19 hours ago, thecorporatepilotdad said:

I did a review on it 2 days ago.  I did quite a bit of stuff with it in the review and even flew on one engine, feathered, and restarted the engine.  No crashing into lakes.  No crashing period.  But if that is the video I am thinking of, in her defense,  she has never flown multi-engine aircraft according to her commentary.

Here is mine: Carenado PA-44 Review by a Professional Pilot - Microsoft Flight Simulator - YouTube

Nice review! PA44 comes with unfeathering accumulator for air start. It releases stored pressure back to governor to unfeather the prop until it windmill. As far as I remember, case of starter assist unfeathering will cause oil pressure rise. I dunno what they modeled .

Also engine won't feather manually above 950 rpm. But it should feather automatically above 950 rpm. I haven't played with failures so I don't know if it works or not  

 

1 hour ago, sd_flyer said:

Nice review! PA44 comes with unfeathering accumulator for air start. It releases stored pressure back to governor to unfeather the prop until it windmill. As far as I remember, case of starter assist unfeathering will cause oil pressure rise. I dunno what they modeled .

Also engine won't feather manually above 950 rpm. But it should feather automatically above 950 rpm. I haven't played with failures so I don't know if it works or not  

 

 

1 hour ago, sd_flyer said:

Nice review! PA44 comes with unfeathering accumulator for air start. It releases stored pressure back to governor to unfeather the prop until it windmill. As far as I remember, case of starter assist unfeathering will cause oil pressure rise. I dunno what they modeled .

Also engine won't feather manually above 950 rpm. But it should feather automatically above 950 rpm. I haven't played with failures so I don't know if it works or not  

 

That is a question I have for someone with history in PA-44s.  Do all Seminoles have prop accumulators? Did early Seminoles not have accumulators? 

 

 

2 hours ago, thecorporatepilotdad said:

 

That is a question I have for someone with history in PA-44s.  Do all Seminoles have prop accumulators? Did early Seminoles not have accumulators? 

 

 

That is a good question for A&P. I flown early 2000s version of PA44. We unfeathered it by descending at >100 kts and moving prop slightly  forward off feathered position. Then after prop starts windmilling we slowly stabilize rpm .

From what I heard some Seminoles don’t have fully feathers props for training purposes. So give it enough speed and prop will naturally windmill . Go figure.

Just now, sd_flyer said:

That is a good question for A&P. I flown early 2000s version of PA44. We unfeathered it by descending at >100 kts and moving prop slightly  forward off feathered position. Then after prop starts windmilling we slowly stabilize rpm .

From what I heard some Seminoles don’t have fully feathers props for training purposes. So give it enough speed and prop will naturally windmill . Go figure.

Thanks for the reply.  I am currently working on another video for the PA-44 on FS2020.  I tailored the checklist to FS2020 and included almost every phase of flight from cold and dark to startup to shutdown.  Can you answer another question for me? When doing the before takeoff - ground check when you get to prop controls - check governor... do you set 2000 RPMs, pull it back to say 1900 RPM and then move the throttle up and watch for an increase in RPM and then wait for the governor to take it back to 1900? It is has been over 15 years since I have flown a piston engine airplane.  Making YouTube tutorials and talking about this stuff has knocked off a huge amount of rust! 

21 minutes ago, thecorporatepilotdad said:

Thanks for the reply.  I am currently working on another video for the PA-44 on FS2020.  I tailored the checklist to FS2020 and included almost every phase of flight from cold and dark to startup to shutdown.  Can you answer another question for me? When doing the before takeoff - ground check when you get to prop controls - check governor... do you set 2000 RPMs, pull it back to say 1900 RPM and then move the throttle up and watch for an increase in RPM and then wait for the governor to take it back to 1900? It is has been over 15 years since I have flown a piston engine airplane.  Making YouTube tutorials and talking about this stuff has knocked off a huge amount of rust! 

Throttle up to 2000rpm then prop to 1500rpm. We exercise prop  by pulling it aft momentarily down to 100-200 rpm. Then watch for MP increase ,  rpm drop (no more than 300) and oil pressure 

1 minute ago, sd_flyer said:

Throttle up to 2000rpm then prop to 1500rpm. We exercise prop  by pulling it aft momentarily down to 100-200 rpm. Then watch for MP increase ,  rpm drop (no more than 300) and oil pressure 

Good to know.  I did it to 2000 then moved the RPM to 1900 then moved the throttle to watch it go back to 1900.  I won't use the exact procedure on that part but I still think it will drive the point home of what the prop governor is doing.  I do my best to make my videos as accurate as possible.  Just trying to bring the real world to FS2020.  I've been that way since I started my YouTube channel.  I had a guy get on me for calling the flight mode annunciator the "scoreboard".  I no longer call it the scoreboard.  I went to recurrent training after that happened and the instructor called it the "scoreboard".  It drove me nuts.  

