Carburetor Heat Axis assignment

[PMSoares 7]

Dear PMDG team, 

 

First of all, CONGRATULATIONS! The DC-6 is by far the best Classic Airliner available for P3D. I'm absolutely in love for this plane! Tha sounds, the cockpit textures, the flight model, and the systems modelling... Everything is so accurately well done that I sometimes can almost feel the scent of "old plane" filling my office... It's my default plane from now on! 

 

I would like to know if it's possible to assign a joystick axis or button in order to open/close the carburetor air levers. I found it quite difficult to work these levers from the pilot's seat, specially during the high workload phases of the flight. 

 

Thanks for the attention 

 

Paulo M. Soares 

[downscc 1,327]

There shouldn't be a need for frequent adjustment of carb heat, if you are doing that then you might not understand how to properly apply carb heat.  I don't think there is a default carb heat axis other than the default keycommand to toggle heat which is not what you want either.

[AviatorMan 253]

The default keyboard assignment for carburetor heat is "h". which cycles on/off. This will do it for all four engines. If you have a yoke and/or quadrant addon, you should also be able to assign it to one of the buttons. I am not aware if it is possible to assign CH for all four engines separately.

I don't totally agree with downscc on this, because even if you do not need to apply carburetor heat frequently, it is still difficult to view down on the pedestal to the switches when you are busy with other things. I use the "h" key for carburetor heat even on the A2A Cherokee and Comanche. The checklist for prelanding, for example, calls for a cycle of carburetor heat just to ensure there is no moisture buildup, and as this is a busy time it is awkward to have to scroll the view down to the bottom of the panel to find the CH switch.

[AviatorMan 253]

I have to correct myself. Just checked on the PMDG DC6A, and the keyboard assignment "H" does not work to activate the "Carburetor De-Ice" switches on this aircraft. It does on most others.

[MatzeH84 81]

Carb de-ice and carb heat are two different systems, be aware of that. One uses alcohol injection into the carb, the other one preheats the induction air.

By default there is no axis assignable for carb heat, as it's only on or off. On custom modeled planes like A2A or the DC-6 carb heat may be applied from off to full and everything in between, the only way to assign an axis for this would be a custom configuration program like A2A provides, or maybe if someone would provide an LUA for that.

[PMSoares 7]

On 8/10/2017 at 2:03 PM, downscc said:

There shouldn't be a need for frequent adjustment of carb heat, if you are doing that then you might not understand how to properly apply carb heat.  I don't think there is a default carb heat axis other than the default keycommand to toggle heat which is not what you want either.

Hello Dan! 

According to the DC6 manual, carburetor heat should be used whenever icing conditions are expected.  The manufacturer of the plane I fly defines Icing Conditions as TAT below +10°C and visible moisture . But there is a maximum carb temp (15 with Hi Blowers and 38 with Lo Bowers) that must also be observed, so you must keep the carb temperature high enough to prevent icing, but low enough to prevent damage to the engines... It's a tricky situation that may not be  applicable to fuel-injected engines like those who power  the beautiful C-421 in the background of your picture .  Icing conditions are more likely to occur at low altitudes, where the single pilot (in our simulation)  workload will be very high, as AviatorMan have stated... This is where a carb heat axis assignment would be useful, since it's very difficult to operate 4 carb heat levers with the mousewheel. I believe that in real life, either the copilot or the flight engineer would take care of those levers and control the carb heat temp precisely, but we don't have this luxury... 

 

Thanks Mathias for the suggestion of assigning a LUA for carb heat control. If somebody can provide a LUA for setting this axis , I would be very grateful. 

 

Paulo M. Soares

[downscc 1,327]

Based on my own experience in the PMDG DC6 during beta testing, I flew her all over Alaska and I only had one flight out of dozens where carb heat was necessary.  My interpretation of the POH pg 278 is that it should only be used when necessary and not as just a precaution.  The one time I had to use carb heat she announced it to me with a dropping MP and slight application of heat was called for.  In fact, the  POH cautions that carb heat can cause icing to occur by raising the temperature into the freezing range.  I might be wrong on this and I haven't heard from the DC6 pilots we had available in a few weeks but when one of them does show up I'll ask him specifically about this.

Thanks for the complement, actually it is a C-414 not the A but the original short nose S/N 00003. And correct, this is not a topic that we have to worry about in the turbocharged fuel injected engines. 

I encourage you to submit a trouble ticket to PMDG product support with the recommendation for an axis assignment.  They take customer requests that they can accommodate and put it into a bug tracking system as a feature request so it's not forgotten.  I had a whole list of command bindings that I wanted but are still in the tracking system.

[PMSoares 7]

Hello Dan! 

 

Thanks for the reply. I'll submit a ticket. Currently I have some old throttle controls, and because of this I have plenty of spare levers to use as hyd bypass, cowl flaps, mixture levers etc. Have a nice day! 

[Japo32 52]

I searched for this one, as still is a problem in 2021 with the MSFS DC-6. I wish PMDG would change their mind and implement those keys that are not present for us. In the past, people only had a joystick only, but nowdays there are much cheap joystick and panels solutions around to miss the opportunity of giving support for those people.

cheers.