tttocs

Yes, absolutely. I'll just say this - starting at the runway will cause you to miss one of the most amazing things about this plane. The startup sounds are simply incredible. They're layered, detailed and responsive to throttle, mixture and temps. Every time I start this plane it leaves a big ol' grin on my face. As I mentioned before, I recommend either a high quality 5.1 sound system, or good quality headphones with Dolby Atmos for Headphones and the "Home Theater" setting enabled in sim. It is incredibly immersive! Scott

With respect, I think you misunderstand my friend Ryan's frustration. What threw him off-kilter (and honestly did me too) was the idea that someone would reject this entire, most excellent, aircraft package completely because of that single issue. An issue which has no real workaround other than to take the "nuclear" route that A2A does, which just isn't practical (or even necessarily desirable) for most developers, or to possibly break other things. I don't disagree with wanting that detail to be correct, and I don't think Ryan does either. Nick is obviously an extraordinarily talented individual and perhaps he can eventually come up with a workaround - and good on him if he does - but as others have noted, ultimately the ball is really in Asobo's court (or Working Title, or whoever is working on the engine model) to make improvements. The correction of the mixture issue has been a good start, but I hope the sim team continue to make what the base sim allows even better. Nuff said. Scott

Yep, this one had me confused until I played with it for a while. Kind of a bummer, as the auto-on when selecting a mode feature is pretty slick, and mildly annoying that it doesn't work with hardware activation. But not a huge deal either and easy to work around. To stay in the spirit of real-world operation, I just do that first activation with the mouse and then revert to hardware after. The auto approach feature is also pretty slick and generally does what most want it to do. Does make me feel like I'm forgetting to do something though. 😅 There is a light on the GPS Annunciator Control Unit which lights to let you know that APR has been armed, which helps to alleviate some of the anxiety. All in all, I really like this unit. In part, because of its uniqueness, but also in part because it has some very interesting features. One other note I'd add which was discussed in the initial 114 topic - if you use the "Control ALT SEL with Hardware Events" option in the tablet, the standard MSFS barometer setting applies. Since the AP's barometer setting only resolves to the tenths, and not the hundredths, this means the final digit will be truncated with this option set. This can lead to some fairly significant AP ALT discrepancies. If, for example, you have a barometer setting of 29.99, the AP will see it as 29.90 with the option enabled. This is the main reason I decided to program all of the thumb wheels using the documented lvars instead so that I can set manually and round rather than truncate. So, for example, for 29.99, I'll manually set 30.00 in the AP. Unfortunately, it's an all or nothing configuration. If you turn it on, you can't use the more accurate lvars for hardware on any of the AP thumb wheels. Hope that's not too confusing. Scott

Wish I could steer you towards something, but... nope. I'm using this one: https://flightsim.to/addon/62381/ksun-friedman-memorial-airport Listed as 2020 only but I haven't noticed anything egregious in '24. Not to complain about freeware but it's just OK. Miss the old Orbx from P3D. Scott

Which is great! I hope he can come up with a solid mechanism to do so. The guy is simply amazing in my book. And following up on something I'd written earlier - I did break down and put my TDS 750/650 pairing in the plane just to do a test. Did a fairly extended flight from 7S3 (Bill Womack's beautiful rendition of Stark's Twin Oaks) to KSUN on a GPS flight plan making extensive use of the autopilot. I did not see a single disengagement of the AP in NAV mode the entire flight. Whatever is going on is restricted to NAV mode tracking a VOR radial. And again, to be clear I know what to do (and not do) using NAV mode tracking a radial. It's not a big deal, but a curiosity and as noted earlier, this may well be something the RW unit is prone to. I also have to note that for this particular plane, I had much more fun using the vintage avionics. I love and appreciate modern avionics, but... nostalgia and all that. For multiple reasons, I think this will become my go-to plane when I want to revert to the spirit of my early flying days. Scott

I'm so old that exactly ZERO airplanes anywhere had GPS, let alone my flight school's. Scott

Different strokes I guess. Would I like this to be completely correct? Sure. Does it ruin the plane for me? Absolutely not, as there's so much here that he gets right that others get wrong, and as @JYW points out, you can follow the proper procedure - almost. You just can't wait for the engine to fire before you start to advance mixture. The engine model doesn't allow it, and Nick discusses the drawbacks of some proposed workarounds in the Just Flight forum. A2A are the only ones I know of who model this precisely - something they're able to do because they completely bypass the MSFS engine modeling, substituting their own. Scott

Looking at the 114 checklists available online, it would appear he's got this one wrong. Of course, there may be a different engine variant that behaves differently, but every 114 checklist I've found has the sequence - Prime, throttle cracked, mixture idle cutoff, crank and advance mixture when engine fires. Perhaps MSFS's piston model doesn't support this method well? Dunno. Scott

