I have changed the values in the aircraft.cfg to these:

 

max_gross_weight=64500

empty_weight=37888

 

which gets rid of the over-weight message, but the a/c is still unflyable. The CoG, at least according to the FS9 menu (aircraft/fuel and loading  .. or whatever the title is, I don't have FS9 open as I write this), is as far forward as it could go, at the propeller, and although I can take off OK, it's not long before the plane starts pitching up and down like a roller coaster. By 18,000' it is rocking between 2000ft/min up and 2000ft/min down!

 

Does anyone have this aircraft in a good, flyable state? I'd be grateful if you could paste your [WEIGHT_AND_BALANCE] section here, and any other relevant details. Nothing I do, changing load or fuel, succeeds in moving the CoG back from the tip. Thanks,

 

Martin

Answer: Yes, it is fixable.

 

No one has replied to this post yet, but just in case anyone else finds that the CoG is right at the front and the plane is therefore unflyable, I have fixed this by first changing the [WEIGHT_AND_BALANCE] aircraft.cfg file, as below. Then, with my Dash 8 at the stand, to set the CoG so that the plane is balanced, I load (in the FS9 aircraft/payload settings menu) 12500 lbs of cargo into station 3 and 2765 lbs into station 5. Nothing at all into stations 1, 2 & 4 (all zero)... Those values mean you can, if required, have 100% fuel without the a/c being too heavy for take-off. If you save the flight, you should get this in the .flt file:

 

[Payload.0]
PayloadList=   0.0,   0.0,12500.0,   0.0,2675.0

 

This is the aircraft.cfg alteration. It is basically an FDE I found which was adapted by "John Cillis, László Horváth, Gábor Petrovszki & Zoltán Désits", so many thanks to them. I just worked out the optimum payload/CoG for each flight (around 1% of the overall task!!):

 

[WEIGHT_AND_BALANCE]
max_gross_weight=64500
empty_weight=37888

reference_datum_position=0, 0, 0
empty_weight_CG_position=0, 0, 0
max_number_of_stations = 50

station_load.0=4800,15.000000,0.000000,4.000000
station_load.1=4200,0.000000,0.000000,4.000000
station_load.2=4200,-15.000000,0.000000,4.000000
station_load.3=1110.000000,20.000000,0.000000,-2.000000
station_load.4=1110.000000,-15.000000,0.000000,-2.00000

;Moments of Inertia
empty_weight_pitch_MOI=311701
empty_weight_roll_MOI=361201
empty_weight_yaw_MOI=361691
empty_weight_coupled_MOI=0