Gyro Compass and VOR Indicator

[nriddell 0]

Hi

I wonder if someone will be kind enough to help me identify the error of my ways when I attempt to do a startup from the cold and dark situation that is available in the Ramp Manager. To summarise, after positioning the DC-6 at any airport, I select cold and dark to reset everything and then follow the procedures set out in the POH as part of the Recommended Operating Procedures.

After successful startup, the engines are running, the generators are on and the three inverters on the overhead panel are in the up position, however the Gyro Compass and VOR Indicator (instrument numbers 268 and 270 in the POH) do not appear to be working as expected.

When I move away from the gate or rotate the DC-6 in any direction, the VOR needles will move towards the VOR however the numerical dial on both the Gryo Compass and the VOR Indicator will not rotate. All circuit breakers are in the up position. Resetting the situation to cold and dark and repeating the above process produces the same results.

The only situation where I can get both instruments to come on is if I select the saved state mode, 'Ready for Taxi' and therefore I believe there is something I must be doing wrong or forgetting to do as the instruments clearly work when the above mode is selected.

Any help to resolve this from the cold and dark situation would be greatly appreciated. I have read the POH a number of times and understand the circuit diagrams that show how these instruments operate but for some reason the Inverter just isn't turning on the instruments as expected.

I have to compliment PMDG on what is a tremendous product!

Thanks in advance

[scandinavian13 5,192]

The only situation where I can get both instruments to come on is if I select the saved state mode, 'Ready for Taxi' and therefore I believe there is something I must be doing wrong or forgetting to do as the instruments clearly work when the above mode is selected.

 

Check your gens and inverters.

 

Use the AFE a few times and watch what he's doing on the overhead. That would probably help.

[CloudSurfer 16]

Check your gens and inverters.

the generators are on and the three inverters on the overhead panel are in the up position

@Kyle: you need to read more carefully, and assume less. I'm still waiting for an answer from anyone in my other thread about the location of the static source selector.

 

@Neil: I think I see the same thing as you, but I need to check as apart from blasting around the pattern a couple of times I haven't tried doing any serious instrument flying yet. The instrument to the right of the altimeter follows the aircraft, as does the compass at the bottom right, but I don't remember seeing the VOR instrument rotate. I can't remember if the dual-needle RMI in the bottom left moves, either.

 

Rob Smith.

[tarakanbg 5]

....the engines are running, the generators are on and the three inverters on the overhead panel are in the up position..

 

Have you tried running one inverter on ON, and the other on the alternate position  (as suggested in the POH). Does it make a difference?

[nriddell 0]

Hi Kyle - Many thanks for your reply. As stated in my post, unfortunately this situation occurs with both the generators and invertors all on. In addition, I have used the AFE to help do a compare and contrast and there is no change in the positioning of these switches. From memory, as I am not at my PC just now, when starting with the cold and dark situation and using the AFE, the Gyro Compass and VOR Indicator still do not rotate as expected.

To confirm, the only situation where the Gyro Compass and VOR Indicator do rotate is if I select Ready For Taxi. The AFE does not result in these instruments working when you commence from cold and dark.

 

In addition, I have compared the Ready For Taxi situation to the one I end up with after following the POH and there is no difference. In both scenarios the three inverters are up (ON) and the four generators are ON.

 

Tarakanbg - Yes. I have tried this but with no success. I have tried all three inverters up and then a combination of up and on standby.

 

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide.

@CloudSurfer - You are specifically looking to see whether the numerical dial on the Gyro Compass (the one with the plane symbol in the bottom right) rotates when you do and whether the numerical dial on the VOR Indicator (bottom row in the middle with the two VOR needles) also rotates when you do. It would be interesting to see if you can replicate this in the cold and dark state without using AFE, with using AFE and then by just selecting ready for taxi.

 

From my testing, only the ready for taxi situation works. Even using the AFE and different positions for the inverters. Let me know your results and I'll test again tonight.

 

Thanks

[JRBarrett 3,070]

There is a toggle switch marked "Slaving Cutoff" next to the pilot's RMI that controls operation of the directional gyros. Check that it is set to "NORM". Perhaps the C&D scenario is affecting it?

 

That may not be the problem, because the DG and RMI should still rotate in turns even if the switch is in the "DIR GYRO" position - but the displayed heading won't be automatically synced to the actual magnetic heading. Worth a shot though...

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

@Kyle: you need to read more carefully, and assume less. I'm still waiting for an answer from anyone in my other thread about the location of the static source selector.

 

I already provided you a temporary answer: "I've passed it on to the team member who wrote the POH to see what he says."

 

We are not a 24 hour, around-the-clock business. Tracking down a specific member of a specific team and taking him away from his specific tasks takes a little time. 

 

As far as the other comment goes, keep in mind that I'm responsible for keeping up with the entire forum and support queue. While I did skim, I did point to the one area that might be the biggest suspect in an effort to help, with an alternate of watching the AFE. I don't fly the DC-6 in my daily life, and I don't have cold and dark procedures memorized. You might not have found it helpful, particularly in light of the discussion in the other thread (where you hadn't mentioned looking in the manual, and the manual does actually have a very comprehensive guide to the flight deck, so my response wasn't entirely unreasonable), but watch your tone. There's a lot going on and I'm trying to be as helpful as I can to a number of people.

 

 

 

To confirm, the only situation where the Gyro Compass and VOR Indicator do rotate is if I select Ready For Taxi. The AFE does not result in these instruments working when you commence from cold and dark.

 

I find this hard to believe seeing that this is exactly what I did to create Tutorial #2, which has an intense focus on these two gauges and the NAV1 gauge. All of which are functioning correctly as is shown in the screenshots in that tutorial.

