Hey Bert, you'll probably know this, isn't there a panel_power=1 cfg setting or something similar to that? So that power is always on? Or am I thinking of FS9?

Never heard of it... but it is easy enough to fix this within the airplane code.

 

"If battery is on and avionics is off, toggle avionics power".

I have the c172 checked as my "default" flight, with everything turned off in a "cold and dark" start mode sitting at my "home airport"  KCMA.

 

Then, I switch to one of my favorite add-on aircraft to insure that everything (engines, nav/radios etc.) are completely shut down.

 

This allows me to start the aircraft in a realistic fashion as an alternative to pressing Cntrl-E.

I've found no plane, complex or otherwise that fails to work normally if it's the first flight loaded in FSX. But that's with FSX.

Steve, I've explained the rationale for having a simple, stock aircraft saved as one's "default flight" many, many times here and elsewhere.

 

In shorter form, this is simply because the "default flight" saves more parameters than a "regular flight, as long as those parameters exist in the saved aircraft to begin with!

 

One never actually has to ever load the "default flight" when starting up the sim. Whatever aircraft is loaded though will read any additional parameters that are required from the "default flight" file.

 

That is why if the aircraft used as the "default flight" does not have certain critical features such as an avionics switch, or fuel valves, or any of a baker's dozen of other such things, some complex aircraft will be loaded with those missing things defaulted to an "off" state since they were never set in the "default flight."

 

This by the way is the primary reason for L-M adding the "saved panel state" in Prepar3D v2.x now, although that too has its share of issues still.