hey all

i'm very very newbie on dash 8 and i'm about to buy this awesome bird from majestic;but after reading the manuals,i found out that we can only control propellers via a joystick axis because of FADEC.is that true?because my stick has only one axis for throttle.

Hei,

I programed my controls such that I can move the power levers (propeller rmp) by joystick buttons. I did it using FSUIPC and it should work as well with the keyboard. Presumably you have to have the registered version, but I'm not completely sure about that. It took me some reading and trying but it works now like a charm.

If there's interest I can post some instructions.

yeah,that was very intersting!thank you thaine!and i love to know how to do it with FSUIPC.could you please post the instructions or email them for me?thank yo so much!

You basically want to write directly to the FS offsets with your key/button presses. This means that a key- or button press directly sets the position of the prop lever in FS.  I have one button for lowering prop pitch and one button for increasing prop pitch for each engine. So in total 4 buttons. I haven't found the offsets for controlling both engines at the same time. I guess it is possible by scripting the button/key presses some more. But I haven't looked into that since I don't use it. You would need to read into the FSUIPC documentation some more if you like to control all engines at the same time.

I assume you are familiar with the basic button/key setting screens in FSUIPC.

So here is what you do.

1. Open FSUIPC and go to the button- respectively key tab.

2. Set the button/key you want to use for the action.

3. In the "Control sent when button pressed"/"Control sent when key pressed" list you want to chose "Offset Sword Increment" for
increasing the prop pitch, and "Offset Sword Decrement" for decreasing the prop pitch.

4. In the Offset field you have to type in the offset for the corresponding prop lever. Those are: "x088E" for the left engine and "x0926" for the right engine

5. In the Parameter field you have to specify the value for the offsets. The format you have to use is "offset increment/offset maximum" and "offset increment/offset minimum" for increasing and decreasing the leavers respectively. It's simply: "5120/16384" for increasing the prop pitch and "5120/-4096" for decreasing the prop pitch.

 

This will divide the whole prop pitch-lever range such that you have 5 positions. The prop pitch levers have offset values from -4096 to 16384. Dividing that range into 4 segments, thus 5 positions, gives you: (16384 - (-4096))/4 =  5120.

 

6. Save your settings in FSUIPC.

7. Open the MJC84 Control Panel and go to the engine settings.

8. Here you cycle now up and down through all the prop-pitch positions with the keys/buttons you have just assigned and put the values that are given to you in the Input field for condition leaver left respectively condition leaver right into the fields for "Max, 900, Min, Start, Off".

For me those are:

  Max: 65536

  900: 45060

  Min: 24580

  Start: 4100

  Off: -16384

 

They should be the same for you. If they differ for some reason, just put in the values you have.

 

Now you should be good to go. Let me now if you have further questions or something isn't working quite right.
 

oh,youre a hero for me!thanks a lot!i'll try it tomorrow and post the results!

ps i didn't get 8th step

could you please explain it with some pictures?

 

ps i didn't get 8th step

could you please explain it with some pictures?

Oh Yeah!!!! I got it working here!!!!  thanks a lot thaine, you're the man!!!

 

How do you know which offset is each button? is there any list?

 

@ Capt. Farhadi, once you got the Q400 control panel open, if you push, press or move the buttons you've just already assigned, you'll see that the values change (green box), and those values are the ones you have to type one by one and set them in each box according on the condition you want (red boxes)

 

 

 

Here's a picture of the engine control tab in the MJC84 Control panel. The "Posititon" field (red frame) gives you the value that FSX sends to the Dash 8. The other fields, "Max", "900", etc... (blue frame) give you the values that the Dash associates with certain condition lever positions. In the example above, if your joystick for the left engine sends 53624 to the dash, the left condition lever will be put into "900".

You use your fresh assigned buttons/keys for moving the condition levers up and down and note down the possible "Position" values (red frame) it gives you. In my case they are: -16384, 4100, 24580, 45060 and 65536. They should be the same for you. If they differ it should be no problem as long as you only cycle through five different values.

Then you input those five values in the blue framed fields in ascending order such that you have the highest value associated with "Max" and the lowest associated with "Off".

 

Thats it. Let me know how it works.

 

 

How do you know which offset is each button? is there any list?

 

 

 

 

There's a list with all possible FS offsets in the FSUIPC documentation. You find it in FSXFolder/Modules/FSUIPC Documentation/ or similar. Glad it worked for you.

thank you all!you are really awesome!thank you

i'll test it tomorrow 6:00 utc and tell you what happened

hey all

i'm very very newbie on dash 8 and i'm about to buy this awesome bird from majestic;but after reading the manuals,i found out that we can only control propellers via a joystick axis because of FADEC.is that true?because my stick has only one axis for throttle.

 

Assuming you didn't delete the default FSX keyboard assignments, try

 

CTRL+ F4 sets condition levers to MAX

CTRL+F1  condition levers to CUTOFF

CTRL+F2 to move to previous gated detent

CTRL+F3 to move to next gated detent

 

 

I noticed there is some lag. Need to hold the key combo for a second or two, and may need to press the key combo more than once. It works though.

I'v been using the Ctrl+F2 / Ctrl+F3 without the assignments. Only thing is you have to hold them down a while or press them about 15 times each to get it to move between settings (I imaging the detents as being positions the FSX 'condition levers' need to move to, and if you press F2 once, it gets about 1/10th of the way there.)

 

I like this other method though.

 

This bird is making me want to get some more hardware. Throttles, a Steering tiller, etc.

well,i found out i'm very comfortable with mouse draging.no need for new assignments!thank you all!

Regards

Rafael,

Thanks a lot for sharing this. Works like a charm here.