Landing gear drag

[Guest jlwoodward]

I need to add some drag with the gear extended. Probably a pitch change along with it. I used the editor that came with FSDS2 to open up the air file, and found lines for gear drag coefficient and gear pitch factor. I entered values from similar aircraft.However, extending and retracting the gear has no effect on the speed or pitch, even though the gear does visibly function and has the right contact points.The plane is based on the 182 air file, and I think now that the Mooney or 182RG might have been a better choice. I wonder if there is some other data that I have missed. I also wonder if I should be using a different editor.Thanks,John Woodward

[Guest Milton]

John,This is my understanding and what I had to do to get control of gear drag and other factors.FSEdit adds records to the air file which essentially eliminates important records in 1101.If you want gear drag and pitch from section 1101, delete the high end records added by FSEdit. I removed records 1534 and higher.Be advised that doing this then requires you to get the aircraft stable again through primarily 1101.Make a backup, and go have fun. :-)Milton

[Guest Milton]

John, lolI forgot to mention that as the 182 is fixed gear and the drag is part of the aircraft drag. YOu might be better off changing to a retractable gear air file. I am not sure if section 1004 is used in FS2k2 or not as much of that is covered in contact points.I have never really thought about the fixed gear side as I have only done retractable gear aircraft.I also cannot find any "switch" in the cfg or air files that say fixed_gear=1 though I thought there was such a parameter. :-)You will also want to check record 325 for gear warning.Milton

[Guest jlwoodward]

Wow, that went way over my head, so what I tried was to keep my cfg file with all its modifications, and use the RG and Mooney air files. Either way, the drag with gear extended seemed barely noticeable and would not have been worth the effort of repeating all the tuning process. Possibly the FDE editor is not the tool to use. I might look for Aired or whatever the name is.Thanks,John Woodward

[Guest jlwoodward]

Milton-Just found the old post, above, so I need to make an effort to solve this problem on my own before troubling anybody again. I will be back, I'm sure.John Woodward

[wsieffert 0]

A question about the FDEditor that comes with FSDS2. Is it the same free FDEditor from http://www.flightsimdownloads.com/ ? If so, is the editor fdectrl.txt file dated 10/21/2001? If it is then it is very dated compared to AirEd1.52 with the updated aired.ini of 11/09/02 by Ron Freimuth.http://ftp.avsim.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboa...ewmode=threaded

[Guest jlwoodward]

I went and got AirEd and opened my C182S-based air file for the Lake Amphibian. Next I deleted lines 1539-1547 like the other post said. Then I changed the drag coefficients to match the 182RG.Now the landing gear has drag. I had to go back and readjust my other drag values to bring the speed back.It seems that if you use FSedit for adjustments that it puts those lines back in, but if you just edit the cfg file with Notepad everything is ok. It is my understanding that anything you put in the cfg file will override what is in the air file. What FSedit does to it I don't understand, but you guys have been saying right along not to use it.Once again, thanks to everyone in the forum for the help.John Woodward