Recently completed "Amelia's" around the world flight, and I have the following two questions about the Electra:1. On the panel, what is the "Cambridge" gauge? It has a scale of 0-9 with a multipler of 0.1. I am not familiar with this term. I had RPM, MP, fuelflow, and EGT gauges on my panel and the "Cambridge" gauge does react to power settings but does not seem to exactly duplicate any of these.2. Does the Electra have direct tail wheel steering? This is a new one for me for tail wheel birds. Sure does make it easier to handle on the ground, but I wonder if the real world bird was free wheeling like all others I have flown or actually had direct steering.If you would like a challange,allbeit a lengthy one, I would recommend some consideration to this bird, panel, and the flight plans (Longer actual legs). Search "Amelia: in the flightsim library site for the links.Happy flying:RTH

1: Googled this: http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/archive/index.php?t-33514.html"[...]a fuel-air ratiometer and is fed by the Cambridge gas analyser coil which is an accessory to the engine"Not that that makes me any wiser. :( I think it could be an indicator that helps you lean the mixture or something based on something more precise than "lean until MP drops then enrich a tad". 2: The tailwheel of the Electra could be locked, which I think proves that it was free castoring. Differential thrust (aided by differential braking probably) would be the way to taxi the Electra.Hope it helps and hope I'm not too wrong. :DBTW Which Electra model are you on about? There are a few ones out there.

Electras (in various guises) had a free castoring tailwheel. Some variants had one that could be locked, others did not.The Cambridge Gauge uses a wheatstone bridge to test the resistance of a sample of fuel remnants in the exhaust. The amount of combustible fuel still present in the exhaust sample will alter the resistance of it and that's what the Cambridge Gauge measures. With a needle and calibrated scale displaying the result in the cockpit, you can adjust the fuel air mixture and RPM to get better fuel economy based on reading how well you are doing on that gauge.Al

Electras (in various guises) had a free castoring tailwheel. Some variants had one that could be locked, others did not.The Cambridge Gauge uses a wheatstone bridge to test the resistance of a sample of fuel remnants in the exhaust. The amount of combustible fuel still present in the exhaust sample will alter the resistance of it and that's what the Cambridge Gauge measures. With a needle and calibrated scale displaying the result in the cockpit, you can adjust the fuel air mixture and RPM to get better fuel economy based on reading how well you are doing on that gauge.Al

Fascinating info Al. I wonder why something so functional was never introduced into widespread service? I'm assuming by the name that it was a British development. It would have seemed to be something that could have really stretched range and/or improved economic efficiency.British designers did a lot of pretty amazing though maybe a bit quirky things with some of their piston-engined aircraft that never got adopted elsewhere - the Airspeed Ambassador was a great example. It was supposed to be as simple to manage the engines as in a turboprop - almost everything was automated so you really didn't need to worry about overboosting or managing the mixture controls. I never did actually fly one but did all the prep as I was supposed to ferry one belonging to Decca back to New Zealand for a start-up charter operator. Unfortunately the only route we could have flown due to limited range got cut off by the outbreak of war between Pakistan and India. By the time the dust had settled, the deal had fallen through. I did get to fly to the UK with all expenses paid and sat in the cockpit of the aircraft - it was stored at West Malling.... But we never did fly it. :( Ian

Thanks folks:If the "Cambridge" gauge is used for leaning, I suspect that it is a bit bogus relative to the FS panel. At what I am assuming would be cruise power it is pegged out, although I have not seen an operation manual for the bird in question.The tail wheel steering is as I suspected. There may be such a thing, but I have never thus far heard of direct steering for a tail wheel on an aircraft. It sure makes it easy but is not very realistic.Thanks for the replies:RTH

The idea behind the gauge is to lean/rich until the gauge indicates a prescribed optimum value.The electra at flightsim.com has a small table with settings.You would need to do some test flying to verify if these are correct settings for best economy.My understanding is that leaning works a bit different in FS than in reality so the question is how the mixture ratio relates to performance.The gauge in the electra uses it's own calculation while the fuel mixture ratio can be obtained from FS directly.