My thoughts on fsx + questions on the Caravan

[asnamara]

hi there everyone,
i haven't been a regular on this forum for ages now, must be 2-3 years. been busy :-/

well i got my hands on FSX, and, i know this will sound crazy, i'm running it on my laptop. I ran the demo on my laptop to see if it would work. And to my complete surprise, it worked pretty decently. It probably helps that my expectations were low to start with, as my laptop (compaq v3000) just has an onboard intel graphics (no ati or nvidia in this laptop). Of course I cant put high settings on autogen and things like that. But scenery+texture and aircraft wise, the settings are quite high. Water is on high 1x though; in 2x i start feeling a big hit on frame rates. over cities fps will go down to 14-15fps and in cruise i get anywhere between 25-40fps (i'm talking vfr-single engine cruise; so around 4000'). I'm supposed to get a desktop computer in a few month, so i'll be able to max out the settings then. but in the mean time its working great.

Now i have a few questions concerning the caravan in fsx. Having flown the real thing, i can say the caravan is excellent, the VC is incredible. Huge step forward compared to the FS9 caravan (i didnt get a chance to try that payware caravan from feelreal though). The feel of flying is just great, and it tends to act just like the real thing, except at extremes and low speed (I wasnt expecting FSX to improve the flight dynamics compared to FS9, but they seem to have done something). Its got a tendency to float over the runway as well, while the real deal tends to sink more (actually the real thing is perfect when it comes to flaring). in fsx if i come in at 80kts over the fence, its going to float half way down the runway. So i'm a bit forced to decrease my approach speed.
Here are my questions:
-Anybody managed to feather the caravan? I keep trying but it doesnt seem to feather, RPM is quite high when i try to bring the prop lever down to feather. same thing in flight.
-And when i set the inertial separator to bypass on my final checks, i tend to lose a lot of torque, even when power is set for approach. anybody experienced that?

Overall, i think FSX is great. and i cant wait to enjoy all the new eyecandy on my future desktop.
cheers,
asnamara

[Brett_Henderson]

I've never flown a real Caravan, but I do have almost 900 hours in many different aircraft. The FSX flight dymanics are a HUGE step up in realism. They seem to have focused a lot on ground-effect. All the planes "float" more now then they did in FS9, and I have to admit, they float a little too well. But it's still WAY more realistic than FS9.

I've found the Caravan sits down rather nicely at 80kias over the fence (closer to 70 at the numbers). Those might be a little slower than real, but with full flaps it works out well.

If you're up to experimenting... try messing with the aircraft.cfg file (make a backup first). There are MANY parameters to play with. Not wanting to mess up in-flight dynamics, try adjusting the flap lift and/or the flap drag scalars. Do it in small increments and then test fly it.

The Caravan doesn't have the proper lines in the aircraft.cfg file.. so you'll have to add them.

Look for this paragraph:


[Flaps.0]
type=1
span-outboard=0.5

[asnamara]

Thanks a lot Brett,
I will check that out right now.
And you're right, the more i spend time on FSX the more i realize the improvements of flight dynamics.

Another comment, its a pity theirs no caravan model without the cargo pod. I thing it looks nicer without, but it doesnt really matter haha

cheers,
asnamara