The JS41 was one of the reasons I took the plunge into FSX too...Haven't regretted it either...You will never be able top please everyone. Please don't stop trying though...That said, there will always be someone with some hidden agenda attempting to rain on your parade...Andrew

I thought that I had posted a message in this thread. I hope it hasn't been deleted because I didn't sign it. After all, my username is my REAL name, and several requests for clarification in this department have never been answered.Christopher Low(posted just in case....)

Anybody know if the OP ever managed to get the engines started? I noticed all his pictures were on the ground. [P.S. The Woodpigeon solution for side window icing was to take the ingenious step of not fitting side windows. This had the secondary advantages of weight reduction and improved ventilation. Just another example of the integrated thinking and creative production technology that made this bird the pride of the fleet and the envy of the world.]

And to think I spent thousands of hours flying this airplane and never once saw icing on the side windows... <sniff>

What if you kicked it into a vicious sideslip in icing conditions for about five minutes or so? :(

What if you kicked it into a vicious sideslip in icing conditions for about five minutes or so? :(

A friend that was a KC-135 pilot has a war story about having to crab for landing due to ice on the windscreen. Geeze.

A friend that was a KC-135 pilot has a war story about having to crab for landing due to ice on the windscreen. Geeze.

This add-on is awesome. I am on hiatus from flying it until we get an update for the cockpit bevel lines, but when it comes out I will fly it all the time.

And to think I spent thousands of hours flying this airplane and never once saw icing on the side windows... <sniff>

Just wondering: have you ever been inside real JS41 cockpit on the parking in the cold weather conditions? Any ice or snow on side windows when aircraft is not moving and engines are not running?To explain: this is question, I'm not a real world pilot, but I'm from damn cold Russia and I know how much time I've spent in my life cleaning snow out of my car. Just from this experience I guess it would be realistic to show some snow on side windows, but remove it after relevant engine is started and have been running for a 15-30 seconds. Again, this is just guess.

I believe there are, as I write this, exactly two MSFS add-on aircraft which model visible ice accretion, and both are designed to model in-flight icing, not snow accumulation on the ground.I suppose it was inevitable that people would start calling this aspect of these two airplanes unrealistic, but I didn't think it would happen so soon.Snow and ice accumulation on the ground would require you to have the aircraft deiced. Do you only fly out of airports covered by Aerosoft's AES, which offers deicing when the weather calls for it?

If I may slide in here with a question somewhat related and rather not start a new post for something so minor.I recently bought the almighty JS41 less than 24 hrs ago, and I am completely impressed. The VC is second to none, and haven't even started to really learn the systems yet since I can't stop from just staring at the detail long enough to learn anything yet.Anywho, I have been pretty busy tonight but wanted to see the icing effects at least once so turned them back on and parked myself at Kord (I shut it off because I get some pretty bad artifacting). I set the temp to -10F and some light snow but now after several hours (about 7) I still don't have icing. Is that not cold enough? I am planning to hit the manuals and tutorial hard tomorrow or later today of time is available, but just curious, thanks!Bonus Question: The engine sounds seem the same no matter if I'm at idle or max thrust, is that normal?In responce to the original poster or more so from commentors like this. It's sad that some people can't appreciate a quality aircraft when they get one. I think it really shows age here and of course maturity levels. Not all, but a lot of complainers seem to be young and more born into the FS age we're at with no basis or past experience of how far the sim have come, especially due to companies like PMDG that seem to push every possible concept out of each FS platform they can and truly are pioneers in every sense of the word. It also blows my mind at how spoiled some people seem to be, and over technology that they don't even respect enough to justify any right to talk about. It's sad that some will just complain no matter what they get, and no matter what new ground breaking things we see in the future, it will have it's down side from these types of people saying "Are you going to now patch your 7 year old aircraft to do the same?", it really seems like a smack in the face to me for all the efforts to surprise us and give us what we already have. Maybe I just get overly sensitive :( but even with Pete's paints you get some people that immediately go to every airline site they can to almost try and find a fault (not everyone). I wish they had a tiny bit of understanding of the time and patience required to do paints and suggest they try it themselves, they may develope more respect than some "Rivet Counters" currently have. (In case you're wondering, that is the term some painters use to describe the people I am trying to describe :( ).