"waaaaay better"? Sorry, but we must not be flying the same planes. The turbocharger implementation is different from the Dukes in the first place as the Duke is turbocharged while the 114 is turbo normalized. So there's that. That said, they both behave pretty much as they should. The only difference that I see, other than that, is the behavior above critical altitude where the new Working Title mixture fixes that he used start to come into play. I rarely fly the Duke above its critical altitude, mostly due to the limitations in its pressurization system and diminishing returns. I image I'll NEVER fly the 114 above its CA, as the value proposition isn't good. As slowly as the 114 climbs, even today's flight at 15,000' was only due to terrain. The marginal gains in speed make going higher of questionable value. So while the changes are welcome and its nice to know the behavior is now correct - sure it's better, but it's hardly, well, waaaaay better as you're talking corner cases for both planes. Black Square's turbocharger implementation was already pretty word not allowed good. What I expect IS way better is the normally aspirated 114 where the mixture issue would be apparent under all conditions. Haven't flown the standard version yet to verify. Scott

And in a related topic, this morning I got the rotary knob on my Bravo AP section working using SPAD.neXt to properly increment and decrement those thumb wheels for altitude and vertical speed. Pleased at getting that done as the thumb wheels are a bit fiddly in the VC! Sorry default MSFS users, as there's no way around using lvars for this one. Edit: And once again, needed to read Bill's post first as there is, indeed, a workaround. Awesome! Edit #2: However - just tried the default mappings method and will stick with my custom work as it's smoother and easier to use. Also, using the workaround, the barometer settings truncates the second decimal place rather than rounding which is more accurate. FYI. Scott

Double check those bindings if using the turbo-normalized version, as the custom mixture implementation Black Square uses for proper mixture operations in TC airplanes can cause issues. From the manual: Please make sure that your hardware bindings are using the Key Events, such as “K:MIXTURE1_DECR_SMALL”, or “K:MIXTURE1_SET” to set the mixture, and NOT setting either “A:GENERAL ENG MIXTURE LEVER POSITION:1”, or “B:FUEL_Mixture_1_Set”. Alternatively, setting “L:BKSQ_MixtureLeverPosition_1” from 0-100 will also work to set the mixture axis. Just an FYI, (and for others' info as well) as the default Bravo bindings may well have this done properly. Edit: And while I was doing this post, I see Bill provided similar info. Scott

Don't know how to implement in FSUIPC as I no longer use it, but in SPAD I use the Black Square Lvar:BKSQ_MixtureLeverPosition_1 . My understanding is that normal mappings don't work due to BS's custom mixture logic. Not sure what folks using MSFS mappings do. Scott

I intentionally (no, really! 😁) did some hard braking after landing yesterday and yep - nose wheel shimmy, bigtime. There are so many little nuances to this one. Just terrific! Scott

Impressions after my first flight (KMPI - KMYF). As I had thought I would, I went ahead with the old school avionics for my first flight, though I chose not to tackle the funky (in a good way!) RNAV right out of the chute. I'll get to that in later flights. So... I'm sure some will feel otherwise, but I LOVE the very unique avionics. It's just nice not to see the same ol' stuff. The AP is, as documented, very simple but does have its quirks, in particular the altitude and vertical speed settings thumbwheels and their associated barometer setting. The barometer only goes one place past the decimal point so you need to round up or down as appropriate to keep your altitude from being too far off. The NAV mode likes to occasionally disconnect for no particular reason that I can find when tracking a radial - and yes, I do know how to properly use an AP to track a VOR radial. Did it IRL for years in the pre-GPS days. Don't think it's either user error or a system bug, but rather a characteristic of this AP. Will be interested to see what it does with a GPS - eventually when I stop having my old school fun. That RNAV still calls after all. I rather like the digital CDI, but not sure about the stand-alone ILS unit. I didn't fly an approach on this beautiful VMC day, but did enable it for my landing on 28R which does have an ILS. Maybe I'll like it better when I actually shoot an approach. Oh, and that funky analog DME is a hoot as well. And the sounds. These have to be some of the best sounds ever done for a piston single. The layered cold startup sounds in particular are simply wonderful. Do yourself a favor and fly this one with a quality pair of 5.1 headphones. It rocks! And finally - gee Scott, are you gonna get to the "how does it fly" part? Well yes, and very nicely thanks! As I was aware - it's no rocket ship. Flying out of a somewhat high-hot airport, even flying the turbo normalized variant, was as expected. I trued out at about 158 knots at 10,000' on this warm day, which is respectable. Getting out the O2 cannulas and going higher will net better speeds, of course but I wasn't in a hurry today. Landed with about 7 knots of xwind component and the landing was fine as well. Can't really comment on landings too much after a grand total of one, however. The Bonanza has come up several times here as being too similar, and let me just say that this is NOT that, and I mean that as a compliment. This is its own thing in all the best ways. Simple DG and attitude indicator, old school and very unique avionics (though you can, of course slot in your favorite magenta-line creator) all contribute to a very different feeling aircraft, as does the flight modeling. My guess is that not everyone is gonna love this, but many will, especially RW piston GA folks of a certain age. Count me among those. I like it - a lot! Scott

Used my BS Bonanza profile (SPAD.neXt) as a starting point, so config is going quickly. A few minor differences for some switches, most of which I've already sorted. Just about to start on the AP, as I agree... That might be the biggest challenge. Scott