8 hours ago, jon b said:

Thanks for highlighting this aircraft, I’ll download tomorrow and see if 2024 will accept it.

Geeat to hear that we have someone on the forum with experience operating the Darts!

When you say you "milked" the HP levers on startup, does that mean that the "open" position isn't a detent but just a marking? Or did you pull the lever back out of the detent?

Maybe you can also comment on how well the Darts are modelled on the F-27? It sounds as if the developer had to jump through some hoops to model their peculiarities that set them apart from more modern turboprop engines.

I used to enjoy flying Rick Piper's HS.748 back in FS9. The F-27 is bringing back memories of that!

10 hours ago, sloppysmusic said:

that's brilliant. we could used fsuipc to map the axis to those 4 detents then?

Yes, I think that should work!

Alternatively, I've got mine set up now in MobiFlight so they're controlled by buttons - I've got a short RPN snippet that "steps" the levers through the detents. I don't recall if FSUIPC allows you to assign RPN code to buttons. If you're interested, let me know and I can post the RPN when I'm back at my computer.

When I did some more testing yesterday, I did notice some oddities with throttle response. Not sure if that was because I used these LVARs or something else, but I wanted to pass it on. Will have to do some more testing. Edit: I've done some more testing, and throttle response this time was fine, so it must have been something else.

A minute to get the engines shut down sounds painful. I find the HP levers fiddly, but not that fiddly. Usually, the first time I drag them they'll move just a tiny bit, but then the second time I can move them where I want them.

Lovely screenshot. That Braathens livery is one of my favourites. I love the elegant "Friendship" lettering.

Edited December 8, 20241 yr by martinboehme

1 hour ago, martinboehme said:

When you say you "milked" the HP levers on startup, does that mean that the "open" position isn't a detent but just a marking? Or did you pull the lever back out of the detent?

There was a very firm detent, if I remember correctly you had to pull the lever sideways then back to get it out of the detent. The lever was then cautiously retarded only a couple of centimetres if that just to meter the fuel flow and avoid a hot start.

 I’m not sure if it was an approved procedure but it was widely done, with the lever being a mechanical link to the valve it gave you the option to meter the valve.

There was also a prohibited RPM range on the darts, I think somewhere around 10,000 RPM I’ll have to look it up. At that specific RPM the prop became neutral not delivering either thrust or drag and the shaft in the engine could become unloaded and start to float and loose meshing with the gearbox.

Climb thrust was as I remember, 14,200 RPM with the fuel trimmers used to maintain 755 degrees on the TGT, which I’m sure will be in the documentation. You had to remember to set the fuel trimmers back to 100% on the way in otherwise in a go around you’d firewall the throttles and the RPM and noise would increase but you wouldn’t get much torque out of the engines..

The water methanol injection was impressive and you could really hear it and feel the aircraft shake when it kicked in, later engines had a standby position on the water meth switch which would start injection on the live engine if it sensed an engine failure.

There was a good cockpit video of the F27 made by ITVV with a flight from LHR to GUR Guernsey, it used to be on YouTube somewhere, but I can’t find it.

3 hours ago, martinboehme said:

Yes, I think that should work

https://forum.simflight.com/topic/98796-fsuipc7-how-to-assign-an-axis-to-control-an-lvar/

I'm putting that link here so I don't lose it lol. The end of page instructs how to set atr condition lever lvars to axis in fsuipc. 

All I have to do now is find my calculator 😁

14 hours ago, martinboehme said:

I've found LVARs for these now:

f275_CondLev01_Pos

f275_CondLev02_Pos

Experimentally, the following values seem to correspond to the various lever positions:

FEATHER: 0

H.P.C. SHUT: 22

OPEN: 75

LOCK OUT: 100

Hi Martin! OK noob time for me. WHERE did you find these LVARS? I'm in FSUIPC and can't see any way to call these directly (cant see in custom variables and they not listed in the layout.json file. Do I need to write a function/s myself to call them?

Not sure if I'm THAT dedicated to this plane to do that despite the valuable learning experience!

Currently deep in the FSUIPC manual but if you could confirm location that would be great!

4 minutes ago, sloppysmusic said:

Hi Martin! OK noob time for me. WHERE did you find these LVARS? I'm in FSUIPC and can't see any way to call these directly (cant see in custom variables and they not listed in the layout.json file. Do I need to write a function/s myself to call them?

Hm - it's been a while since I've used FSUIPC, so I don't really recall if and how it deals with LVARs. I can take a look later today when I'm at the computer, or maybe someone else can chime in.