 

All the same, I'll have a look when I get home from the day job to see if anything is out of sorts.

[nriddell 0]

Many thanks Kyle - I greatly appreciate your help with this. I truly believe that I am doing something wrong as the ready for taxi situation correctly shows that the instruments are working. The perfectionist in my is just niggling away trying to find out what I am doing wrong. I did read tutorial two but didn't find anything to help. I think the issue may be because the AFE is perhaps doing something that when replicated in cold and dark is not producing the same results.

The compare and contrast I did as well makes it even more frustrating because all the switches in the OHP are in the same position with all inverters up and the gens on. A final point to confirm, there are no failures active at that time.

 

I will test again tonight and see what the results produce. Again, I greatly appreciate your help.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

I did read tutorial two but didn't find anything to help.

 

I'm not expecting that it would, specifically, but if you watch the process (that I'm starting from cold/dark) and look at the screenshots (showing the gauges working), you can definitely see that I had them working. That's all I was getting at.

 

Where are your battery and battery/gpu switches when this is happening? I believe the AFE should address both of these in the before start checks, but I can't remember.

[twgin 0]

First off, great airplane, delighted to see PMDG's first X-Plane offering (!) and hope for many more as time goes on.  I read somewhere a rumor about a DC-3, instead I would like to see a C-46 Commando (simulate Flying the Hump !)

 

I have had some unusual instrument behavior also; in my case the localizer/glideslope was only available on the co-pilot's side, GPS guidance only on the pilot's side...  I tried two or three approaches with the same results; later, after a restart of X-Plane and a reload of the airplane, behavior was as it should be with both VLOC and GPS working on both pilot side and copilot side (at this point I am mainly choosing "ready to taxi" and some subset of automated copilot assistance).  Until I learn more about the plane it is hard to separate my mistakes from possible bugs.

 

Had a hydraulic failure apparently, near my destination discovered no gear and no flaps.  Tried to use the automated copilot for help, i.e. instructed him to go through the pre landing (descent ?) checklist.  He did, and reported that flaps were deployed and that the gear was down when if fact neither was the case.  I read somewhere to treat the copilot as a rookie, not to be trusted, but this is a little much !  I realize building failure awareness into the copilot might be difficult, but in its present state the copilot is reporting flat out wrong info.

 

Finally, I run a two computer setup; one for the panel (MASTER) and the other driving a TripleHeadToGo setup (SLAVE) for a wide out the windscreen view.          X-Plane requires that the airplanes in the Slave machine be identified with a suffix, in my case I use    "-copilot"    so all of the planes in the Slave setup have "-copilot" added to the name of the plane.  This screws up the DC-6 plane; with the different name the aircraft plugin will not open.  It was also a problem with registration, plane couldn't be registered with a different name.  Net effect, without the plugin can't get rid of all the ground equipment, chase view shows the plane flying along with all the oil pans, ladders, etc.  hanging off the plane !  This is not a huge issue as the Slave is 99% of the time in look out the window view, but guys like me with multiple computer setups are probably right in your target market ...

 

Thanks for a great addition to the X-Plane fleet !

 

Terry

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

I have had some unusual instrument behavior also; in my case the localizer/glideslope was only available on the co-pilot's side, GPS guidance only on the pilot's side...

 

What was the CDI set to?

 

 

 

Had a hydraulic failure apparently, near my destination discovered no gear and no flaps.

 

It's more likely that you forgot to reset the hydraulic bypass. This is done on the In Range checks for the AFE.

 

 

 

He did, and reported that flaps were deployed and that the gear was down when if fact neither was the case.

 

He's simply reading the actions on the checks here. He put the gear lever into the up and then the down position, but since it seems you weren't running the checks properly (either by running the AFE's checks, or by ensuring you manually set the bypass to OFF), the actions didn't do anything.

 

 

 

This screws up the DC-6 plane

 

We didn't create the DC-6 with this in mind.

 

 

 

...have you flown the tutorials?

[nriddell 0]

I'm not expecting that it would, specifically, but if you watch the process (that I'm starting from cold/dark) and look at the screenshots (showing the gauges working), you can definitely see that I had them working. That's all I was getting at.

 

Where are your battery and battery/gpu switches when this is happening? I believe the AFE should address both of these in the before start checks, but I can't remember.

 

Hi Kyle - From memory, the Battery is on 'Plane Battery' and the Bat/GPU is 'Off'. I am just home from work just now and so will do some further testing this evening and keep you appraised as to how I get on. I will also go through various AFE scenarios and see what they produce.

 

Again, I appreciate your help with this and hopefully my incompetence can be resolved soon!!! 

[Guest-475 81]

You don't have random failures enabled in x-plane, do you?

[nriddell 0]

I'm not expecting that it would, specifically, but if you watch the process (that I'm starting from cold/dark) and look at the screenshots (showing the gauges working), you can definitely see that I had them working. That's all I was getting at.

 

Where are your battery and battery/gpu switches when this is happening? I believe the AFE should address both of these in the before start checks, but I can't remember.

 

Kyle - I have good news to report. Both instruments are working. I am ashamed to say that I do not know why they are now working as I feel I have followed the same procedure as I have done for the past few days. I will keep testing to see if I can repeat this situation at all and I will report back if that is the case. For now, thank you very much for your help and I apologies for any time wasted on your part.

[CloudSurfer 16]

I'll have a look here as I'm fairly sure it wasn't working for me, either.

 

The AFE seems to look only at what was set, and not what actually is the case (just try running the AFE approach checklist whilst cold and dark).

 

@Kyle: apologies for my tone earlier.

 

Rob Smith.