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Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX - RealAir Simulations Flipbook PDF
Welcome to the RealAir Simulations Citabria, Decathlon and Scout Flying Guide. This guide is essential reading, even if
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Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX
Flying Guide Introduction
Welcome to the RealAir Simulations Citabria, Decathlon and Scout Flying Guide. This guide is essential reading, even if you are an experienced pilot and FSX user, since it contains important tips for setting up these unique aircraft to fly properly within the simulator. If not set up properly, advertised features such as spinning and side-slipping may not work! This latest version for FSX is the most significant upgrade in the RealAir Scout’s history. Many major changes have been necessary to simply allow these aircraft to perform as well as they did in FS2004, but the most exciting news is that we have also taken full advantage of the new FSX architecture, adding many new features and improvements that weren’t possible in FS2004. The following pages give useful information about all aspects of operating these aircraft in FSX, written in plain language. For more detailed, technical operating procedures please refer to the separate Operating Handbooks included with this package.
Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX
New Features This new version of the RealAir Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX is brimming with innovative new features, these features include: • A completely new VC, designed from the ground up for FSX with new features including specular mapping. See the Virtual Cockpit section for a more detailed description of the new VC features. • New truly 3D gauges that improve on our highly acclaimed ‘Smooth Gauges’. • Improved gauge back-lighting that is visible in the day time as well as the night time (requires FSX SP1 to be installed). • New camera views in the VC. • Reworked exterior models compiled specifically for FSX, with improved textures. • Improved sounds that utilise the new FSX sound features. • Spinning capability with greater authenticity. • New liveries. • A new Config Panel. • A new FSX version of the Bear Gulch scenery. • Three VC colour schemes — tan/brown, tan/red and black/grey. We also needed to significantly alter other areas of these aircraft to overcome the changes between the FS2004 and FSX architectures including the need to make five new flight models from scratch, and the need to devise a new gauge back-lighting technique.
3D gauges in the new tan/red VC cockpit.
Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX
Aircraft Included In This Package This package includes a comprehensive collection of aircraft representing every main variation in the American Champion catalogue. Like the 2006 Scout package for FS2004, this package includes five aircraft: Citabria trainer: Partially aerobatic, with flaps, fixed pitch prop and two tandem seats. Decathlon: Flapless aerobatic trainer and sport aircraft with full inverted fuel system. Scout standard tyres: Touring aircraft with higher payload, flaps and full IFR capability. Scout amphibian: for water or ground take off and landing. Scout tundra tyres: Same as the aircraft above but with massive 31” tundra tyres for rugged go-anywhere bush flying. Below is a table of some differences between each variant in this package: Aircraft
Type
Flaps? Climb rate (approx) Cruise speed
Citabria
Sport/trainer
Yes
1100 ft/min
128 mph
Scout
Tourer/trainer
Yes
1075 ft/min
140 mph
Scout amphibian
Bush/lakes/sea
Yes
900 ft/min
125 mph
Scout tundra
Bush/farm
Yes
900 ft/min
125 mph
Decathlon
Aerobatics/trainer
No
1280 ft/min
145 mph
All these aircraft are derivatives of the original Bellanca Citabria (which is itself a derivative of the Aeronca Champ), and are now manufactured by American Champion Aircraft.
Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX
History and Development Citabria The American Champion Citabria 7GCBC is the baby in this group of aircraft. The Citabria is based largely on the Aeronca 7 Champ, of which over 10,000 were built between 19461951. Champion Aircraft Corporation purchased the rights to the Aeronca 7 in 1951, from which it developed the 7EC Traveller and 7GCB Challenger, followed in 1964 by the Citabria. Bellanca took over production of the Citabria in 1970, building the Citabria from then until 1982. Finally, in 1990 American Champion Aircraft started building the Citabria and its sister aircraft, and they’re producing these aircraft in small quantities to this day. Like all the aircraft in this package, the Citabria has an airframe constructed from steel-tube and covered in fabric. It’s powered by a 160hp IO-320 Lycoming attached to a fixed pitch propeller. Its high lift wings are fitted with flaps, giving it good short-field capabilities. The Citabria airframe is stressed for basic aerobatics (+5g,-2g), but in reality its aerobatic ability is quite limited due to high stick forces, a highly cambered aerofoil section and no inverted fuel delivery system. The Citabria is most at home as a rugged, basic, back-country aircraft. It’s also commonly used as a training aircraft, being used for such duties as ab-initio, tail-wheel endorsements and basic aerobatic training. Unless you want to carry more than one passenger, the Citabria very closely matches the Cessna 172 as a tourer, plus it can do a few loops and rolls on the way and get you into and out of tighter back-country airstrips. One interesting piece of trivia: the name ‘Citabria’ is in fact ‘airbatic’ spelt backwards.
Decathlon The American Champion Decathlon 8KCAB was developed from the basic Citabria design by Bellanca in 1970. While at first glance it looks quite similar to the Citabria, it is actually a much more capable aerobatic aircraft. The Decathlon’s wing is a completely new design with an aerofoil section much more suited to aerobatic flight. Its stick forces are much lighter and better harmonised, and it is stressed for +6g,-5g. Its engine is a more powerful 180hp Lycoming IO-360 with an inverted fuel and oil system, attached to a constant-speed prop. These uprated specs make the Decathlon’s performance superior to the Citabria in almost every way, including better climb-rate, better cruise speed, faster roll rate, and the ability to fly inverted manoeuvres. The downside to this improved aerobatic performance is slightly inferior short-field capability (the wings do not have flaps) and a slightly lower payload when compared to the Citabria.
Scout The American Champion Scout 8GCBC is a development of the Citabria. All of the changes made to the original Citabria design to make the Scout were aimed at making the Scout a much more capable back country utility aircraft. Probably the most obvious difference between the Scout and Citabria is the Scout’s lengthened undercarriage and larger tyres. This change is aimed at making the Scout able to fly into the roughest of bush airstrips. It also features a more powerful 180hp IO-360 with a constant-speed propeller, giving it improved takeoff acceleration and a higher climb rate. The Scout wings are lengthened versions of the Citabria wings. These longer wings combine with larger flaps to give the Scout short field take off and landing (STOL) performance over-andabove the already good STOL performance of the Citabria. Included in this package are three variations of the Scout. There is the original, standard Scout with taildragger undercarriage and standard-size tyres, there is a version with taildragger undercarriage and massive 31” tundra-tyres (pictured), and finally there’s a version with amphibious floats. The 31” tundra-tyres look almost comic at first, but they give the Scout the ability to take off and land on almost any unprepared surface, such as creek beds, unprepared grass and beaches. The amphibious Scout has the ability to take off and land on both water and normal runways. The floats on this version of the Scout have retractable wheels, that are set down for landing on the ground and up for landing on water and during normal flight.
Massive, go-anywhere 31” tundra tyres are an option on the Scout.
Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX
Setting Up the Citabria, Decathlon and Scout in FSX Loading the Citabria, Decathlon or Scout for the first time After starting FSX, go to the Select Aircraft dialog box in the usual way. Make sure that ‘Show all variations’ near the bottom of this dialog is checked, otherwise you will only see one livery for each of the aircraft in this package. To make these aircraft variations easier to find choose ‘ACA’ from the ‘Aircraft Manufacturer’ drop down list at the top left. You will see a total of 56 aircraft variations.