The way I found these in the first place was through developer mode in MSFS - there's a tool for inspecting LVARs, I believe under Tools / Behaviors, and then click on the "Local Variables" header. I use MobiFlight for my control assignments, and it can write to LVARs directly.

As I say, I'll take a look later to see what can be done with FSUIPC. 

13 minutes ago, sloppysmusic said:

OK noob time for me. WHERE did you find these LVARS?

Oh wait, I see that the link you posted earlier has exactly the instructions you should need to control LVARs from FSUIPC.

You say that you can't see the LVARs I mentioned. If this is happening, make sure you have started a flight with the F-27 before listing the LVARs - it should then list the ones I mentioned. Failing that, you could just try copy-pasting the LVAR names I gave into FSUIPC and see if that works for you. 

20 minutes ago, martinboehme said:

You say that you can't see the LVARs I mentioned. If this is happening, make sure you have started a flight with the F-27 before listing the LVARs - it should then list the ones I mentioned. Failing that, you could just try copy-pasting the LVAR names I gave into FSUIPC and see if that works for you. 

Yes I have the plane loaded. cannot see them. Didn't know you can copy paste! I just need to figure out WHERE to now :D

36 minutes ago, martinboehme said:

I believe under Tools / Behaviors, and then click on the "Local Variables" header. I use MobiFlight for my control assignments, and it can write to LVARs directly.

Yes I see them moving there when I move levers. Interestingly p42 variables move too. hmmmm! 

Ahhh:

Finally, the fourth option, “Send Preset to FS”, allows an axis to be assigned to a preset, which are defined in either the events.txt file (provided by MobiFlight) or in the myevents.txt file (for your own presets). You would usually only use this option to assign to a preset that uses a parameter placeholder (either $Param or the @ symbol) to accept the axis value, and you would also need to calibrate this axis value (in the preset calculator code) to accept values. For example, here is a preset definition which uses an axis with a usual range to control an lvar for the condition levers in the ATR, which accepts a value of 0-3: MSATR CONDITION1 LEVER SET#@ 16384 + 10923 / near 0 max 3 min (>L:MSATR_CONDITION1_POS) MSATR CONDITION2 LEVER SET#@ 16384 + 10923 / near 0 max 3 min (>L:MSATR_CONDITION2_POS)

Edited December 8, 20241 yr by sloppysmusic

1 hour ago, sloppysmusic said:

FEATHER: 0

H.P.C. SHUT: 22

OPEN: 75

LOCK OUT: 100

Point of note these are NOT set in 'stone'. I've noticed twitchy values. Example moving lever from feather to SHUT detent gives me reading 21. Moving DOWN from OPEN to same detent gives me 25. Detent for lever in plane is same place but value differs depending on which direction you enter it from! So range 21-25 would work, I just need to find out what to trigger now in FSUIPC. Also if different values there.. does the plane read a range or trigger at some middle value?

The most efficient way to do this would be to read my axis 'live' and assign values like a potentiometer. Variable from 0-100. I know people have done this to make dimmable lights...

Edited December 8, 20241 yr by sloppysmusic
potentiometer

11 hours ago, jon b said:

There was a very firm detent, if I remember correctly you had to pull the lever sideways then back to get it out of the detent. The lever was then cautiously retarded only a couple of centimetres if that just to meter the fuel flow and avoid a hot start.

 I’m not sure if it was an approved procedure but it was widely done, with the lever being a mechanical link to the valve it gave you the option to meter the valve.

Thanks for this and your other insights from the real world -- things that aren't in a manual and that you can only get from someone who has flown the aircraft.

11 hours ago, jon b said:

There was a good cockpit video of the F27 made by ITVV with a flight from LHR to GUR Guernsey, it used to be on YouTube somewhere, but I can’t find it.

That sounds interesting -- but the ITVV website doesn't seem to have it either. I've found a few other F-27 videos on YouTube, but nothing with the production quality of ITVV.

Ah yes, sorry I thought it was ITVV, I used to own it on VHS but apparently it wasn’t ITVV, I’ve found it here…

 

8 hours ago, sloppysmusic said:

Yes I see them moving there when I move levers. Interestingly p42 variables move too. hmmmm! 

What are the "p42" variables -- is that part of the variable name? In developer mode, I can't find any LVARs that have that in the name?

