10.10b2, beware with some planes

[Keith Smith]

One of our users, Lee Williams, encountered a REALLY interesting issue with several aircraft in xp10.10b2. His BE36 from Carenado (as well as the Rollon CRJ-200, and more) were losing their comms not long into the flight when flying on PE.

I helped him debug this today and found that when the plane was opened in 10.10b2 the 28V electrical system on the BE36 was surreptitiously replaced with a 12V electrical system and a charming little 200amp draw on the battery. This was causing the voltage to drain outta there faster than a nun's first curry. PE, being a clever little bugger, was silently killing the radio once the voltage got too low.

Lee saved the airplane in PlaneMaker opened it up again and the 24v system was back, with roughly a 20amp baseline draw, well within the capabilities of the alternator to handle.

So, there you have it, watch your voltages in 10.10b2 with certain planes. I've flown a V9 BE58 Baron that I haven't touched and it's been going swimmingly, so it doesn't affect all aircraft. I don't have additional time to pursue this one but if anyone loses comms in 10.10b2 not long into their flight, this is what's going on. Check your voltmeter/ammeters during startup. If the plane doesn't have one, use the data input/output option. The settings are in the 50's section, column 4 to output to screen (battery amperage, generator amperage, battery voltage, etc). If you see the voltage dropping (quickly or slowly) when you have the engine/apu running and the generator/alternator on, then you're in trouble.

[lwilliams]

Keith;

I can't tell you how much I appreciate you going "above and beyond" to help me solve this weird issue I was having.

For clarification (in case nayone else has this plane) it was the Coronado Bonanza F33. It should also be noted that Carenado states that the planes are for XP9 only at this point, although they "should" work with XP10.

What a quirky problem though? At least I know how to fix it.

Thanks again, my friend!!

[svilenv]

Resurrecting an old, but still relevant topic:

There seems to be a similar issue with the recently released Soul Made Sim DHC2 Beaver, except it doesn't have its alternator hooked to the underlying x-plane electrical system at all, resulting in constant and unavoidable battery discharge, albeit at unrealistically slow rate of discharge. Losing of comms on PE comes 40-60 minutes into the flight depending on the electrical load. Happened to me last night near the end of the flight, not nice I posted a thorough explanation on their support forums (http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=92882), hope they'll fix it in the future.

Also I've had this issue happening twice with the latest (3.2) version of the Carenado F33 Bonanza, although it's no longer the extreme case of 12V / 200 amps that Keith described: must have fixed that along the way. Still, looking at x-plane's data output, the electrical demand imposed by some consumers seems wonky: in some cases too high, in some cases too low or nil, i.e. 30-ish amps by the prop heaters, 12-ish by the pitot heat, 6 amps by the taxi lights and 0 from the landing lights, etc. The rate of battery recharge shown on the ammeter is always low, even with plenty of current to spare so it's easy to draw a lot if using all heaters and lights for a while and then it takes a lot longer to charge back. And there's no built-in voltmeter gauge in this model to track the current state of the battery, so... Yeah, the electrical system on some sim models appears to be a pain. And definitely something to consider when we're making our addon airplane purchase choices for flying on PE. Shame reviewers typically have no clue about these subtleties so there's hardly any pre-purchase awareness of the possible issues. Let's keep each other informed if we spot any

[wmburns]

Regarding the x-plane.org post. It might help the people helping you if some additional details were added to the post. For example:

• The aircraft being used (author, version)
• the version of x-plane
• any add on's. If add on's are present is the problem repeatable with the add on removed?
• the OS

I know this may seem nit picky but the people you are asking for help shouldn't have to guess the details of your set up.

[svilenv]

Thanks, wmburns. The post is in the Soul Made Sim DHC2 Beaver dedicated subforum, so there should be no doubt about it, but I'll add the other details.

[svilenv]

Update: the DHC2 Beaver developer acknowledged his model uses custom electrical system which is not hooked to the xplane datarefs, but was interested in may be working towards resolving the issue if he is given more detailed technical information.

Hence a question to Keith or whoever else has an insight of the internals of the PE X-Plane client:

- what values/thresholds do you use to determine whether to kill the voice comms?
- do you use a hardcoded/flat voltage threshold, or some percentage of max bus voltage or may be you're using X-plane's low volt alert boolean dataref?

The questions above are just for reference, basically whatever concrete information you can provide to help x-plane developers make their electrical systems compatible would be appreciated.

Once again the link to the relevant discussion on the .org forums: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=92882 if you prefer to post directly there (otherwise I'll relay).

Thanks!