An odd problem with assigning park brake and engine cut off.

[Morgan]

I fly B737 and have a B737 throttle.
Lately I got problems with setting the park brake. When I move the handle, it switch off and on rapidly several times.
I have read that in B737, to set park brake, you shall hold foot brakes and then pull the handle.
I never made that work. Earlier I could assign the PB so it switched on and off, but something happen which I have not been able to solve.
The controls in FSX is completely disconnected. In FSUIPC i need to assign FSX park brake. Could that be the reason.B737 does not have Park brake as we are used to. Any suggestions?

Second problem.
I assign engine cut and engine idle to Linda
Also tried to assign it in FSUIPC.  But in both cases, the function of handle goes back to idle when I want to cut off engnines. It takes a few seconds before the handles goes back up, in the simulator. My physical handles does not move of course.
Have tried all different ways and combinations to solve it, but out of ideas now.
Any known solution?

 

Two days ago I was finish building my steering tiller. I had no clue that Pete had constructed this function the way he did. I read about it last week in an article I found on the net. Now I can taxi the plane very comfortable and like a pro.( Had a lot of complaints from the crew and passengers for my poor quality of taxi to and from the runways! ) No more over-steering to right and left. GREAT!
 

Thanks Pete for a well functioning program!

 

[Pete Dowson]

I fly B737 and have a B737 throttle.

Lately I got problems with setting the park brake. When I move the handle, it switch off and on rapidly several times.

I have read that in B737, to set park brake, you shall hold foot brakes and then pull the handle.

I never made that work. Earlier I could assign the PB so it switched on and off, but something happen which I have not been able to solve.

The controls in FSX is completely disconnected. In FSUIPC i need to assign FSX park brake. Could that be the reason.B737 does not have Park brake as we are used to. Any suggestions?

 

Sorry, I don't understand what you are doing.  Yes, in a properly programmed 737 cockpit you'd need toe brake pressure to set and release the parking brake -- it just acts like a latch to keep the pressure on. I have this programmed in my cockpit because I have written my own code to do it. You could do it yourself using a Lua plug-in program.

 

But most folks don't bother. They are just happy enough to set and release the parking brake with a lever or switch. There's nothing in FS which operates the "real" way. Why not try just assigning to the Parking brakes control?

 

BTW It isn't only 737s -- many aircraft have the sort of parking brake which is really just a latch which holds the toe brake pressure on. Even a Cessna light aircraft one works like that. The 737 is in no way unique.

 

I assign engine cut and engine idle to Linda

Also tried to assign it in FSUIPC.  But in both cases, the function of handle goes back to idle when I want to cut off engnines. It takes a few seconds before the handles goes back up, in the simulator. My physical handles does not move of course.

 

I don't know what you are doing to make that happen. The fuel lever "idle" is set by the "mixture rich" control, and the fuel cut is set by the "mixture lean" control. It sounds like something you are running is re-sending "mixture rich".

 

Sorry, but I don't know Linda at all. I think they have their own support.

 

Pete

[Morgan]

Good morning Pete.
Yes I was also happy setting the park brake by pulling the handle on the throttle, activating park brake on or off.
What gives me more grey hair, is that is seems like there is a "hidden" assignment that interfere  with this action.
But I have not been lucky to find it. So when pulling the handle, meaning activating a switch, the park brake jumps on an off rapidly several times in FSX cockpit.
Had a hope that I could get a suggestion what cause this action. :)

About cut engine and idle handle, there is assign for that, for B737 as well, idle engine 1 & 2, Cutoff engine 1&2.
So lowering the handle to cutoff, it stay there 2-3 seconds, then goes back to Idle. The engines never stop :)

 

Mixture lean and rich is more for turboprop and petrol engines i guess. I have used that one for Beechcraft and Cessna.

Ohh well, perhaps some readers have a clue, or else I just got to continue experimenting.

Lua, I thought that one was in cooperation with FSUIPC, so I was wrong here..


 

 

[Pete Dowson]

Yes I was also happy setting the park brake by pulling the handle on the throttle, activating park brake on or off.

What gives me more grey hair, is that is seems like there is a "hidden" assignment that interfere  with this action.

But I have not been lucky to find it. So when pulling the handle, meaning activating a switch, the park brake jumps on an off rapidly several times in FSX cockpit.

Had a hope that I could get a suggestion what cause this action. :)

 

Hmm. You can log events in FSUIPC to see what is happening, but whilst that shows the controls passing through which are doing it, it cannot identify the source. So you'd need to look. For instance, are you assigning in FSUIPC but still also have controllers enabled in FS? Do you have multiple assignments in FSUIPC? Maybe the lever is actually not a latch but a momentary on-off, like a button, but you have assigned the parking brake control to both "push" and "release"?

 

Or perhaps this throttle quadrant came with its own driving software which is trying to do the job and you've added unnecessary extra control assignments?

 

I can't really hazard many more guesses without knowing what you have installed or what you've done.

 

About cut engine and idle handle, there is assign for that, for B737 as well, idle engine 1 & 2, Cutoff engine 1&2.

So lowering the handle to cutoff, it stay there 2-3 seconds, then goes back to Idle. The engines never stop  :)

 

 

This sounds like the same sort of thing as above, though where or what is delaying 2-3 seconds I can't guess at all. Are you sure there's no software or driver involved other than FSUIPC or FS assignments? No normal assignments will "wait 2-3 seconds"!

 

Mixture lean and rich is more for turboprop and petrol engines i guess

 

No, FS uses precisely those controls for the fuel idle/cutoff valve controls for jets too.

 

Lua, I thought that one was in cooperation with FSUIPC, so I was wrong here..

 

 

Sorry, I don't understand this comment. What "one"?

 

Pete

[Morgan]

I asked the questions in a group on Facebook. An another guy had exact same problem as me, so I am not alone:)
If FS use same idle/cutoff as mixture lean, they have different name but same action perhaps...hmmm..got to look into that.
oki, thanks for you time. will continue looking for solving these to annoying disturbances.

 

 

Lua/Linda, and FSUIPC i was mistaken.

Not same developer, sorry.

[Pete Dowson]

I asked the questions in a group on Facebook. An another guy had exact same problem as me, so I am not alone:)

If FS use same idle/cutoff as mixture lean, they have different name but same action perhaps.

 

The internal names for the controls, and the ones used in FSUIPC (and logged if you enable event logging) are the same no matter which aircraft is used, i.e

 

For generic all-engine action:

Mixture lean

Mixture rich

These are the ones default assigned by FS to keyboard combinations.

 

For specific engines the names are

MixtureN lean

MixtureN rich

where N is the engine number, 1-4.

 

You can get the same results with Axis controls of course.

Mixture set with parameter 0 = lean, 16383 = rich

MixtureN set the same

Axis mixture set would have parameters -16384 for lean, +16383 for rich

Axis mixtureN set the same

 

Also repeated use of Mixture decrement or Mixture increment controls would eventually do the same thing, when the value reaches the extremes, as would writing the extreme values directly to the correct FSUIPC offsets, which would be the way hardware interfacing via SIOC or many other interface cards would probably work.

 

Come to think of it, if your lever is latching and programmed to repeat whilst "pressed", and assigned to an increment or decrement control, it might well take 2-3 seconds to reach the value which moved the cutoff/idle starter lever.

 

Pete