8 hours ago, sloppysmusic said:

Finally, the fourth option, “Send Preset to FS”, allows an axis to be assigned to a preset, which are defined in either the events.txt file (provided by MobiFlight) or in the myevents.txt file (for your own presets). You would usually only use this option to assign to a preset that uses a parameter placeholder (either $Param or the @ symbol) to accept the axis value, and you would also need to calibrate this axis value (in the preset calculator code) to accept values. For example, here is a preset definition which uses an axis with a usual range to control an lvar for the condition levers in the ATR, which accepts a value of 0-3: MSATR CONDITION1 LEVER SET#@ 16384 + 10923 / near 0 max 3 min (>L:MSATR_CONDITION1_POS) MSATR CONDITION2 LEVER SET#@ 16384 + 10923 / near 0 max 3 min (>L:MSATR_CONDITION2_POS)

Ah yes, this sounds right.

What I think you'll want to do is to add two lines to the myevents.txt file that look something like this:

F27 HP LEVER 1 SET#@ 16384 + 327 / near 0 max 100 min (>L:f275_CondLev01_Pos)

F27 HP LEVER 2 SET#@ 16384 + 327 / near 0 max 100 min (>L:f275_CondLev02_Pos)

Then you should be able to find these new events under the "Send Preset to FS" option.

Breaking down what this does:

• "F27 HP LEVER 1 SET" is just an arbitrary name for this preset
• The # symbol indicates that this is the end of the name and that the definition of the preset follows
• The @ symbol means to take the current value of the axis input
• "16384 + 327 /" means to add 16384, then divide by 327. (The order is a bit strange because this is what's known as "Reverse Polish Notation".) This has the effect of converting the original axis value (which ranges from -16384 to +16383) to a range of approximately 0 to 100 (which is what the HP levers use).
• "near" I believe means to round to the nearest integer (I'm just following the example here)
• "0 max 100 min" makes sure the value is constrained to the interval 0 to 100.
• "(>L:f275_CondLev01_Pos)", finally, means to write the resulting value to the LVAR "f275_CondLev01_Pos".

I've noticed I don't actually have FSUIPC installed any more, so I haven't been able to test this, but I'm hoping it will at least do something close to working and that you can then tweak it from there using the explanation above.

8 hours ago, sloppysmusic said:

Point of note these are NOT set in 'stone'. I've noticed twitchy values. Example moving lever from feather to SHUT detent gives me reading 21. Moving DOWN from OPEN to same detent gives me 25. Detent for lever in plane is same place but value differs depending on which direction you enter it from! So range 21-25 would work, I just need to find out what to trigger now in FSUIPC. Also if different values there.. does the plane read a range or trigger at some middle value?

I've noticed similar things. I got the "22" from the fact that that's what the plane starts up with in cold-and-dark mode. The "0" and "100" are pretty obvious -- and the "75" was just a good guess. These values seem to work, at least...

Anyway, if you go the route above, all of that shouldn't matter, because the effect will be exactly what you describe here:

8 hours ago, sloppysmusic said:

The most efficient way to do this would be to read my axis 'live' and assign values like a potentiometer. Variable from 0-100. I know people have done this to make dimmable lights...

Hope the above works, let me know how you get along.

14 minutes ago, jon b said:

Ah yes, sorry I thought it was ITVV, I used to own it on VHS but apparently it wasn’t ITVV, I’ve found it here…

Excellent, many many thanks for this!

1 hour ago, martinboehme said:

F27 HP LEVER 1 SET#@ 16384 + 327 / near 0 max 100 min (>L:f275_CondLev01_Pos)

F27 HP LEVER 2 SET#@ 16384 + 327 / near 0 max 100 min (>L:f275_CondLev02_Pos)

Brilliant! This is what I cobbled together but didn't put in myevents.txt as didn't want to crash the sim!

F275_HPLEVER_LEFT#@ 10.23 / $Param 16384 + 327.86 / max 100 min 0 (>K:2:f275_CondLev01_Pos)
F275_HPLEVER_RIGHT#@ 10.23 / $Param 16384 + 327.86 / max 100 min 0 (>K:2:f275_CondLev02_Pos)

I took code from a lighting snippet and umm bent it to look half real but now you've explained what the sections are it makes sense.

I used to program in Pascal a LONG time ago...so I understand how code works with a manual to say where the variables, functions and constants etc are at.

1 hour ago, martinboehme said:

"16384 + 327 /" means to add 16384, then divide by 327. (The order is a bit strange because this is what's known as "Reverse Polish Notation".) This has the effect of converting the original axis value (which ranges from -16384 to +16383) to a range of approximately 0 to 100 (which is what the HP levers use).

I get this, I presume that's for RAW yes? If I use data from the drivers not the device direct it's already 0-100?

I'm almost getting there thanks after giving up earlier today and getting back in the F28 :D