This may be sort of a bug report...

[Welsch]

I have a few remarks/questions about the C182 with the last update (11/20/2014). I did not fly a lot before the update, so I can't say if the issues below are new with the update, or if they have been there from the beginning.

First thing I noticed - I have the three-bladed prop installed, but in the load manager (Shift+4), my airplane is shown with the a two-bladed prop. I noticed there is a fitting picture of the engine section with a tree-bladed prop hiding in the installed files somewhere, so I have a feeling this is maybe not intentional.

Secondly, I fly a pretty aged specimen, and so the the elevator had shown in yellow in the maintenance hangar for some time. Last flight it gave up, I noticed some controllability issues (could pull up, but had a hard time to push the nose down) at landing and when visiting the maint hangar, the elevator was now red and said the lower elevator actuator was broken (or something to that effect). So far, so expected.

Now, before I fixed it, there were two things I found strange - I could see the elevator travel up and down when moving the yoke without any apparent restriction (from the outside view), and there was no damage visible when I checked using the walkaround feature. Even made a screenshot and compared it with the condition after fixing it - and there is no difference. There should be a screw missing in case of a broken actuator if I interpret the picture files in the installation folder correctly, but apparently there wasn't.

Third thing is a question about the baggage loading area. With the update, it got split up into three sections. Any information on loading limits or the different moment arms of the three locations?

[lonewulf47]

The load manager does not alter the picture upon configuration change. It's just a background picture. So no changes when using a different prop.
The elevator issue is however a bit strange as it should - as your correctly expected - have shown up also during walkaround. As far as the restricted travel of the elevator is concerned, I'm not sure whether we model that. I would need one of the devs stepping in here. My guess is that we don't. We just restrict the effect of the elevator in case of a damage.
For weight and balance you will check this: http://www.n53kp.com/ Here you find the answer to your loading arms Observe however that our Basic Weight is differing from the one used in this calculator. You need to replace it with the A2A figures.

[Welsch]

Thank you for this lightning-fast response
Let's see...

The load manager does not alter the picture upon configuration change. It's just a background picture. So no changes when using a different prop.

Well, ok, fair enough... I just wondered because I would have expected to see the factory standard 3-blade prop in that case. Why go with the uncertified, experimental setup as background? Plus, there is this pic lying around in the panel folder, which has the three blade and would fit nicely into the load manager screen:

The elevator issue is however a bit strange as it should - as your correctly expected - have shown up also during walkaround. As far as the restricted travel of the elevator is concerned, I'm not sure whether we model that. I would need one of the devs stepping in here. My guess is that we don't. We just restrict the effect of the elevator in case of a damage.

Now that I come to think of it - what I haven't checked was the travel of the yoke inside the VC. I seem to remember there was restricted movement when I had a binding elevator hinge in the C172 once, because I noticed I could not get the yoke forward enough to apply the control lock. So I would expect this to be modeled in the C182 as well... too late to check now, though.
Anyway, would be interesting to hear if there should be limited elevator travel visible from the outside or not, since I tried to troubleshoot the problem on approach that way. When I saw that the elevator surfaces moved, I concluded it might be a CoG/trim problem and not the elevator.

Regarding the walkaround issue - I have fixed the elevator meanwhile and I can not provoke the failure at will again, so it's hard to tell if this was some unlucky one-off glitch or a real bug. Maybe someone with debug tools could check if that is something reproducible.

For weight and balance you will check this: http://www.n53kp.com/ Here you find the answer to your loading arms Observe however that our Basic Weight is differing from the one used in this calculator. You need to replace it with the A2A figures.

Wow, great calculator, thank you... and I just figured out a had not been paying any attention to the lower max allowed landing weight. Yikes!

[lonewulf47]

First of all: Thank you for your report!
About the picture: this is something that is prepared already and it will be introduced in the next update. In the other area we will do some investigative work to find a reasonable answer for both the restricted travel of the yoke and the missing failure indication in the walkaround. You will certainly get an answer as soon as there are some findings.

[Oracle427]

Limited control travel in flight may not reflect in limited travel of the yoke. If a cable or pulley breaks free you may only be able to move the control in one direction.

Can't say how much flexibility FSX allows for changing what is shown in the external views.

[Welsch]

@lonewulf47
You are welcome. And hope I didn't sound impatient or anything... absolutely not my intention. Just my way of "brainstorming" about an issue. I love to wrap my head around such things and tend to concentrate more on fact than on tact, sometimes

Limited control travel in flight may not reflect in limited travel of the yoke. If a cable or pulley breaks free you may only be able to move the control in one direction.

Good point. And I just looked at my screenshot again and realized I had in fact engaged the control lock when parking the aircraft - without noticing any restriction in forward yoke travel at that time. So that all fits.

[lonewulf47]

@lonewulf47
You are welcome. And hope I didn't sound impatient or anything... absolutely not my intention. Just my way of "brainstorming" about an issue. I love to wrap my head around such things and tend to concentrate more on fact than on tact, sometimes

Don't worry, nor harm done...