to continue my flight without further incident.Anyway, any tips on electrical power conservation would be greatly appreciated.Gary

[philbrown 9]

Sounds like an issue with battery drain. Normally in Flight Sim, the batteries (which is providing the power while the engines are off) will experience 'drain', and once they've run out of juice, the cockpit goes black. You starting an engine straight away then causes the plane to be powered by the engine, and so no battery drain.You can get round this with FSUIPC. It has an option to extend the amount of time before battery drain, or disable it completely. I think you will need the registered version though, which costs about

[Reset XPDR 1,271]

Thanks for the response Phil. I was afraid this might call for a registered FSUIPC fix. Strange how this is the only payware aircraft I have that is affected. Perhaps it is because the Concorde doesn't have an APU like other heavies that I turn on as soon as I load the aircraft up. You'd think that connecting external power would deal away with any battery holding charge issues.I don't think I'll be shelling out 23 pounds just to keep my battery charged, especially when virtual aviation fuel to keep one motor running is free :-lol Gary

[Murray_CHYZ 1]

I have a registered copy of FSUIPC and that does not fix the problem. The response that is given is that PSS support can not duplicate the problem. Therefore, they can't fix it.I am not sure if the threads still exist, but there were a few posted. I thought I had fixed the problem by doing a complete purge and reinstall of "all" my software, but unfortunalely, the problem came back.

[Guest Phoenix_7]

as the problem has only been reported by a few people out of thousandsI doubt very much the problem is with the Concorde codeI still believe it has something to do with your startup flight and/or some other 3rd party softwareJohnPSS SUPPORTsupport@phoenix-simulation.co.ukhttp://www.avsim.com/pss/phoenix.jpg

[Murray_CHYZ 1]

That is more than likely true, but unfortunatly, only the Concorde is effected (for me anyway). You can see why this is frustrating for those that have the problem? You see, we "like" the PSS Concorde and appreciate your effort in creating it, but we can't use it. That's frustrating.

[Guest Khurram Mahmood]

I have been experiencing the exact same problem and in most cases, I cannot even tune radios as soon as the aircraft loads up! Mostly though, I have noticed that the battery only allows the Avionics to functions for about 20 minutes. Another thing I did try was battfix (can't remember the author, but it's on Avsim under battfix.zip). I installed the extra XMLPanel that shows the battery voltage and I noticed that the avionics die after 2V have been used up by other systems....maybe I'm on the wrong track.My default aircraft is a Cold and Dark PMDG 737-800, so not sure if there is something in the PMDG that causes the PSS Concorde not to function correctly.Can you please suggest what the default aircraft settings should be?I have a feeling that this may well be the cause.Thanks!Khurram Mahmood

[Guest Phoenix_7]

you MUST start FS with the original default flightthen switch to the Concorde at the 'create a flight' screenJohnPSS SUPPORTsupport@phoenix-simulation.co.ukhttp://www.avsim.com/pss/phoenix.jpg

[amollen 0]

I have had the same electrical/radio problem and a similar problem with the Dreamfleet B-727. The B727 team initially "denied" there was a problem but after a while found that there is indeed an issue and now have it on their list to fix for the next patch.There is a flag ELEC_ALWAYS_AVAILABLE in the fs9.cfg file that you can set to 1 (it will do what it says -- make electricity always available regardless of battery/ground power settings) but I haven't tried yet if it will bypass this problem.

[Guest RobertK]

Wanted to chime in and mention that I got the exact same problem.Just worked through the - excellent btw - tutorial, and couldn't select any frequencies, work any comms or get the autopilot to do anything.FSUIPC (registered copy) is set to extend battery life indefinitely, apparently that didn't help.My standard flight which is loaded with FS9 is with the Baron, engines off and battery switch off (the avionics switch is left on because I had problems as those now with the Concorde due to the standard flight being with avionics off).I changed the standard flight now to one with engines and systems running, will test the effect on the Concorde some time soon and report back.The product itself keeps me amazed, many of the solutions found to get this plane into FS9 are great (the very verbose mouseover texts are a great help!).However, without autoflight, I am not sure I can make it to Kennedy Airport. :)

[Guest RobertK]

Alright, I can confirm that when the default flight is with a standard flightsim aircraft that has engines and systems running, the situation with the electrical power issue doesn't arise.Just tried the tutorial again and successfully got the lady to cruise altitude and speed, with working autopilot, radios, lights etc.And may I say, what a joy to fly she is.Thank you PSS, I am truely impressed. :)Regards,Robert

[Guest Dave_M]

Hi,I just returned to flying Concorde, infact my first flight for ages was yesterday and had the electrical problem with radios etc. I manged to solve my problem by turning on the FS master battery, I have this mapped to "shift M", not sure if thats the default. I guess if you make sure the battery is switched on on your default flight this will do the same thing.David