Simviation Forums

Hi Guys
      Top of the day to all. How do you determine the weight of your craft before take off and expecially after a long flight, I see its mentioned a lot in the forum but i never know what is my plane's weight. Any help please?.

Atkins.

Weigh all of your passengers and both their checked baggage and their carry ons.

thanks for the info i appreciate it. I will give it a try

Hi Bruce,

An excellent question that more simmers should be asking.  I'll tell you how I figure the weight.  If there's an easier way, I hope someone will let us know.

Look in the aircraft.cfg file and find the section for Weight_and_Balance.  Out of all those numbers, get the empty_weight value and all of the station_load values.  Sometimes there will be only one station_load.

** The weight of the unfueled aircraft is the sum of the empty_weight plus all station_loads.

(If the station_load is zero, that means all crew, PAX, luggage, etc. is lumped into the empty weight.)

Next, find the Fuel section.  The fourth value listed for each tank is the fuel quantity in gallons.  Convert jet fuel to pounds by multiplying gallons by 6.70.  AvGas for the prop planes is usually 6.00 pounds per gallon.  You can verify the fuel values by opening FS, selecting the specific aircraft and clicking on the Fuel tab.

** The total weight of the aircraft when you start the engines is the unfueled weight plus the total fuel.  

If the panel doesn't have a decent fuel gauge, you can determine the fuel remaining at any point in the flight by selecting the aircraft menu and clicking on "fuel".

Hope this helped.

Regards,
JerryH

Well...
You should know how much fuel you have on board the aircraft at the start of your flight.
You should also know what your payload onboard is.
Avgas (100LL) weighs 6 lbs per gallon
Jet 'A' weighs 6.84 lbs per gallon
During flight, you shold have a guage that indicates gallons/pounds of fuel used per hour (GPH or LB's per hour)
Now you know how much your aircraft weighs.
After a flight of X amount of hours, you can calculate how much fuel you have used, and can calculate your landing wieght.