Hi,

I have noticed a strange issue with the Falcon 50 fuel counters. When the plane begins to burn fuel from the wing tanks, so the feeders are 609 lbs, the counter for the fuel used indicator is going up faster than it should. This results in unreliable indications for the total fuel used and aircraft gross weight gauges. Often after a flight I am routinely checking the actual fuel consumed against the estimated fuel consumed in the OFP. I noticed that if I make the sum of the total fuel used shown on the instrument panel and the total fuel on board after landing, the result is higher than the fuel I loaded before departure, which is impossible. On a particular flight the error was in excess of 1000 pounds. I loaded 7000lbs, and based on the indicators in the cockpit I should have had more than 8000lbs before departure, which meant there is definitely something not working properly with those instruments.

I did some further testing and I realised by comparing the gross weight of the plane shown in the payload manager window and the gross weight calculated by the instrument in the cockpit (the one using the fuel consumed counter to calculate it) that this issue is only happening then the engines are burning fuel from the wing tanks (or when fuel is transfered from the wing to the feeder, when the feeder is around 600lbs). Continuously comparing the 2 values with the engines at 90-100% on ground, they are identical while the fuel is consumed only from the feeders, when fuel is being transferred from the wing tanks to the feeders the issue begins and the gross weight indication on the instrument panel is lower than the one in the payload manager, the error is getting larger and larger as more fuel is consumed. 

I enjoyed flying this plane so far, it's one of the best I've had in the sim, the systems are modelled nicely apart from this issue, but this one issue is ruining the immersion for me. I reinstalled it twice hoping it would fix itself but it still persists. 

I just disregard fuel *burned* counters.  As far as I can tell, the weights at any given time are accurate, so basing your landing numbers on the gross weight gauge (as reset by the button on the 2d popup window) is accurate.  The plane just generates fuel as it transfers.  I'm working on a PFPX profile bias that accurately reflects this.  Admittedly, I kinda avoided letting the cat out of the bag because what we have is basically a longer-range version.  Fewer tech stops - almost like having winglets or upgraded engines.

Also flying the True Airspeed indicator seems to be more accurate than the airspeed indicator at altitude.  That affects fuel burn too.

 

-Tony

Edited September 25, 20205 yr by HowAreYourRides

Thanks for your reply. 
That may be true, I also think that the plane is generating fuel instead of transferring. It explains why this issue is happening, maybe instead of actual transfer it generates fuel in the feeder and deleting from the wing tank but it skips the last step every now and then so actual fuel content is more than it should be. That means the fuel counters are working correctly, the system which manages the fuel transfer is the problem (I did actually test this during a flight, I set the throttles to have exactly 600lb/h per engine, after 1 hour I had 600lb burn per engine indicated and the fuel consumed indication increase by exactly 1800, so counters may be working as they should). In the end, you are right, you are getting more range, but it is because of a bug and it is sacrificing realism. I am disregarding the fuel burned counters for now, but it would be better to have this system work as it was designed to.

 

-Dan. 

Sometimes I'll choose between what benefits me most for a given flight.  If I'm flying a long haul, I'll usually plan fuel based on the manufacture of fuel.  If I'm flying a short flight and want to operate at heavier weights, I'll use the realistic fuel burn and land heavier.

-Tony

Edited September 25, 20205 yr by HowAreYourRides

That’s one way of coping with this... for me I think for now I’ll disregard the fuel counters and use only the fuel quantity indicators which will always be accurate. I won’t even bother setting up the gross weight indicator during preflight since the indicated value will not be the same as the one computed by the simulator throughout the flight. I will calculate the weight manually if needed. I really hope a developer will address this issue in a future update. 

 

I also noticed that if you set the gross weight indicator before starting the engines the value will increase by a few tenths/hundreds for each engine start, which also is not normal. 
 

-Dan

On 9/24/2020 at 9:36 AM, DV744 said:

I have noticed a strange issue with the Falcon 50 fuel counters.

On 9/24/2020 at 11:03 PM, HowAreYourRides said:

I just disregard fuel *burned* counters.

