Engine Fire Detection

[Hangar14 0]

Greetings,

There is an old joke in heavy - How does an aviation boatswain mate know he's on fire?  He doesn't need a light for his cigarette and his coffee stays warm.  

With that in mind, my question is How does the PMDG 737 know it has an engine fire.  I can't seem to get the aircraft to "know" it is on fire and since it doesn't have a cigarette or cup of coffee…;)  I'm pretty sure it is operator, but cannot imagine what is going on.

After I get the jet fully running and flying, I go to the FSX "Failures" menu and Arm an engine fire for 1 to 5 minutes. I wait.  

Eventually from the outside view I can see smoke.  Inside the only indication is decreased performance on the effected engine - no lights, no bell.

When I go to extinguish the fire, I have to use the override button.  I have used both bottles.  The fire is still there.

Obviously the aircraft systems are not recognizing the fire.  I have tested the fire dection system with the test switch and all bels and lights .

I'm thinking with this most excellent PMDG sim, this is not a case of, "Oops we forgot the engine fire stuff"  ;)  In fact I am sure it is operator error.  But what is the error do you think?

 

Full Name as per the rules :)

William C Kotheimer Jr.

[JoeDiamond 67]

1 hour ago, Hangar14 said:

After I get the jet fully running and flying, I go to the FSX "Failures" menu and Arm an engine fire for 1 to 5 minutes. I wait.

I'd venture a guess that is your problem.  You should be setting the failure through the PMDG failures menu, not through the FSX menu.

[Hangar14 0]

On 3/30/2017 at 2:33 PM, JoeDiamond said:

You should be setting the failure through the PMDG failures menu, not through the FSX menu.

Well…that is disappointing…I was trying to build an FSX mission with an engine fire…I'm pretty sure the Mission Action for a Failure is the same as the Failure Menu…

 

Thanks for the info.

[Hangar14 0]

UPDATE:  Near as I can tell, the Failures menu for the 737 only offers autopilot malfunctions.  Same for the Jetstream.  However, the Jetstream give you all the fire warnings when using a Mission Failure Action - Engine Fire.  And the fire extinguishing works too.

The only things I  can think of are:

a) I'm missing a step in my start-up checklist that turns on the Fire Detection system.  The test button works fine.

b) I've got the original 747 Queen of the Skies that I had to fiddle with to get its PMDG options menu to show.

The reason I think that ma be the issue is that when I start up the 737 first, the only option on the PMDG menu is "About PMDG".  It is only when I start the 747 first, then switch to the 737, that the "Full" menu shows…although the only menu function that works is the Failures item.

Maybe a complete reload?

[downscc 1,327]

4 hours ago, Hangar14 said:

Maybe a complete reload?

You have to exit the simulator and start a new session to load a different PMDG aircraft.  This is explained in the Introduction manuals, which also have many pages of failures that are available in all aircraft systems, not just autopilot.  The default mission feature is a different thing altogether and because much of the PMDG simulation is done outside the box this feature is unreliable. 

Off topic, but sincerely interested in why use the default missions feature?  What does it do that you cannot do without?

[Hangar14 0]

Thanks for the info - guess I need to go back and "RTFM" again.  

Re default missions.  Actually I make missions - some pay ware and some freeware.  (see esci Flightsim Publications)

Normal FSX Missions allow you to do all kinds of things (in addition to setting an engine on fire at a specific time or place) that you can't do in Free Flight. 

Being a former Navy guy I was looking at using PMDG's P-8 to do a ship reconnaissance mission.  Put out a bunch of ships traveling back and forth through a strait and you have to go out and find the "bad guy" - then vector other aircraft, helicopters or Navy ships to it - I was going to throw in an engine fire at low altitude just to make things exciting…but all that other stuff may be enough fun.  

All that AI traffic (air and ship) plus various triggers and goals to see if you can fly the mission successfully, system failures…and the radio and IC comms that go with it to create the proper "atmosphere"…that's all written into a standard FSX mission.

 Again, thanks for the info!

 

[downscc 1,327]

33 minutes ago, Hangar14 said:

Being a former Navy guy I was looking at using PMDG's P-8 to do a ship reconnaissance mission.  Put out a bunch of ships traveling back and forth through a strait and you have to go out and find the "bad guy" - then vector other aircraft, helicopters or Navy ships to it - I was going to throw in an engine fire at low altitude just to make things exciting…but all that other stuff may be enough fun.  

That's pretty cool... simulating a range then.  I'm an Air Force guy and can appreciate the intensity of such training scenarios.

I recommend you contact PMDG directly via a trouble ticket at PMDG Product Support (  ) and make a request for specific fault triggers to be included in the SDK.  They have done this in the past for another developer, perhaps y'all can develop a commercial partnership.

Allowing your code to trigger the events directly rather than via the simulator platform is the way to go.