Sandy R

I have a Spitfire cockpit with authentic style control inputs. A real Spitfire does not have toe brakes but has a single lever on the control column for the brakes. A pneumatic valve configuration operated through the Rudder control allows this single lever to actuate the left and right wheel brakes independently/differentially. For those with a single brake lever like mine, the following LUA script simulated this facility in the MSFS spitfires by mixing the analog Rudder input with another single analog Brake input to provide standard MSFS Toe Brake outputs. I have successfully tested following LUA file originally written for me by John Dowson with the Flying Iron Mk IX and the Airplane Heaven Mk1a Spitfire models for MSFS. The file should be placed in the FSUIPC7 folder and the lines: [Auto] 1=Lua spitfireBrake added to the end of the FSUIPC7.ini file or add 1=Lua spitfireBrake in the [Auto.xxx] section (where xxx is the name of your spitfire profile). You also then need to assign both your rudder and brake lever axis in FSUIPC7 using Send to FSUIPC Offset with Offset Dword Set. The script uses offset 0xA000 for the rudder axis and 0xA004 for the brake lever axis - use these or update the script to the ones that you use. spitfireBrake.lua

Thank you so much (again). I shall test this out then post it on the Authentikit forum. I hope you get flooded with FSUIPC sales from them as a result! Reading through your script, it looks like I really over complicated things when I tried to reverse the axis! I console myself with the fact that at least it worked! Best Regards Sandy

John, I have reversed the polarity of the magnet in the hall effect sensor arrangement on which the Brake Lever relies. This 'Un-reversed' the brake control and enabled me to test your original script and prove it worked perfectly 'straight out of the box'. Also, I was able to check that I had built it as designed first time round so the likelihood is that anyone who's built the Authentikit Spitfire Control Column will have the brake control axis reversed same as I did! Nice to know that I'm not a complete idiot! I am returning the two LUA scripts here should you wish to make the axis independent script you suggested. Thank you so much for this, you wouldn't believe how much joy* this has brought me. Regards Sandy *and frustration - if you thought the Spit's ground handling was challenging, try adding differential braking to the mix spitfireBrake.lua spitfireBrakeRev.lua

Success!!! After a bit of jiggery pokery with the LUA script, I now have it working quite nicely. No fundamental changes to the values or logic, just enough to get it working with my Brake Lever 'reversed'. I am however concerned as to why my brake lever was reversed in the first place. I hadn't really questioned it before when all I had to do was tick the 'reversed' box in the dialog before binding the control. However, I now suspect that I may have reversed the polarity of one of the magnets when I was assembling the Hall Sensor units. This means that if I were to share the script on the Authentikit forum, it's only going to work for people who've made the same stupid mistake as I when building their control columns. I think I will go back and redo this fix 'mechanically'* (ie reverse the magnet), and then verify that the original script works ok. Sandy *This does of course mean I will have to track down my 'good' reading glasses, Jewlers screwdrivers and tweezers. I'm pretty sure the Elves nicked them

Great News! I have installed the latest version of FSUIPC7 as suggested and this has made all the difference. Brake and rudder inputs are mixing as they should (minor issue the brake lever is reversed but I can sort that). Let the tweeking commence!

August 2020 sounds about right for when I installed put the paid for version of FSUIPC on - getting all the bells and whistles working properly in the Spit Cockpit was my 'Lockdown Project' and FSUIPC was instrumental to that. Thank you for your perseverance - I will do all you've asked and let you know how I get on. Probably tomorrow or Monday now as I have other duties to attend.

Sorry I missed the bit about the autorun. My reading of the LUA log suggests it only ran through the process once then terminated - should there be some sort of loopback there or does putting in in the Auto section keep it running?

