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Skycat! You helped me out on the '47 ... now I heed a little bit of help on the '51H.

Both the "D" and "H" port over to my FSX without issues, but while I can still use the VC to drop tanks on my "D", I can't get them to drop on the "H".

I have complete VC panels (unlike the 47 port overs), but the toggles on the "H" are not active in FSX.

Any thoughts?

(PS ... my short-term work-around is to have both "combat" and "tanks" versions in the hanger and when I want to drop the tanks, I just switch it out with the tankless version. Not realistic, but ....)

I just loaded the P-51D/H pack into FS9 to take a look at it. I haven't ported it over to FSX to test yet, but after my FS9 familiarization flight in the P-51H I did notice that the drop tank switches are:

1) Not on the pop-up electrical panel, or on any other of the 2D panels; and
2) The drop tank switches are available in the P-51H VC but they are not in the same place as in the P-51D.

In the VC mode, look for the two silver switches located under the word CHEMICAL in the BOMBS area of the weapons panel. Specifically, these two switches are directly below the turn and bank indicator and directly above the landing gear position lamp. The magneto switch is immediately to the right. Try flipping these switches to cycle "arm" and "drop" for each wing tank.

I'll try copying the P-51H over to FSX later tonight to check that side of the equation myself.

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I like Thunderbolts! (Link to MySpace tribute page)


120th Fighter Wing, Montana Air National Guard

Disregard my above advice. I just tested the P-51H w/tanks in FSX and I understand now that the drop tank switches can't be engaged with the cursor.

There's probably a keyboard shortcut that covers this action. I will dig into this later.

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I like Thunderbolts! (Link to MySpace tribute page)


120th Fighter Wing, Montana Air National Guard

Thanks, Skycat! Very much appreciated!

The simplest solution is to program the FSX keyboard shortcut for "drop all tanks" yourself. It is blank in FSX by default.


Go into the settings menu in FSX, then to Controls. Scroll down to the "drop tank" options:



Double click on the drop tank item you want to assign a key combination to. I chose "drop tanks (release all)" which opened this box:



Since Shift+D is a standard shortcut for releasing droptanks, I pressed those two keys simultaneously:


Press OK to save. Once you return to the P-51H cockpit, try the shortcut. The switches should animate and cause the tanks to disappear. (It worked for me at least. )

It's not as good a solution as having the clickable hot spot in the VC, but it is far better than stopping the sim and switching to the combat model.

_________________
I like Thunderbolts! (Link to MySpace tribute page)


120th Fighter Wing, Montana Air National Guard

Thanks for the quick response, but it's still not working for me.

In FS9, I can drop tanks with the toggles or with SHIFT+D. In FSX and FSX Accel ... neither option works.

As I mentioned, I do have a work-around so I sure don't want you to stay up all night working on something like this. I don't know why it doesn't want to accept my "commands". It does show "Tanks Armed" (or whatever it says in red, upper left of the screen), but when I hit SHIFT+D again, it doesn't execute. If I re-hit SHIFT+D, it tells me that "Tanks already dropped" (but they're not).

Hey, it's a flight sim ... a neat aircraft to be sure ... but it's not a deal breaker. I LOVE A2A STUFF!

Cheers!

when I first tested in fsx after adding the command, the tanks weren't dropping for me either. Then I cycled through the views and the shift+D command suddenly worked fine, even after reloading the aircraft.

_________________
I like Thunderbolts! (Link to MySpace tribute page)


120th Fighter Wing, Montana Air National Guard

Thanks ... I'll give that routine a shot!

I can get results now ... I have to cycle through a couple or three times ... BUT I ULTIMATELY DROP TANKS!

Thanks a BIG BUNCH!