I am not a very good search guy yet, and I am limited on flight time so sorry I did not search for this.

 

Is there a way to have your aircraft be TRUELY cold and dark on startup. Specifically, when I jump in my plane after booting up, my engines are winding down. Is there some sort of special save, or aircraft.cfg line to edit or something so that the aircraft is not winding down when I jump in? Flame on fellas for asking a simple question but I have been RW flying for quite a while, (845 hours in the last 12 months!! B) ), so I am rusty on things FSX. THANK YOU in advance for any help on this!

Hi Jet,

 

I'm not sure if you are flying default aircraft or add ons, but the best advice I can give is to start a flight with the aircraft you typically fly. Then, shut everything down and save that as your default flight. Then, when you start a flight, you should be at cold and dark. I know that the engines winding down is a situation I find myself in at times (the Flight 1 Mustang, for example, because I have to move the throttles to cut-off manually), but when I load the Turbine Duke cold and dark, I don't get that issue.

 

--Don

Easy. Select the aircraft you wish to make your default aircraft when you open FSX and in the main menu also the airport from where you wish to start. Set the weather if you wish and season and time of day if you wish to alter the default FSX selection. Click "Fly Now" and FSX will load and present you with the aircraft and the airport you previously selected.

 

You will find your engines running or spooling down as you previously mentioned. Let them come to a complete shutdown state. Find the switches on your panel for your avionics and battery functions, and turn off the avionics first and then the battery. This should render you a dark and cold panel. Now click on the "Alt" key on your keyboard and a tool bar will appear at the top of your screen. Select the first header named "Flights", click on it and a drop down menu will appear. Find the command "Save Flight", click on it and then in the next window, label the flight to your liking and be sure that the small tick box on the bottom of the window that says "Make this your default flight" is checked. Save it and exit FSX. The next time you load FSX, you should be at the airport you selected with the aircraft you also selected as your default aircraft, in a cold and dark condition. To activate, just click on your battery and avionics switches.

ACK!!! LOL What am I doing wrong. Just did what both of you guys suggested. Nope. Still winding down. :blink:

 

_{Everything else was cold and dark. Cept engines. The Premier 1 folks even went to the trouble of putting in the engine covers and cones when all is wound down. LOL. I waited until then and then some to save my flight. To no avail. :lol: :blink:}

You might try hand editing your default flight's .FLT file in Notepad. You'll need to know the name of it, mine is "Cub at 65S" for example so in my case I would start Notepad (Programs > accessories) then go into the "C:\Users\Jim\Documents\Flight Simulator X Files" and drag "Cub at 65S.FLT" into the Notepad window. Scroll about 3/4 of the way through the file and you should find an [Engine Parameters.1.0] section. It should look something like this:

 

[Engine Parameters.1.0]

ThrottleLeverPct=0.00579833984375

PropellerLeverPct=0.99951171875

MixtureLeverPct=0

Pct Engine RPM=0

MaxReachedEngineRPM=1827.4901508639387

LeftMagneto=True

RightMagneto=True

GeneratorSwitch=True

CowlFlapPct=0

FuelPumpSwitch=False

CarbHeat/DeiceSwitch=False

 

Check particularly "Pct Engine RPM=0" and make sure it reads zero, if not change it. In fact zero everything from "ThrottleLeverPct=" through "MaxReachedEngineRPM=". If the default flight was saved using a multi-engine aircraft you'll have an [Engine Parameters.x.x] section for each engine, zero everything for those engines too.

 

Save and start the sim and see if it helped. If not, try saving a new default flight with the engines shut down using one of the default piston aircraft.

 

Jim

Jim!! Your a genious. It WORKED. Now to find out how to get those gyros wound down. I tried to do it up under the pitch bank areas to no avail. I will TAKE this though as it has 99% of what I am looking for. Thank you, that fixed my problem!

 

I wonder if there is a way to get FSX to stop writing the .flt files that way or with the engines winding down like that.

