When flying in outside air temperatures lower than -2c the engine gradually looses all power irrespective of altitude. I assume that this is intentional to model what would happen under icing conditions, however having all of the aircrafts ant-icing systems engaged makes no difference. I like to fly real world weather and as we're in winter I'm unable to climb to 6000ft without the engine starting to die, in a recent flight I had to drop down to below 1000ft before the OAT increased sufficiently to allow the engine to regain power. Does anyone have a solution, preferably one that will fix the anti-icing systems?

I use the Malibu a lot using, like yourself, real world weather yet have never experienced this.  However, it's something I'll now be keeping an eye out for.

If your engine starts to lose power, press the "H" key to enable carb heat. Now in reality, the Malibu engine is fuel injected, and there is no carburetor to ice up, but FSX seems to model the effect of carb icing in all piston powered aircraft.

 

Also, don't forget to lean the mixture as you climb. In this area too, FSX departs from reality a bit, in that you typically have to lean earlier, and more aggressively to maintain peak power than you would in a real aircraft.

Thanks both for your replies. Is there any way to modify one of the aircrafts config / ini files so that when turning on pitot heat this also activates carb heat? I guess the other alternative would be to configure a button on a controller with a macro that toggles both of these functions on and off together.

 

I'm definitely monitoring the mixture levels, I find the aircrafts digital power readout is really useful for this, during full power climbs you can notice each 1% drop in power and easily lean the mixture to compensate.

I've confirmed that hitting the H key instantly resolves the issue, so thanks for the heads-up Jim. I have tried to replicate the issue on other piston powered aircraft from other developers (RealAir Piston Duke / A2A C172) but neither suffered with the problem so have concluded that this is something that Carenado could address so have logged a case with them.

 

KevinJH, I have the realism sliders all the way to the right maybe carb icing is something introduced this way?

 

 

KevinJH, I have the realism sliders all the way to the right maybe carb icing is something introduced this way?

 

Hi P, I've a feeling that carb icing is always active in FSX regardless of settings, though I could be wrong.  And I must apologise, I assumed you'd already tried hitting the 'H' key and had identified a possible .cfg fault (you know what Carenado can be like.....   )

 

Great 'plane though, eh ?  :wink:

Hi P, I've a feeling that carb icing is always active in FSX regardless of settings, though I could be wrong.  And I must apologise, I assumed you'd already tried hitting the 'H' key and had identified a possible .cfg fault (you know what Carenado can be like.....   )

 

Great 'plane though, eh ?  :wink:

 

Hi KevinJH, I wandered whether it was a case of "they all do that sir" but I've tested piston aircraft from other developers under the same conditions without experiencing the issue so feel Carenado ought to be able to address this though not sure if they will be bothered.

 

Other than this one issue I am finding it a great model of a complex single piston prop aircraft to transition to after the A2A C172, visually the cockpit is a very nice place to be especially in DX10 mode.