Realism Settings The first thing you need to do after loading these aircraft is to set the appropriate FSX realism settings. If you do not do this, the Citabria, Decathlon and Scout will not spin or side slip as advertised! Access this menu by pressing ‘Alt’ then choose ‘Aircraft/ Realism Settings’. Some of the realism settings are optional, but if you want to fly this aircraft to its design specifications you must set the ‘General Realism’ slider to the maximum (fully right). You must also set ‘Autorudder’ to off (make sure the box is unchecked). We cannot emphasise enough that without these settings these aircraft will not be able to spin or side-slip! We highly recommend the use of rudder pedals or at least a stick with a rudder twist-grip. We also advise when first flying that you set the p-factor and torque to zero until you’ve got used to the basic handling of these aircraft. Once you’re used to their basic handling, we recommend p-factor and torque settings of one-third to one-half. With these settings these aircraft will drift to the left on take off, needing right rudder to correct, and will also slightly yaw and roll to the left when flying, especially at low airspeeds with the throttle set high. This is exactly how the real aircraft behaves. You can use rudder trim once established in cruise or climb by using the standard FSX keys for this function (default keys are Ctrl 0 and Ctrl Enter on the numpad). Be aware that the real aircraft do not have a rudder trim fitted, so using rudder trim is not strictly authentic. We recommend turning ‘G effects’ on. We also recommend setting ‘Crash tolerance’ to a low value, and setting ‘Aircraft stress causes damage’ to off.
Display Settings With these aircraft, it is very important that reflection mapping is enabled in your display driver settings. By default reflection mapping is enabled, but many flight simulation forum users recommend turning it off via your display drivers to increase framerates in FSX. While this may help framerates, the sacrifice is large — you may be missing a lot more than you realise. Lastly, we recommend turning anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering on as they both make a significant improvement to the appearance of FSX, and have little effect on framerates with recent video cards. This can be done either via FSX or your display driver control panel. With current high-end cards such as the Nvidia 8800 series, we recommend turning both antialiasing and anisotropic filtering up to high levels — these cards are designed to run with these settings set high, and the graphics in FSX will look much better for it.
Sounds You may wish to balance the volume between the engine sounds, the sound effects, and your air traffic control messages. The ATC messages tend to be a lot quieter in relation to the aircraft sounds. While in the sim itself, go to ‘Options/ Settings/ Sound’ and adjust the relative volume of engine, cockpit, environment and ATC sounds. Most of the sound effects apart from the engine are adjusted with the cockpit and environment sliders.
Autopilot and GPS If specified in the Config Panel, these aircraft have full autopilot, IFR and GPS capability. However, in the real aircraft there is generally an absence of a fixed GPS, and therefore no dedicated NAV/GPS toggle switch. Our FSX Citabria, Decathlon and Scout match the real aircraft in this regard. While we don’t recommend it (for reasons of authenticity) you can switch the navigation gauges to GPS control, but you must do it by setting up a nav/gps key command. You can do this by going to ‘Options/ Settings/ Controls’, and then clicking on the ‘Buttons/keys’ tab. From here, scroll down until you find ‘Nav 1/GPS (toggle)’. Now assign a key command of your choosing to this event. Once this key is enabled you can slave the autopilot and nav gauges to the GPS, although as said earlier this is not authentic for these particular aircraft!
Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX
FSX SP1 Improved Framerates In May of 2007 Microsoft released the first major update for FSX — Service Pack 1 (or SP1). The main goal of SP1 was to improve the performance of FSX, and on most systems, especially multi-core systems, this goal was achieved. With SP1 installed you will most likely experience improved framerates, and improved framerates lead directly to an improvement in the fluidity, control response and general handling of the aircraft in this package, as well as any other aircraft in FSX.
Improved Gauge Back-Lighting Thanks to SP1, and for the first time ever in a Microsoft Flight Simulator, it is possible to have back-lit VC gauges in the day time. The aircraft in this package take full advantage of this new feature. With SP1 installed you will be able to switch gauge back-lighting on or off in the day and night using the “Instrument Light” switch, and the digital displays on the radios are lit day and night just as they should be, making them much easier to read at all times of the day, no matter what the ambient lighting conditions. The downside to the improved VC gauge back-lighting is that it doesn’t perform as well if you don’t have SP1 installed. In this case the gauge back-lighting will behave as follows: • If you do not have SP1 installed then the gauges cannot be back-lit in the day. However back-lighting will work at dawn, dusk and night times as it did in the past. Also, the digital displays on the radios will only be lit at night. • If you do not have SP1 installed then you cannot turn gauge back-lighting off at night time.