FSUIPC7.log spitfireBrake.log

I have manually edited the FSUIPC7.ini to put the spitfireBrake LUA into an autorun section. Still no controls working but I now have a LUA logfile

I think I am still missing a trick here. I made the change to line 8 as suggested. I have copied the LUA script into the FSUIPC7 Installation folder. I have assigned the Brake and Rudder to the xA0000 and xA0004 offsets. On running the SIM -with the external view, I can see the rudder is not moving with the pedals and the internal cockpit brake pressure gauge suggests the Brake lever is non-functional too. The logfile shows the requisite IPC OFFSET CONTROL messages when I move the rudder and brake lever, so I know at least the inputs are being processed. I ticked the appropriate LOG selection to open a separate logfile for LUA activity, but nothing seems to be logging! I notice the FSUIPC7.ini file does list spitfireBrake in the list of LUAs (as No 1) Do I need to do anything else to make the LUA script run? There doesn't seem to be any menu options in the FSUIPC dialog to do so.

So even had I been able to get to grips with the LUA scripting right away, I was probably on a hiding to nothing because my starting formula was wrong! I am about to have a go with this. It's not a trivial exercise as I have to do any editing and downloading files etc. on my laptop before installing them on the flightsim PC proper. My flightsim only has projected (BIG) screens so doesn't lend itself well to text work like this. When this is successful would you be happy if I shared the solution on the Authentikit forum? I know there would be a good few people there who will jump at it. You will of course get all the credit. I doubt if it will result in many FSUIPC sales as any serious builders there should already have your software. Regards Sandy

Thank you so much, this is fantastic. I know what I will be doing over the weekend. I had included the conditional tests in the formulae as many programming languages, (and interestingly excel), returns a '0' if such tests are false and a '1' if true - I thought that was an easy way to test for right or left rudder.

My thoughts on this was to use the two 'analog' axis inputs. Brake Lever and Rudder: Rudder Input is always passed through unchanged to Rudder Control Left Brake Control = (2*((100-Rudder)-50)*(Rudder<50)*Brake/100 Right Brake Control = (2*(Rudder-50)*(Rudder>50))*Brake/100 The above formula assumes all units are percent and in the case of the rudder 0% is full left 50% is neutral and 100% is full right. Thus: Brake lever 0% and Rudder pedal 50% (ie neutral) gives control inputs = Left brake 0%, Right Brake 0%, Rudder 50% Brake lever 100% and Rudder pedal 50% gives control input = Left Brake 100%, Right Brake 100%, Rudder 50% Brake lever 100% and Rudder pedal 0% (ie full left rudder) gives control input= Left Brake 100%, Right Brake 0%, Rudder 0% Brake lever 100% and Rudder pedal 100% (ie full right Rudder) gives control input= Left Brake 0%, Right Brake 100%, Rudder 100%

The toe brakes that are mentioned refer to Saitek or similar sim rudder pedals. Both the Airplane Heaven Mk1 spitfire implementation and the Flying Iron Mk IX spit allow the toe brakes on typical SIM rudder pedals to be used for differential braking. On a real spitfire (which my homebuilt cockpit closely resembles), what looks like a handbrake on the control column (as can be seen in the cockpit view of the sim), is in actuality the only brake control that the real spitfire had. There was a screw-in locking mechanism that locked the brake in the on position - this was the 'handbrake', a pneumatic valve configuration linked in with the rudder pedals allowed this single lever on the control column to also effectively operate as a differential brake. I have had a look at the sample scripts in the documentation folder and I am sorry to say could not make head nor tail of them - I am not a quitter - have started watching a Youtube series on LUA programing and once I have some basic understanding I will revisit. This may take me some time though! I console myself that I am not alone in my ignorance as the settled view on the Authentikit forum - a site dedicated to people like me building 'Spitfire and similar Warbird' cockpits seemed convinced this was not possible! I am fairly confident this is exactly the kind of challenge at which FSUIPC excels, and I hope to be able to present them with a solution sometime.

Thankyou so much - I shall look into the examples first and if I get stuck may have to come back to this post. I shall update if I have a successful outcome.