Gear Pump - Toggle?

[shortspecialbus]

Hi,

I'm mucking about with getting an axis working for the gear pump (an unused axis on my Saitek TPM) and one thing I'm noticing is that even with merely the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl-G or whatever I bind in the Spitfire Keybinder program) it's using the gear pump as a toggle. For example, I press Ctrl-G and the gear pump lever goes nuts until I press it again. I have the same issue with an axis (using directions from here: http://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtop ... 57#p184687 ) and while it makes it quite easy to pump the gear (slide the axis out and wait, or press ctrl-G and wait) it's not really what I'm looking for. This is with Accusim 1.6 update. This happens in both FSX and P3D v2.1 (I'm testing there.)

Any thoughts? A forum search doesn't turn up this specific issue.

Thanks,

-stefan

quick edit to state what I ultimately want - I'd like one full pump of my axis to equal one full pump of the gear lever.

[Gypsy Baron]

The gear pump lever is animated in the model so all you are able to do is activate it and deactivate it...a toggle function.

As I recall, this was changed from requiring mouse clicks or axis lever strokes to the current on/off automatic pump
handle way back in beta testing when it was determined that to raise the gear took something like 16 or 20 strokes
and to lower the gear took somewhere around 30 strokes,

That is a lot of activity, particularly after takeoff, when you really need to concentrate on flying the plane.

I can see in my FSUIPC.ini file where I commented out the entries I used before it was changed to the current arrangement.

Paul

[Killratio]

Stefan,

You can do what I did..have two switch "events" per cycle of the control. One will turn the toggle "on" and you will get around one cycle. The second will turn it off, requiring you to keep pumping to activate it again.

The change to "toggle" certainly took away some of the point in having the pump in the first place IMHO but one must apparently bow to pragmatism in these things.
regards

Darryl
(Paul, can you PM me, I've lost your email address, cheers
.)

[shortspecialbus]

Thanks guys. Glad to know that it is indeed working as intended, even if the manual makes it sound otherwise. Probably a misreading on my part. I'm trying to make things as authentic as I can, considering what I have to work with, so I'm futzing around with various things. I'll try a few things - if I come up with a "solution" that's significantly different than the last suggestion I'll post it. Thanks much!

-stefan

[Gypsy Baron]

Just to add to Darryl's solution there, if you have a registered version
of FSUIPC4 you can program an axis to have zones so that moving the
lever up will cross a zone that sends the "on then off" conditions to
achieve a single stroke.

Then nothing when you pull the lever back. That way you should get 'close'
to the actual number of strokes needed IRL. A refinement might be to use
a simple Lua script to do the actual on/off control with a short delay between the
two that can be set in the script. Again, the function can be triggered by an
axis programmed with zones.

I use this axis zone approach for a rotary on my throttle to send the incremental
elevator trim up/dwn functions as I find that mapping that trim function direct
to the axis results in too coarse of a setting for my liking. I set those zones
to 'repeat' so the trim continues to move up or down as long as I leave the
rotary in a zone. Moving the rotaray back to center stops the trim input.

Also, at the very limits of the rotary I assign a zone to send the "TRIM SET"
command with a parameter of "0". That way I can instantly set the trim
back to zero in an emergency, such as the aircraft entering a stall whilst
on autopilot and the AP running the trim to max nose up!

Paul

[shortspecialbus]

Just to add to Darryl's solution there, if you have a registered version
of FSUIPC4 you can program an axis to have zones so that moving the
lever up will cross a zone that sends the "on then off" conditions to
achieve a single stroke.

Then nothing when you pull the lever back. That way you should get 'close'
to the actual number of strokes needed IRL. A refinement might be to use
a simple Lua script to do the actual on/off control with a short delay between the
two that can be set in the script. Again, the function can be triggered by an
axis programmed with zones.

I use this axis zone approach for a rotary on my throttle to send the incremental
elevator trim up/dwn functions as I find that mapping that trim function direct
to the axis results in too coarse of a setting for my liking. I set those zones
to 'repeat' so the trim continues to move up or down as long as I leave the
rotary in a zone. Moving the rotaray back to center stops the trim input.

Also, at the very limits of the rotary I assign a zone to send the "TRIM SET"
command with a parameter of "0". That way I can instantly set the trim
back to zero in an emergency, such as the aircraft entering a stall whilst
on autopilot and the AP running the trim to max nose up!

Paul

I'm actually following (I believe to be) your directions from the thread I linked above to do exactly that. The thing seems to be that at some point, the "L:LandingGearPumpLever=TOGGLE" or "SET" switched from doing one pump to doing eternal pumps - you can test it with Ctrl-G, instead of doing a single pump, it'll just keep pumping until you stop, as outlined by yourself and Darryl above. The axis trick more or less works, but I must say that I have trouble resisting the urge to cheat and pull the axis out and just wait while it keeps pumping I was hoping for a method that would more or less tie it directly to the lever - this might be done via a LUA script, I'm thinking, but perhaps not. If I can be bothered to mess with it more I might try to write one. As it is now, there's nothing really wrong with the current implementation and if I wasn't inherently lazy, I'd just force myself to pump the axis even though I don't actually need to

-stefan

Edit: I have the saitek pro flight trim wheel that I use for trim on most aircraft that don't have a (documented) autopilot. While I can't zero it out immediately, I generally have a pretty good idea where it is and I can spin it rather quickly if need be. My control setup is a bit wonky, so I'll outline it here for fun:

PFC Yoke:
Yoke - yoke stuff
Throttle axis - tied to parking brake via fsuipc offset. In = off, out = on.

Saitek Throttle/Prop/Mixture:
Throttle - nothing
Prop - Prop plunger in Mk.1a which is 90% of what I fly
Mixture - Gear pump
Switches - nothing at the moment, although I'm pondering mapping some of them to things like generator, oxygen, etc

Saitek Trim Wheel:
Wheel - trim, obviously

GoFlight TQ6-ADV:
Spoiler lever - spitfire automixture control, matches the lever in the plane
Left throttle - Main Spitfire throttle. I don't use the reverser or any of the buttons on it.
Right throttle - nothing, I shove it forward and out of the way
Flap lever - syncs up perfectly when set via lua script to be the radiator lever. Each flap indent (by sheer luck) seems to be exactly a radiator shutter detent. I only got this working yesterday and I'm pretty pleased with it.

CH Rudder pedals:
Rudder - rudder, duh
Toe brakes - in the spit, they're still set to left/right brake axis, but they work as they should where they both basically just work as the lever would and I use rudder to get differential braking. It seems to work fine and as I don't have a convenient lever for brakes (although I've pondered one of the extra throttles) I'll probably just stick with it.

GoFlight GF-LGTII:
Elevator Trim on this device is not used on the spit as I use the saitek wheel
Rudder Trim - rudder trim, obviously
Aileron trim - not used int he spit
Gear and Flaps - gear and flap levers
Three-Way switch - haven't found a good use for this yet. Any ideas?

Saitek Switch Panel:
not used in spitfire, disabled via SPAD

GoFlight EFIS:
not used in spitfire

GoFlight 737 MCP Pro:
not used in spitfire

Saitek Radio:
not used in spitfire, I don't bother with ATC in this thing, especially since I have AI traffic turned off anyways for performance. Maybe if I could shoot them down...

[shortspecialbus]

Oh hey, I should have searched further in the forum. This explains what changed:

http://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtop ... 77&t=31360

-stefan