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Help!

I have a very strange problem with my B-17 and B-377 installs: On both aiarcraft I have a hard time controlling cowl flaps on engine 1 only.

In the case of the B-17, the cowl flap will open from 0 to 50% and then continue to close back to 0%.

On the B-377, the cowl flap is stuck at 3", and whenever I try and open or close cowl flap 1, all four cowl flaps instantly snap to 3".

The other weird thing I'm experiencing on the B-377 is a very strong pull to the righ tonce in ground effect prior to landing.

I tried uninstalling both aircraft, running a registry cleaner and then reinstalling, but I could not cure these problems.

I had a bad PC crash, and that's when these strange behaviours seem to have started. All was well before.

Any guidance will be most appreciated!

Cheers,

- jahman.

Have you double-checked the FSX Control assignments?

Are you using FSUIPC for any assignments?

It sounds like some sort of conflict or calibration/scaling issue.

Paul

Good call, but...

While I do use FSUIPC (and GFDevFSX for Go-Flight Modules), I have not made any assignments for operating the cowl flaps (I will be using LINDA at some point). And in the A2A Input Configurator, the Cowl Flaps Open and Close commands remain unassigned. Also there's this strong right pull on landing...

I'm mystified.

Cheers,

- jahman.

There is a conflict somewhere. Bets way to trouble shoot is to disconnect the hardware itself from the PC and add one at the time whilst testing so you know which bit of kit is having issues.

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Paul and Lewis,

Many thanks for your replies!

I'm not using FSUIPC's Mouse Macros or LINDA, so there's no possibility at all the cowl flaps were assigned to any hardware by me (unless there's a bug lurking somewhere on my system), thus even less of a chance of a double assignment.

Lewis: I've had losts of trouble with Vista-64 (mis)handling of USB connections in the past (they have been stable now for months!), so while your suggestion is a logical one, it could become a "path of most effort" for me. Is there anything else I can try? Any diagnostic software? recall I don't use any Mouse macros at all, or even LINDA, so no hardware at all should be assigned to either the B-17 or the B-377 (and they both used to work flawlessley at some point). What config element could go wrong for both of these aircraft to be affected (almost) equally in Engine 1 cowl flap only?

I still think a scrubbed de-install and re-install for both aircraft might be my best option at least as a frst try. What steps do I need to take?

Kind regards,

- jahman.

Yes give a reinstall a go. However if it worked fine and then all of a sudden it didnt, then that is your starting point. Tracking down what you changed on your system software and or hardware is best bet.

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Hi, Lewis,

I already did de reinstall, unfortunatelly the problem continued.

I did notice that my previous settings persisted through the uninstall/reinstall (and I suspect one of those files/registry settings might be causing the problem) so I need to know how to scrub my PC after the uninstall so I can do the reinstall on a clean PC (B-17 and B-377-wise).

Many thanks gain,

Cheers,

- jahman.

Hello,

the only files that might be left to keep the state are the accu-sim dat files. You can find them in your my docs folder.

thanks,
Lewis

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First message in this thread applies.

After installing COTS 1.1, my cowl flaps problem on the 377 has worsened: While previously the #2 Engine cowl flaps was stuck at 3" and I could still fly her accross the ocean, now all four engine cowl flaps are stuck at 4.2" !!!

Trying to open or close the cowl flaps will move them slightly but then they will "snap" back to exactly 4.2".

Unfortunately this means I can only fly patterns around the airport at low speed.

I'm using the latest FSUIPC v. 4.88, but have no controls assigned to the cowl flaps, nor am I using LINDA (yet).

Any help with this continued and very annoying problem will be much appreciated!

Many thanks!

Cheers,

- jahman.

Jahman,

So, I had some very strange behaviors manifest themselves in all of my p-47 variants last week. The only thing that straightened them out was deleting the .dat files for all three and letting them be built again. I noticed you didn't mention you had done that when Lewis asked. So, did you delete the .dat files? From what I've read in the forums, when things go wrong with an accu-simmed aircraft, that seems to be the first step to take.
JP

Many thanks, Jacques, for your suggestion. I again deleted the .dat file and had the 377 re-create it.

I seem to have narrowed down the problem to interference with FSUIPC4, meaning when FSUIPC4 is disabled the cowl flaps work fine (alas nothing else works as I assign all FSX controls via FSUIPC4.)

Specifically, what happens is cowl flaps #2, 3 and 4 work fine, until I activate cowl flaps for the #1 engine (either try to open or close.) Then quickly all cowl flaps set themselves to (now) 3" open (yesterday it was 4.2" (go figure).

So for starters what I would need to know is what offsets within FSX are being used by the A2A B-377 cowl flaps #1, 2 3 and 4 so I can take this over to the FSUIPC4 support forum.

Please also provide me with the cowl flap offsets for the B-17, as well as for the primer selector (same FSUIPC4 interference problem).

I look forward to getting this problem solved and sharing the results with any other users similarly affected.

Many thanks!

Cheers,

- jahman.

OK, I've checked the FSUIPC4 v. 4.80 SDK, Document "FSUIPC Offset Status.pdf" p. 54 and the Engine 1 Cowl Flaps offset appears to be 37F0h, 8 by double float.

Alternatively, another document titled "Revised List of FSX Controls in Numeric Order" lists the offset for "COWLFLAP1 SET" 66162.

Can A2A confirm what the proper numbers are? Sort of lost here, and I'd like to engage Pete Dowson's help.

Many thanks for your reply.

Cheers,

- jahman.

It turns out I had inadvertently mapped the cowl flaps after all! Sorry for the BW.

Cheers,

- jahman.

Apparently there is a recent "problem" with FSUIPC. The author has a free update.
This may be the source of your problem.