Radio panel dead

[Marvin]

What gives? The radio panel is dead thus autopilot and nav radios don't work.
How do I fix this?

[elparker]

I noticed today the radios went dead as I taxied to the runway. I had done a manual engine start and had failed to turn the generator on, therefore the battery went dead. I haven't seen that happen with an autostart.

[mountainhighair]

There is a toggle in the aircraft.cfg file for electrical always on, or something like that. It's a matter of how realistic you want your experience to be. Can't remember the exact line in the CFG. Details are in the SDKs.

[mountainhighair]

I just installed the FSX SDKs (separate install) where MS gives away many trade secrets to FSX. Look on Disk 1 for that.
Anyway, the line the "aircraft.cfg" file as explained in the SDK is:

electric_always_available Set to 1 if electric power is available regardless of the state of the battery or circuit.

So look for

[electrical]
electric_always_available = 0

Change the 0 to 1 and you will always have battery power no matter how long your generator is not pumping out juice. Again, this is a matter of personal preference concerning realism but, for me, when the battery is dead it's dead, and it's a pain in the derrière even if I respect my absent-minded behavior being checked by realism.

John

[elparker]

I think this is very fascinating since "electric_always_available" doesn't appear in any of the aircraft.cfg files on my computer.

[mountainhighair]

Oh? Every aircraft model should have this setting in it's own "aircraft.cfg" file. Sometimes the settings are buried if there are not spaces in between each setting heading in brackets. This gives me headaches when I search for certain items and sends my dog out of the room when I cuss at the screen.
The setting for [electrical] will likely have no line spaces above or below it, and everything is just run together. Let me know which specific plane you are dealing with and I will help.

It is also possible that A2A chooses not to include this line? Eww that would just be brutal, but would also be very realistic! Scott or Lewis chime in here if that is the case, if you are not already laughing so hard you're falling off your chair.

John

[elparker]

Dunno! I did a search in all the SimObjects folder for any text file than contained that string and the results were negative. Can't imagine where else they would be hiding. I guess I could add it in but I have gotten used to the fact that if I let the airplane sit with the battery only for more than about 5 minutes, it will die.

So I don't. The pause button and I are very on very good speaking terms.

[mountainhighair]

In every individual aircraft folder resides that plane's aircraft.cfg file. In that file should be the electrical settings. Accu-sim might be set up totally different and I don't recommend touching accu-sim settings.
All the stock MS aircraft have it. They're messed up to begin with so why not tinker with em.

[elparker]

I can find the aircraft.cfg files for all of the airplanes and they all have the [electrical] entry. But none of them have the "electric_always_available" entry. Like I said, I am not worried it isn't there, it just isn't.

[mountainhighair]

My appologies. You are correct. It's hit-and-miss whether a plane's cfg file has that line in there. The good news is that you can add that line even if it isn't already there. Just add the line:

electric_always_available = 1

...and you will have juice 24/7. Put it under the [electrical] heading. It does no harm to add it, whether it's set to 0 or 1.

[elparker]

Thanks, I will try it. Most of the airplanes I fly these days have functional APU's but I also like the KingAir and Baron.