 

Either way, thank you so much! That is a problem I have been after for years now. :rolleyes: ^_^

I wonder if there is a way to get FSX to stop writing the .flt files that way or with the engines winding down like that.

 

I think if you load up a default aircraft and shut everything down, the Skyhawk for example, and then save your default flight with that you probably won't see these quirks. Any flight that you create from the free flight screen from that point forward will inherit the characteristics of that default flight even though you've switched aircraft, airport, weather, etc. You probably saved the default flight using an addon aircraft of some kind and sometimes the devs do unorthodox things with the FDE to achieve a certain characteristic they're after. Hard telling, but I'd guess the sim just didn't see cold & dark for one reason or another when it wrote the .FLT file in this case.

 

Otherwise for the gyro spin-down you could try checking "[systems.0]" and "[switches.0]" and make sure all the switches are off (False).

 

Jim

I don't think it's possible to get a 100% C&D flight. Some switches, settings etc simply aren't modeled in (name you sim aircraft) regardless of the manufacturer. Bet I get jumped on for that statement too. I'm not going to follow this thread, sounds like a real can of worms waiting to be opened.

Thanks Jim I will give those things a try too. Now, I did save and start out with the C-172 default plane as it were. Exactly as everyone has been explaining. But yet still have the spool down problem, until of course I went into the .FLT file as you correctly suggested. At the moment I am at Cold and Dark Enough.

 

Ok bonus round. Have any suggestions to always have the aircraft exit open when I jump in? Hey, thought I'd go for broke here! :lol:

Ok bonus round. Have any suggestions to always have the aircraft exit open when I jump in? Hey, thought I'd go for broke here! :lol:

 

No, I think you're SOL on that one, one of my pet peaves too. :smile:

 

I think if you load up a default aircraft and shut everything down, the Skyhawk for example, and then save your default flight with that you probably won't see these quirks. Any flight that you create from the free flight screen from that point forward will inherit the characteristics of that default flight even though you've switched aircraft, airport, weather, etc. You probably saved the default flight using an addon aircraft of some kind and sometimes the devs do unorthodox things with the FDE to achieve a certain characteristic they're after. Hard telling, but I'd guess the sim just didn't see cold & dark for one reason or another when it wrote the .FLT file in this case.

 

Otherwise for the gyro spin-down you could try checking "[systems.0]" and "[switches.0]" and make sure all the switches are off (False).

 

Jim

 

 

 

 

Ok.

 

As it has been said on other forums dealing with ADD ON aircraft you simply must load a STOCK FSX aircraft first.  To truly do this right I use the Baron.  The reason is I can turn off alternator/generators, avionics etc and get about as Cold and Dark as you can get.

 

THEN

 

I will do as Hightower wisely mentioned as far as setting up day etc.  Now, I am a newly converted Active Sky 2012 user and I boot that before FSX as it has a Flight Simulator procedure call inside AS.

 

Now I load my favorite add on of choice.

 

I will have a cold and dark, no engine running model sitting on my ramp.  I SAVE this flight now for future flights.  It works all the time.  I would guess if you wanted to do this first THEN change your weather, seasons, time of day, I feel that this is the best way to do it.

 

Anyhow guys, THANKS so much for all the help I finally got it to what I was looking for.

Ive noticed even when fully cold and dark occasionally an engine or some kind of air sound will appear from nowhere

Me too Feebee.  

 

Now, one thing I decided to do when it comes to the idea of total cold and dark is to have a little acceptance of reality.   As a real world line pilot I recall that there really hardly ever is an airplane that I have had the pleasure to fly, that has every switch, setting or other control, completely where it should be either.

 

So if one thinks about it, jumping into your cockpit with some switches on and some off is sort of a good thing in that it FORCES you to perform your Before Engine Start checks.  

 

I am a big proponent of flying simulators like you would in the real world.  I have to as it can throw off my normal procedures if I don't.

 

Anyway just a thought.