The A2A Simulations Community

Hi all,

I have a small problem with my military P-51 + Accusim + latest core update on Windows 7 64 + FSX Acceleration.
Contrary to my other Accusim planes, I have always been flying this Mustang very carefully, so it took me a while to notice the problem: my cylinders don't take damage.
I tried pushing the engine to the max just after startup on a cold winter day, flew around a few minutes, got overheating (I shut all the coolers) then landed and checked the hangar, all the engine is green, compressions are all above 70's... I tried that a few weeks ago with the P40 and it was not nice to see. The engine was shaking badly each time I would push the thottle too far, and after landing the compressions were all in the red !

Coming back to the P-51, strange thing is that it seems all the other Accusim features work properly. The gauges react properly to the plane/engine behavior, engine starts (or not) as it should, fuel stuff seems to be handled correctly, smokes, spark plug fooling etc... all systems seem fine, excepted the engine wear. So I tried deleting the P51 log file in \my documents\A2A\P-51 but it had no effects.

My sim is set according to the recomendations in the realism settings. I don't have any authorizations issues on my Windows and the UAC is turned OFF anyway.
Anybody has any advise ? Should I delete the Accusim.dat file too ?

Personally, the only time I've ever seen a damaged cylinder on an A2A bird was after an unfortunate aircraft/ground proximity incident.

...and after an unfortunate aircraft/tree proximity incident...

...and one aircraft/building proximity incident...

...and various VERY FRUSTRATING aircraft/invisible-FTX-collision-objects-above-runways incident.

Have you tried doing the unthinkable and just lawn-darting the 'stang into the dirt somewhere, just to be sure they aren't taking any damage at all from any source?

-Ian

No I haven't done that yet.

In the meanwhile, I have re-checked the other core Accusim planes. It seems that the Spitfire also suffers from the same problem.
The P-40 however, is fine. I pushed the engine at max, got misfires, then blue smoke, then dying engine during emergency approach and landing, and finally all cylinders red or yellow in the hangar inspection...
I don't understand what's going on. All test flights were done in the same conditions, over the same airfield.

I have noticed my cylinders slowly wearing after time.
How many hours on your engine?

I have worn and replaced the occasional cylinder on my P-51.

Joe

I know the cylinders are supposed to get some wear. This is not my first Accusim aircraft, it's the latest one.
Once again, everything works correctly with the P-40. The Spitfire and the P-51 however, have the engine not-wearing problem. And I don't know where this problem comes from.

I see compression loss and sure have seen main bearing damage along with starter, generator and hyd pump damage.

Check the Mustang's manual on page 27 for realism settings..

Happy SKIES to ALL

Guys, once again the Mustang is not my first Acusim plane.
Only the Mustang and the Spit are suffering from the problem. The P40, which is also one of the core-accusim aircrafts, doesn't have any issues.
Supposing that all the three (well, four with the civil Mustang) core-accusim aircrafts work in the same way, they would all be sensible to the same settings. Since the P-40 works well, I suppose there's a problem with the two others, and that this problem is not related to my realism settings which are anyway set to the max, excepted for the crash detection which is disabled.

If you don't mind losing all your hours to try and solve the problem, I'd delete your p51log.dat file, and then fly again. This has solved problems I had with not accumulating hours, which sounds similar to you not accumulating damage.

But before that I'd recommend what someone else said: Take your Mustang and deliberately do a dramatic crash. See if you suffer damage to your cylinders... Or go into the hangar and replace the cylinders as they are now and see if that allows them to wear.

Just some thoughts to try and help you out- good luck!

Joe

Thanks Joe.
I did delete the log file already, as stated in my first post.
I also followed the recommendations to crash, so I deliberately crush my prop on the runway by hitting the brakes and pushing the stick forward. The prop broke, and I could repair it. The rest of the engine was fine.
If I try to crash, TacPack will transport my plane for 15 seconds out of the zone, then when I come back to normal flight, the battery will not respond anymore and I have to reset the flight to get my systems back.

Daube wrote:Guys, once again the Mustang is not my first Acusim plane.
Only the Mustang and the Spit are suffering from the problem. The P40, which is also one of the core-accusim aircrafts, doesn't have any issues.
Supposing that all the three (well, four with the civil Mustang) core-accusim aircrafts work in the same way, they would all be sensible to the same settings. Since the P-40 works well, I suppose there's a problem with the two others, and that this problem is not related to my realism settings which are anyway set to the max, excepted for the crash detection which is disabled.

Understood. The communities noble attempts to help should not be misconstrued as attacks on your level of Accu-Sim adroitness.
It seems perverse to post for some support then respond with apparent indignation.
I encourage everyone to read the flying manual regardless of thier self-perceived level of familiarity with A2A products.

We all fly higher with unruffled feathers.

Happy SKIES to ALL

Something must be wrong with your settings. Is accu-sim on? There's a setting in shift + 3 panel.

Prop ground strike should look like this. I had a collapsing gear strut, and the whole plane was badly damaged afterwards, including some cylinders:


Cylinder wear is slow, as you can see in this two pictures below.
I repaired the damage I suffered from the prop strike at around 100 engine hours.


Flying without overheating the engine lets the cylinders wear slowly.


Cylinder wear should be high with detonation of the engine. At high ambient temperatures (35°C) you could try low octane fuel, fly low, switch manually to high blower, set rpm at around 2000 and MP as high as possible. Carb air temp far above the green arc and you should hear that rumble sound, badly damaging the engine within minutes.

There's also the FSXAccusim.dat file. I remember that this caused some trouble too in the past. I think before patch 1.51.

Hope you can solve the problem.

I suspect the coolent pump is saving you. If you run the plane without coolent then do the cylinders die.

Thanks for the screenshots. This is typically the kind of damages that I get with the P-40 when I push the engine over the limits.

However, in the Mustang this doesn't happen.

Concerning the cooling pump, I don't know if it's enough to prevent the engine from wearing off when the throttle is pushed to the maximum power. I really pushed it to the max, and flew like that for several minutes. I even closed the cooling cowls, and got overheating engine soon after, with white steam smoke coming out of my plane nose. I continued flying like that for 5 minutes, then landed and took a look to the engine in the hangar, and everything was green. And the compressions were still around the 70's. Of course the damage is set to ON in the 3rd popup.

I've been wondering about the Accusim.dat file. Should I delete it as well ? So far, I only tried deleting the P-51.log file, with no effects. Should I try to delete the other file as well ?

You could backup this file, just to be sure to get it back, if something else won't work after deleting it.
Let's give it a try. Delete or move that file and the P-51 dat-File as well and see what happens.

Regards
Jens