Should I Install SP1? For improved framerates (and thus improved flight characteristics), and for much-improved gauge back-lighting, we recommend all users install FSX SP1. You can download SP1 for free from the FSInsider website: http://www.fsinsider.com/downloads/Pages/FlightSimulatorXServicePack1.aspx
Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX
Config Panel This package includes the Config Panel, a program that allows you to set various configuration options for your Citabria, Decathlon and Scout, and access all of the documentation for these aircraft. Please Note: Before using the Config Wizard, it is essential that you make sure that FSX is not running. If FSX is running you will get a warning message and the Config Panel will quit. To start the Config Panel, go to: ‘Start/ All Programs/ RealAir Simulations/ Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX/ Config Panel’ The Config Panel includes its own help files, which you can access by pressing the ‘?’ button at the lower right. The help info displayed depends on what page you’re on (that is to say it is context sensitive). We have only provided two optional settings in the Config Panel. You can set whether you want the aircraft to load with their engine running or with their engines and all switches off, and you can set your preferred RealView stall buffet strength setting. For more info on these options see the 2D panels section of this guide, the RealView section of this guide and the Help pages in the Config Panel itself.
Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX
RealView RealView is a system developed by RealAir that simulates the forces experienced by a pilot in-flight. This latest version has been simplified for use in FSX. Our FS2004 products include a version of RealView that gives the impression of the pilot’s head (that is, your head!) being pushed around by the movement of the aircraft in response to pitch and yaw. We have deleted this feature from the FSX version of RealView because FSX ships with a camera system that achieves exactly the same result and works just as well as our FS2004 RealView system, except in the following area...
Stall Buffet The ReaView Stall buffet effect exclusive to our FS2004 aircraft remains in FSX. A similar effect is not included in FSX by default. The RealView stall buffet feature is linked to the flight model stall buffet function. When these aircraft reach very high angles of attack or are close to the stall you will see the whole aircraft Virtual Cockpit violently shake, accompanied by stall buffeting sounds. You can alter the strength of the RealView Stall Buffet effect (from off to very strong) using the Config Panel. See the Config Panel section of this guide for info on how to do this.
You can adjust the stall buffet strength via the Config Panel.
Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX
Virtual Cockpit New Features for FSX The Virtual Cockpits in the FSX Citabria, Decathlon and Scout are completely new. They have been created from the ground up to take advantage of the new features available in Flight Simulator X. The new features include: • True 3D gauges. The FSX VC gauges are completely new, being a further advance on our already acclaimed FS2004 ‘smooth gauges’. They feature the same silky smooth movement and ultra clear graphics of our FS2004 smooth gauges, but now they’re truly 3D. You can see this by looking at the gauges from an angle — gauges such as the HSI and artificial horizon show this 3D detail the best. • Bump mapping and specular mapping on VC parts. This can best be seen on the panel edging and stick grip. • Numerous VC camera views. These views make the VC even easier to use than our FS2004 Citabria, Decathlon and Scout. You can now zoom in on instruments and controls for easy viewing or adjustment. • New mouse interaction in the VC. All of the instruments now feature a click-and-drag mouse interaction technique. This makes adjusting instruments such as the radios that much more realistic. • Three VC interior colour schemes. As well as the tan/brown cockpit seen in previous versions of the RealAir Scout package, there is a new black/grey cockpit and a new tan/red cockpit. These cockpits are all based on real ACA factory cockpit options.s