 

I think we have a 'reasonable' fix for the VC Used Fuel and Gross Weight counters issue raised here. As was correctly noted above, the problem is related to the transfer of fuel between the wing tanks and feeder tanks. The nature of this transfer as implemented with the fuel transfer dll created the problem.

If you want to try out the fix (at your own risk, of course), download the Falcon50FuelCounterUpdate.zip file at the link below.  Unzip the file and dig down to the Falcon50.cab and PAYLOAD_MANAGER.cab files. These cab files replace files by the same name in the Falcon50 panel folder. Before pasting the new files into the panel folder, I strongly suggest you rename the existing Falcon50.cab and PAYLOAD_MANAGER.cab files to something like Falcon50_Orig.cab and PAYLOAD_MANAGER_Orig.cab to back them up and make it easy to return to the original files. Restart the sim after making the file changes.

With this fix, you cannot update the Fuel Used or Gross Weight counters in the VC from the Payload Manager when the aircraft is in the air. The Payload Manager is an 'on ground' tool since that's when loading fuel and payload happens. You also can not reset the Used Fuel counter when in the air, but you can reset the three individual engine used fuel counters. This is also true for the RW Falcon50.

The new files to try are at: https://www.dropbox.com/s/lru82lctmd73or7/Falcon50FuelCounterUpdate.zip?dl=0

Would appreciate if you let me know how it goes.

Al

Edited October 2, 20205 yr by ark

Thank you for the updated files. I am sorry for this late reply, I was away for a week from home and today I tested the new files and they are working properly.

 

The testing conditions were the following : start the plane in default state, then shut off engines, refuelled plane using payload manager 2000 lbs in each wing tank, but then adjusted the levels manually using the sim menu to insert 600 lbs in each feeder, therefore activating the fuel transfer from the wing tanks to the feeders. 

After this I reset all the fuel counters and the GW counter, started the engines. Now there are two small issues. First one is the gross weight counter increases by a few tenths/hundreds for each engine start (I didn't write down the exact increase but it's significant). This doesn't bother me that much because after the engine start it is possible to reset everything again. The second one is that the fuel used counters do not start working right away, they need one more reset before they start going. The gross weight counter works right away. These two issues were present before as well, but they can be worked around easily by resetting each fuel counter and sync the GW with the payload manager immediately after the engine start is complete. After this the counters started working and continued with the test. Firstly I set the engines to 90% on the runway threshold and watched the counters go against the payload manager, everything worked as it should. Next step was a more realistic test where I first wrote down all the important values from the instrument panel and the payload manager, then took off, climbed to FL100, landed, wrote down the values again and compared them.

Everything worked as it should, the error doesn't exist anymore. Indicated total fuel used was identical to the actual fuel used calculated using payload manager, individual engine fuel used counter worked correctly as I checked against the fuel quantities before and after, indicated gross weight matched the gross weight in payload manager. 

 

I will check as well if they work properly during normal flights from A to B and report here if I find anything unusual but for now it seems to be fixed.

 

Thank you very much for your support, I appreciate that you addressed this issue so quickly. Wish you all the best.

 

Dan.

Edited October 3, 20205 yr by DV744

4 hours ago, DV744 said:

Thank you for the updated files. I am sorry for this late reply, I was away for a week from home and today I tested the new files and they are working properly.

Dan,

Good to hear things are working.

Once the engines are started and all electrical systems are on line is when I would reset all the counters, including the three individual engine fuel used counters. The individual fuel counters are designed to be re-settable at any time, including in flight -- they are like the trip odometer in a car.  All these counters are ultimately dealing with many thousands of pounds of fuel or weight. So even if the counters in the real a/c were accurate to 1% (unlikely, I think) that is a possible error of 10lbs per 1000. So if the main used fuel counter is reading 12, 000lbs, it could easily be off by 120 lbs. If the counter was only 95% accurate, the error could be 600lbs when the counter said 12,000.  I would expect a prudent RW pilot will get the a/c on the ground well before it looks like the fuel available is down to about 600lbs per engine ( and of course, if flying IFR you are required to have at least 45 minutes of fuel AFTER flying to your alternate airport).

Thanks for the feedback,

Al

 

Edited October 3, 20205 yr by ark