The A2A Simulations Community

Hi everybody,
I read on another thread here about a fellow who flew his A2A cub around the world with Heidi and a dog along for company. On some legs of the trip he had to put Heidi on a commerical flight so that he could carry fuel cans in the front seat and land along the leg to pour more fuel in the tank.
I have just started a tour of the United States that will see me landing at the closest airports to every state capitol in the lower 48. I started at KSAC in California and will end up in Augusta Maine, probably sometime next spring (yeah, I'm a little slow, but thats why I love the Cub). There will be alot of stops in between the capitol cities, for example, from Santa Fe, NM to Austin, TX is something close to 800 miles! While flying the first leg (KSAC to KWLW) I got to worrying about what is going to happen if I have to land someplace that doesn't have fuel. Then I remembered the guy on the around the world flight and his fuel cans in the front seat. That will work great.
My question is this, is there some way to simulate the weight of 2 five gallon fuel cans in the front seat without having Heidi and her humongus head showing up up there?
I was wondering if I can change the aircraft.cfg file weight and balance section to simulate just 60 pounds in the front seat. I know the minimum weight for Heidi is 100 pounds, is that something that is coded in the aircraft model or when I put Heidi up there does it change the cfg file?
Thanks
Mark

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Yea don't thikn you can do it without adding heidi to the front seat, however, you can just add the extra 10 lbs to your own pilot profile...but it won't really simulate the CG shift.

Very surprised someone like Scott, or Rob, hasn't chipped in here. After all, the developers are the ones to know what can be edited to get the results you want. I don't think editing a config file will give you what you want though. What is really needed here, is something that will change "dynamically" as you use it. If Heidi wasn't a problem for you, I'd simply say, make her a bit over weight at the start of the flight, and when you use the extra fuel bring her weight down accordingly. eg. if you're carrying an extra 20lbs of fuel in the front, make Heidi say 120lbs. Then when you use say 10lbs of fuel to top up the tank, make her weight 110lbs, and then 100lbs respectively. That way you get the dynamic changes that would keep it more real.

As she is a problem for you (not liking her head in the way), what you need is for the "graphics" not to be displayed, but the dynamics to remain as earlier stated. I doubt if it's as simple as removing the texture file, but maybe Scott or Rob can say if that can be done?

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Tony

Intel core i7-2600 3.40GHz, 16GB DDR3-1600 Ram, GT430 1GB Graphics, Windows 7 Premium 64bit, FSX Gold Acceleration. REX 2.0 overdrive, TrackIR 5, Saitek X52Pro, CH Rudder Pedals, Saitek Cyborg X.

Hi.

You can edit the aircraft.cfg file to add another fuel tank. In the example below, I have added fuel tank Center2. 0.6, 0.0, -0.42 is its location, which matches where the front seat passenger position is (Heidi's seat). 12.000, 0.000 is 12.000 gallons of fuel followed by the unusable fuel which in this case is 0. 12 gallons of fuel equals 72 pounds, which the cub can easily fly with. If you make it 16 gallons, you will still be under the minimum 100 pounds that Heidi can weigh if you add her.

[fuel]
Center1 = 2.500, 0.000, 0.000, 12.000, 0.000
Center2 = 0.6, 0.0, -0.42, 12.000, 0.000
fuel_type =1
number_of_tank_selectors =1
electric_pump=0
engine_driven_pump=0
fuel_dump_rate=0.02000
anemometer_pump=0
manual_pump=0

If you add Heidi using the Payload & Fuel Manager (SHIFT+4), both Heidi and her weight are added to the plane. So if you add the extra fuel tank, don't include Heidi. This, I believe, is what FAC257 did in his Piper Cub - Around The World Adventure.

Mark

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Intel Core i7 3770K | 16GB DDR3 1600 | Nvidia GTX470 | 24" LCD Monitor | 2 x 1TB HDD, 1 x 500GB HDD | Windows 7 Profession 64 bit

Thanks thats what I've been looking for. I should have thought of that myself but I was thinking of adding pax weight. Adding an extra fuel tank is simple and brilliant!
Mark

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Or you could add a second tank of fuel in the left wing. I've seen a few cubs with a tank up there.

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