182RG Starting problem

[Ron Attwood 3,465]

I've searched this forum for an answer and found just one thread which shed no light on the problem.Using the 'proper' procedure with hardware switches, turn on batteries, generator. mixture full rich props full on and throttle cracked 1/2". Hit the starter switch and....nothing. Using cntrl+E she'll start just fine. The only difference I can see/hear is the starter motor runs a lot longer with cntrl+E. This is not evident in the 182Q. Can't find an update on Carenado's site either. CH throttle quadrant for the buttons. No discernible difference in the aircraft.cfg between 182Q and RGI don't normally use this kind of language but WTH? :(

[Guest BeaverDriver]

Hey Ron,This is a bit of a problem with a lot of machines, and believe it or not, it often has to do with what aircraft you used before the current one. And, it can be attributable to a couple of things, but the most common is the fuel switch. Let's say you had a machine last that has only a Left or Right selection on the fuel selector, and let's say it was on the Left tank but it was empty at shut down. Then you reload FSX and load the 182 in question. You look at the selector and the fuel selector is in the "Both" position, but you haven't checked how much gas is in each tank. Even though the fuel select says "Both", it's actually still on the left tank, and if it's empty, then you won't get a start. What you need to do is as soon as you climb in to the aircraft you are going to fly, cycle the fuel selector lever as the first thing you do. Even if you have lots of fuel in both tanks, and it says you are on Both, cycle them anyway. The flip side of that is using an aircraft that has only 1 tank that's not selectable (some are like that, perhaps the ultralights, but for sure most helicopters). If you then load a fixed wing machine that has only a L or R position, and your last aircraft didn't have a L or R tank (only a single tank), the current machine will not "see" the fuel tank at all so effectively it won't start again, because of no fuel, regardless of what FSX and your fuel gauges and selector switches are telling you or how they are positioned.For quite a few flights, I was having a double flame out in the Lear 24 I was flying. This aircraft has no fuel selector switch per se - it just feeds the left tanks to the left engine and right tanks to the right engine, and that's that. BUT, I'd be x minutes into a flight and all of a sudden, both engines would cut out. I would look at the fuel in the tanks (but you can set the fuel qty switch to ALL so you see all the remaining fuel - I didn't bother to select to each tank) and found I had lots of fuel there, but no power. On the descent, I turned off the autopilot and it would be horribly heavy on one side, which I couldn't explain. Finally, I did a thorough test to see what was happening and I found all the fuel was burnt from the left tank and none from the right, and STILL I was getting a double engine failure. When I thought back to the last aircraft I flew, it was the Cessna 206, which has only a L or R selector position, not a Both. Since it was the last aircraft I used and was saved with the flight, FSX thought I was still running on the left tank, and as soon as that went dry, both engines quite because both engines were drawing from that tank. There is no selector in the Lear as I say, so I couldn't control that - it was totally controlled by FSX, wrongly so. So what I did then was load the 172 with the same amount of fuel as what I had before, cycled the selector (engine off) to each position then set it to BOTH, and then load the Lear. Never had another problem after that as far as engine failures went.Now, that may not be the exact cause of your issue, but I believe it's related. Lately I've been flying helicopters a lot. If I fly the Dodo Bell 206, and save the flight with it as the default, then load a piston machine (Baron, 182, whatever), the engine won't start. When you shut the Bell off (or any helicopter and this may also apply to many turbine fixed wing machines), I find I can't initially start a piston machine. I believe this is because FSX sees the shutdown as coming from turning the fuel selector to "OFF", even though it's a totally different procedure in a turbine/helicopter. As a result though, FSX thinks on next start up that your fuel selector is in the OFF position, even though it shows as being "BOTH". This is a real pain for sure (I won't say where, but I'm sure you can guess ).So, there are 3 ways to avoid or alleviate this problem respectively. First is, always at the end of your flight, load the default 172 and cycle the fuel selector around, then leave it on BOTH. When you next reload FSX, it will recognize that setting and then when you load your aircraft of choice, it should start ok. Alternatively, if you have saved the flight with a non-default aircraft that could cause the issue as stated above, use CTRL+E to start it once, then for immersion/realism, shut the machine down again. After that you can load your passengers and whatnot then fire up. It will work when you do the restart. The other way, which should work with the 182 as it has a BOTH position on the selector, is to cycle the selector switch to each position before trying to start the aircraft, then putting it in the BOTH position and firing up. This way you don't have to load a default aircraft first. That said, I haven't actually tried this so if you do, let me know how it goes :(.That's a pain I realize, but this is a bug that's been with FSX for all of time (maybe since Acceleration - don't really know for sure), and it took a lot of time and trouble to find it. But once you are aware of it, you can either prevent it, or fix it, whatever works best for your situation.Hope that helps Ron. Let me know if you're still stuck.

[FreeBird(Josh) 314]

Open your 182 aircraft cfg and change the line to read normalized_starter_torque=1.0 under the heading [piston_engine] works like a champ

[Guest BeaverDriver]

Open your 182 aircraft cfg and change the line to read normalized_starter_torque=1.0 under the heading [piston_engine] works like a champ

Oh yeah, forgot about that one. Thanks Josh. It'll be one of those 2 things. Only thing is, if it normally starts for him and he gets the occasional failure that suddenly crops up, it's probably not the starter torque. However, that is a very distinct possibility. I've seen that with other aircraft as well.

[Ron Attwood 3,465]

Heckuva post Beav! :( Nice that you took the trouble. Oddly enough, the 182RG is the only aircraft I've experienced it on and it doesn't normally start. Also oddly enough, I was speaking to Josh on Teamspeak and he tried his 182RG and got the same result. Hard to believe that the same circumstances you described should happen on two PCs at the same time. But then we are talkin' FSX here. :( One more 'oddly enough', changing the config file may/does work on the 182RG, but the normalized_starter_torque=0.3works on the 182Q! But like I said, we're talkin' FSX here.Odd. :(

[Guest BeaverDriver]

Yeah Ron, if you normally have problems starting the 182, then I believe Josh's solution would be the right one. I had that with the MAAM DC3 where there wasn't enough torque to turn it over. Oddly though, that was a port over and the 182 isn't (I don't think). If the RG is a port over then yeah, the original value was for FS9 and FSX has quite different parameters thus it doesn't work there. If the Q isn't a port over (and I don't think it was) then the torque was set with FSX in mind and does work. Or something like that .Either way, in this case I'd say Josh's idea is the one to go with in this case. Just keep the fuel selector situation in the back of your mind though in case you get any unexplained engine failures down the road. Hopefully that will provide a quick cure/solution and keep you from losing the hair I lost trying to figure that one out . Glad it's working for you now, and thanks for the idea Josh.

[Ron Attwood 3,465]

Thanks chaps, I appreciate your help. What I find very disappointing is that a: Carenado themselves haven't bothered to fix it and b: Can't be arsed to come and answer the question, in fact any question about any problem. Still, I don't suppose that approach will change any time soon. :( Good thing there's a bunch of guys that can be bothered!Oo, I'm sounding grumpy, not like me at all. :(

[Guest BeaverDriver]

My pleasure Ron, although the credit for this one really should go to Josh. I understand your frustration about Carenado being MIA, although I guess if its a really small company, he'd spend all his time here instead of building new machines. Once in a while it would be nice for them to make an appearance though, or better yet, fix the bugs before the machine is released (i.e. ignore the twits that insist something be released today instead of tomorrow :().Good luck and have fune :(