VC Views When you load the Citabria, Decathlon or Scout in FSX for the first time, press ‘A’ once to see the VC. This is the main VC view that you are now looking at. This view is suitable for general flying (such as takeoff and landing) and aerobatics. The camera in this view moves in response to pitch, roll and yaw forces. To cycle though the other VC views, press ‘A’. The VC views are as follows: 1 Main VC View. This is the first VC view you’ll see when you load these aircraft. This view is zoomed out a fair bit to allow you to see a fairly wide picture. Suitable for general flying and aerobatics. The default FSX head movement feature is turned on in this view. 2. ‘2D’ style view. This view mimics a traditional MS Flight Simulator 2D panel view, although it is actually the VC panel you’re looking at. This view is fixed, you cannot pan the view like in a normal VC view, the view ‘snaps’ left right and back like it would in 2D panel view, and allows a complete overview of the main panel without having to pan. This view is suitable for general flying. Aerobatics are better flown from the traditional VC view (1 above). The default FSX head movement feature is turned off in this view, which makes gauge mouse clicks much easier to achieve. 4. Radio Stack. This view zooms right in on the radio stack. Use this view if you want to easily make adjustments to any of the radios in the stack. The default FSX head movement feature is turned off in this view, which makes gauge mouse clicks much easier to achieve. 5. Throttle Quadrant. This views zooms right in on the throttle quadrant. Important engine gauges can also be seen in this view, allowing you to precisely set throttle, prop and mixture while monitoring manifold pressure, RPM and EGT. The default FSX head movement feature is turned off in this view, which makes gauge mouse clicks much easier to achieve. 6. Switch Box. This view zooms in on the main electrical switch box (located above and to the left of the pilot). The default FSX head movement feature is turned off in this view, which makes gauge mouse clicks much easier to achieve. 7. Fuel Gauge Left. This view zooms in on the left fuel gauge. The default FSX head movement feature is turned off in this view, making gauge mouse clicks much easier to achieve. 8. Fuel Gauge Right. This view zooms in on the right fuel gauge. The default FSX head movement feature is turned off in this view, making gauge mouse clicks much easier to achieve. 9. Elevator Trim, Fuel Valve and Flap Lever. This view zooms in on the elevator trim, fuel valve and flap lever. The default FSX head movement feature is turned off in this view, making gauge mouse clicks much easier to achieve.
Adjusting VC Instruments with the Mouse All of the instruments in the Citabria, Decathlon and Scout VCs feature a new mouse interaction technique. For on/off switches: Simply click on the switch as usual. For rotary adjustment knobs: For example, the HSI course and HSI HDG knobs, plus many more: • To INCREASE the value, left click and drag UP. • To DECREASE the value, left click and drag DOWN. For rotary knobs with an inner and an outer knob: E.g. the tuning knobs on the nav/com radios, and the alt select knob on the autopilot. • To INCREASE the INNER KNOB value, LEFT click and drag UP. • To DECREASE the INNER KNOB value, LEFT click and drag DOWN. • To INCREASE the OUTER KNOB value, RIGHT click and drag UP. • To DECREASE the OUTER KNOB value, RIGHT click and drag DOWN. In practice this works as follows: To tune the nav or com WHOLE digits, LEFT click and drag on the knob. To tune the nav or com FRACTION digits, RIGHT click and drag on the same knob. To tune the autopilot altitude by 1000s, LEFT click and drag on the knob. To tune this value by 100s, RIGHT click and drag on the knob. This all sounds rather complicated to explain, but to actually use you’ll find it quite simple, intuitive, fast and precise. It allows the radios in particular to be adjusted in a realistic way. No more searching for invisible mouse click areas, waiting for the mouse cursor to change. No more clicking on the radio numbers when in real life you turn a knob to tune the radio. No more waiting for values to slowly increase — the faster you drag the faster the values change. However you may experience difficulty adjusting instruments in the VC when the camera view is moving around due to turbulence or g effects. To over come this, switch to a different VC view using the ‘A’ key. All of the zoomed in views have the camera movement effect turned off to facilitate easy instrument mouse clicks.
