Loosing Pilotedge Coms - Solved!
Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2017 7:55 pm
For weeks now I have been troubleshooting an issue where I had pilotedge coms but they would stop working after approximately 2 mins, audio would just die, but the radios were still on. I could no longer hear frequency, and they couldn't hear me. I verified on the live map that i was tuning the proper frequency. I briefly tried the Baron, as my main aircraft was the Carenado Commander 500. I tried changing audio devices for Pilotedge, no luck. I started to suspect one of my plugins was causing it, I removed all those and added them back one by one, no luck. Then i wondered if my copy of Xplane was somehow hosed up, so I deleted and reinstalled that from scratch, and reconfigured that. Then I added just the pilotedge plugin back, worked fine, then slowly added the rest of my plugins back one by one. I though I had fixed the issue, and bam, it started again. During one of my radio checks the controller mentioned sometimes people have issues because their alternator is not online. I cycled mine, they were already on. Then a little later after removing my ortho scenery and still continuing down the "my pc has an issue" troubleshooting path, I decided to look at the alternator amp gauges in the overhead panel. Low and behold my battery voltage was at 18 (28v aircraft) and no amperage after idling for about 2 minutes. I increased the rpm slightly, the alternator output popped on, and my pilot edge radio chatter reappeared!
To me it seems this issue is being caused by the poor electrical system simulation in Xplane 11.05 and below, and the fact the Commander 500 that I am using doesn't have any sort of voltage light. I highly doubt the real aircraft has such a quick voltage drop as this, I know my 182 does not.
Anyway I hope this post saves someone else the same heartburn, I spent at least 15 hours troubleshooting this. I am also hoping Xplane 11.10 resolves the issue, I saw where they are advertising one of its new features as better electrical system simulation.
To me it seems this issue is being caused by the poor electrical system simulation in Xplane 11.05 and below, and the fact the Commander 500 that I am using doesn't have any sort of voltage light. I highly doubt the real aircraft has such a quick voltage drop as this, I know my 182 does not.
Anyway I hope this post saves someone else the same heartburn, I spent at least 15 hours troubleshooting this. I am also hoping Xplane 11.10 resolves the issue, I saw where they are advertising one of its new features as better electrical system simulation.