Dan,Glad you are enjoying the J41 as much as we have enjoyed developing the aircraft. I still find myself flying her occasionally on short hops because thats about as much time as I have because I am in the hangar busily building more airplanes and helping Vin.As for the ice accumulation, I think you have to be flying in order to see visible ice accumulation but hold that thought, I'll ask the development team if there's ice accumulation on the ground. I cannot remember, there's a billion things going on around here that I can't keep track of everything :-). As for the prop noise, you would hear slightly different engine sounds when the condition levers are on ground idle versus flight idle. The engines on the J41 are constant drive engines meaning that the RPM stays constant, the only variable is the prop pitch changes based on your throttle input. Its a fun aircraft to handle. Wait until the Dash 8, the engines are a different animal compared to the J41, the throttles control the engine RPM, not the props :-)Cheers,

Thanks for the reply Jason, much appreciated.I fully understand about the engines now and had thoughts along those lines, and now that you mention it think your right about the need to be in the air. I think I may have read that somewhere, but then again, thought I saw a time lapsed video somewhere of it and it was parked. It was a while ago so I could easily be mistaken.Thanks,

Dan,The icing is modeled to be realistic in flight. As such, even though you're on the ground, you won't see ice accretions on the side windows, but you will see it on the radome, and leading edges of the aerodynamic surfaces. I know you're not asking this, but I'll reiterate it anyway...to try and simulate the way ice and snow accumulates on a parked airplane is well outside the scope of any addon.As far as why you're not seeing any ice buildup, are you sure you've got the VC quality setup correctly in the configuration manager? On the ground, icing conditions for the J-41 are defined as 5C or below with visible moisture, or a contaminated runway. In flight, it's 10C or below with visible moisture. The PMDG bird respects these upper limits. There is also a lower limit to icing conditions, but it's not a published number. At some point it's so cold that it's just no longer conducive to ice accretion. It's been a while since I've flexed the grey matter that contains that tidbit, but I think it's something like -40C.About the engine sounds. I'm not sure how familiar you are with turboprops, so forgive me if I'm covering stuff you already know. The TPE-331's on the J41 are essentially a constant speed engine, just like a C-130. In flight, the engine is in Propeller Governing (PG) mode. The POWER levers control fuel metering to the engine, and the IEC (think FADEC) then regulates blade angle to maintain a sufficient air load on the prop to keep the engine at the desired RPM. As such, the sound doesn't vary too much with POWER lever movement, but if you listen closely, you can hear slight variation. The RPM range for flight is very small, from 96% to 100%, and is controlled with the CONDITION levers. If you move these levers in flight, you'll hear the difference.On the ground is completely different. In this case, you're operating in BETA mode (the entire range of Power lever travel from just aft of FLIGHT IDLE to MAX REVERSE is referred to as the BETA range). In this range, POWER lever movement directly controls blade angle through the Propeller Pitch Control (PPC) to facilitate quicker engine response, and the UnderSpeed Governor (USG) controls engine speed. The CONDITION levers control the USG and can command an RPM range from 72% at TAXI to 97% at FLIGHT. This is where you hear the biggest difference in sound. As you roll past the hold short line, you push the CONDITION levers up to FLIGHT, and the change in engine sound is pretty dramatic at the engine accelerates.For what it's worth, while it pales in comparison to RSR's experience, I've spent no less than 200 hours in the J41 jumpseat, and the PMDG airplane sounds EXACTLY the way the real one does. It's uncomfortably loud in real life too. ;)In my opinion, the only compromise on sound realism is the startup sequence, and we have to give them a pass on that since FSX is notoriously bad at simulating startup, and the FSX turboprop model in particular is completely FUBAR'd.Hope that helps you out a little.EDIT: I guess I need to learn how to type faster! I've been beaten handily!

Wow, thanks again for a very thorough reply Nick!As for my knowledge of Turboprops, it's safe to say I understand them as much as I do women,,, hmm, ok even less :( So any information is great information. I double checked my icing config and it is set back to defaults with icing details enabled, maybe it's because of windowed mode? I'll give it another whirl later. It's a shame I have to turn it off, I may decide to live with the flickers and keep it on, not sure yet.In regards to the sound, I was blown away by how great the sound was. Even though I don't understand the turboprop as you mentioned I can actually here multiple sounds that make up the one which is sweet! As for my original questionm I totally understand now and love the realism. When I was messing around with it earlier I did have a problem where I lost all engine sound and had to click on a different application, then back in the FSX window to get them going again, was odd but then again most people probably don't have as many other programs (non sim) running outside of FS.Thanks for the help, I'll come back after I do some studying so some more of what you said makes more sence to me ;-)

I had the same sound issue just the other day. Had to restart FSX to fix it. I attributed it to the fact that I had about 12 programs running, including Max 8, Photoshop CS4, Global Mapper 11, FSX, six Internet Explorer tabs, and few other things.I can't really be sure if it was a J41 issue or not...Anywho, I lied to you earlier. The IEC doesn't modify the blade angle in flight, the Propeller Governor (PG) does. That's what happens when you blurt things out from memory... tsk. tsk.

Haha, no problem I do it all the time. As for what you may have mentioned it's more than ok since I still have 0 clue to anything your really talking about ;-)I hope to change all that and from the reading I will do tomorrow and the next day hope to at least be able to fully comprehend your posts :)Funny, you had almost the same apps I had running. Maybe something is stealing the focus from FS and causing the problem? I'll post something if it happens more and if I can't find a easy fix but imagine it's the focus for now. Thanks again!