richstam

Hi, thanks for your help. I think you are right about the encoders being the problem - I talked to PFC and thats what they thought too. Having just got it all working (after 5yrs in attic). I now have to tear it down and send the RIC back to PFC :) .They were quite nice about it (considering its 5yrs old) and agreed to replace the faulty encoders for free. Still not sure about the "verbose" DME - but if yours is doing the same thing its probably supposed to - my gues is its the equivalent of some sort of DME "ping". I am also looking at some of the GoFlight stuff too - and also considering if I could "canibalize" my old Saitek X36 USB to make use of all its knobs and buttons. Richard

Hello, I have just started using a CIRRUS II with RIC and avionics box using FSX. The PFC stuff is about 5yrs old (bought it and it sat just in the attic - never got round to setting up until now :( ). I am using (registered) versions of FSUIPC and PFC FSX(4.30). Basically it is working but I am having some problems with the controls on the RIC on the Cirrus II. The problems are related to using the HDG and CRS/DG knobs on the RIC. They are very very "twitchy" and the settings they control dart all over the place making them all but impossible to use. I noted that these knobs can generate "up fast, up slow, down slow, down fast" commands and took a look at the logs using the "Log all decoded received data" test feature in PFCFSX. This seems to be the clue because, for example, just 2 or 3 up clicks of the HDG knob generates a plethora of "Console Heading up(slow)", "...down(fast)", "...down(slow),...."up (fast) etc. etc. messages which would account for why it is twitching so badly. By contrast the ALT knob on the RIC (which has the same functionality) works fine and generates a sane set of up/down messages for the Console Baro setting. I put the serial output from the PFC thru a USB adapter to see if it would cure it but its just the same. Is there a particular technique needed to use these knobs? One other thing I noticed from the logs is that the DME is very noisy wrt to commands - it keeps cycling thru messages like "DME mode2 = RMT", "DME mode1 = R1","DME RMI = NAV2" or similar when there is no control input. Is that normal - corresponding to DME "pings" or is that another problem? I would appreciate your help/suggestions. Thanks Richard