On 11/20/2020 at 8:19 PM, Little Jenny said:

Ok, I couldn't help myself and Carenado got some more of my money.  Nice to hear the Mooney fix is coming soon but have a question about the PA44.  I have a lot to learn with this plane for sure.  Is there anywhere to set the altitude for the AP? I figured out how to get it to follow the GPS but can't find anywhere to set the altitude.

You can't set the altitude.   It's VS to the altitude you want then press ALT to hold the altitude.

I'm moderately happy with this Addon - I was moderately happy with the Mooney too.  If only they worked as you want them to...  I was practicing single engine flying today and noticed that my CH throttles were unable to feather the props - I had to "physically" move the prop lever in the cockpit to the feather position.  I assumed this particular PA44 has the accumulators, because they come out of feather surprisingly quickly.  More so than the real aircraft, in my experience.  I also noticed that at full power on the operating engine, completely clean configuration, banked up to 5 degrees into the good engine with the ball slightly out to that side, and at blue line airspeed, the aircraft managed maybe a 10 fpm climb at sea level - even at very light weights.  In fact, only a slightly higher pitch attitude (airspeed about 5-10 kts below VYse) produced any perceptible climb.  Which isn't right.  I did my MEI in a PA-44, and remember seeing many single engine drills and drag demos.  The actual aircraft I flew could easily do 300 fpm on a hot day with full tanks and 2 on board.  I know the single engine out reduces performance by 80%, but when taken with the unrealistically slow cruise speeds, I'd say this model is underpowered compared to the real plane.  

To add on to my previous comment, according to my PA-44-180 manual, I should be getting about 155 KTAS at 4500 ft, +15C (according to the OAT guage), 65% BHP (21.5"/2400 RPM).  In the sim, I'm showing about 145 KTAS.  Also, anyone know how to fix the heading bug/ CDI?  I can only get it them to move in 10 degree increments both with key bindings and mouse scroll wheel.  If I left click and hold, it moves fluidly, but too fast for accuracy.  Very annoying...  Almost as annoying as the CTD I just got when I fiddled with the TAS bug on the altimeter...

10 hours ago, quint60 said:

To add on to my previous comment, according to my PA-44-180 manual, I should be getting about 155 KTAS at 4500 ft, +15C (according to the OAT guage), 65% BHP (21.5"/2400 RPM).  In the sim, I'm showing about 145 KTAS.  Also, anyone know how to fix the heading bug/ CDI?  I can only get it them to move in 10 degree increments both with key bindings and mouse scroll wheel.  If I left click and hold, it moves fluidly, but too fast for accuracy.  Very annoying...  Almost as annoying as the CTD I just got when I fiddled with the TAS bug on the altimeter...

I use the mouse scroll wheel and press left shift to double the rate the heading bug moves.  If you move the mouse wheel fast a few times it will move really fast and go 20-30 degrees with each scroll of the mouse wheel.

 

After the last sim update, my PA44 is trying to kill me every time I turn on AP.

The aircraft will pull hard right and send me towards the ground with the flick of a button. Forcing the aircraft back to normal using the joystick automatically disconnects the AP.

I know the AP generally was broken with the last update (how is this even possible?), but I've only seen this behavior in the PA44.

I used the AP yesterday multiple times in the PA44 and it worked flawlessly.  

On 11/25/2020 at 8:23 PM, sd_flyer said:

That is a good question for A&P. I flown early 2000s version of PA44. We unfeathered it by descending at >100 kts and moving prop slightly  forward off feathered position. Then after prop starts windmilling we slowly stabilize rpm .

I am an A&P but my time is in a Seneca, not a Seminole. The closest I have to flying a Seminole class would be the Beech Duchess. I know that both the Duchess and the Seneca had Unfeathering Accumulators. I would be surprised if the Seminole doesn't as well.

Edited December 2, 20205 yr by GACSavannah
spelling flub

On 12/1/2020 at 7:49 PM, GACSavannah said:

I am an A&P but my time is in a Seneca, not a Seminole. The closest I have to flying a Seminole class would be the Beech Duchess. I know that both the Duchess and the Seneca had Unfeathering Accumulators. I would be surprised if the Seminole doesn't as well.

From what I've found later models had accumulators and at some point earlier in production they did not have them.  I just read an article by AOPA that states unfeathering accumulators are a great standard feature on newer Seminoles.  The article says the accumulator would take the prop out of feather at 100-120 knots and previous models required the starter to be engaged to uncage the props.  Here is the article.  Piper Seminole - AOPA  

I have a very basic problem. I can not get the engines to turn over. They simply will not crank. Everything on the panel seems to respond when I turn on the master and fuel pump switches, etc. but when I push either o the start switches noting happens. No noise, no crank. In desperation I tried the auto start using the Ctrl=E keys but nothing happens. The engines should crank over even it you haven't turned on the fuel pumps. Any hints?

Thanks