Virtual Cockpit Lighting The lighting in the VC of these aircraft is dramatically improved by having the cabin lights switched on at all times, including during daylight hours. Unfortunately the lighting in FSX is such that when you’re flying towards the sun, even at midday, the VC forward panel becomes far too dark, making the gauges quite difficult to read. This is cured largely by keeping the cabin lights on at all times. These latest versions of the Citabria, Decathlon and Scout include an instrument light switch in the main electrical switch box (upper-rear-left of cockpit). Turn this switch on and you will see back-lighting on the VC gauge faces. This back-lighting can be switched on or off independently of the cabin lights. Note: You will need FSX SP1 installed to see back-lighting in the day, and to turn the back-lighting off at night.
VC Gauge Shimmering You may notice a slight ‘shimmering’ on the VC gauges. This is an unwanted by-product of their high resolution graphics. This can be reduced by increasing anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering in your graphics driver control panel. Increasing these values has a very positive effect on FSX graphics in general, including the scenery, but it will reduce your framerates. Thankfully modern graphics cards are made to run high anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering values so with newer cards the framerate hit should be acceptable.
Virtual Cockpit Construction Details These VCs are made similarly to how movie sets are made — they are meant to be viewed from one angle only — the front seat. If you move the eyepoint dramatically things will look odd or appear to be missing. These ‘missing’ parts have been left out to improve performance and to allow the major design focus to be placed on the VC parts that really matter — the parts you can see from the front seats. One of the new VC views mimics a traditional 2D panel. One of the new VC views mimics a traditional 2D panel.
The main electrical switch box contains the lighting switches.
Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX
2D Panels The FSX VC panel is superior in every way to the old FS2004-style 2D panels, so we have not included 2D panels in this FSX version. Our reasons for this are as follows: 1. The visual quality of the VC panel is much higher than that of the old-style 2D panels. Gauge faces, needles and the entire panel in general are clearer, easier to read and display no pixelation or undesirable colour-banding, unlike old-style 2D panels in FSX. 2. Unlike most FSX VCs, the movement of the gauges in the VC is smoother than in the oldstyle 2D panels. Minuscule needle movement can be seen, as opposed to the small ‘steps’ that 2D gauges move in. 3. The VC panels do not distort when using a widescreen display or other non 4:3 display resolution. 4. The VC now includes a number of preset views, which can be cycled through by pressing the ‘A’ key while in the cockpit view. These make the old ‘shift 1-9’ panels obsolete. For example, to get a zoomed in view of the radio stack, press ‘A’ while in the cockpit view until you see the zoomed in radio stack view. 5. Only the main VC view has the head-latency effect turned on. This allows precise gauge clicks easier to achieve while in the secondary VC views during turbulence or other high g manoeuvres. 6. The VC is a much more realistic environment than the 2D panels. We believe that the sense of ‘being there’, that is the sense of immersion, is greater in the VC than in the 2D panels, thus greatly enhancing the enjoyment of flight.
One of the new VC views mimics a traditional 2D panel.
Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX
Flying Taxiing When taxiing any of the aircraft in this package, DO SO WITH CAUTION especially if there are strong wind conditions. It is easily possible to provoke a ground loop in the Scout, and the rudder needs to be carefully operated to avoid either a ground loop or excessive turning at speed which can cause the wind to lift a wing on one side and the aircraft can flip over with damage to the wing. PLEASE NOTE we strongly advise you to TURN OFF “Crash Detect” in the Flight Simulator Aircraft Realism menu. This effect merely re-sets the flight when airframe stress or a collision is detected. Switching this effect off will enable you to see the consequences (entertaining sometimes) of taildragger inexperience! If you want to taxi the Scout Amphibian on water, make sure your water rudders are in the DOWN position (either press Shift W or operate the water rudder switch on the right of the panel).
Excessive rudder at speed can cause this, or a full ground-loop
General Handling If you want accurate torque and p-factor (tendency to drift left), you must first set this in the Aircraft Realism menu. We recommend putting the torque and p-factor sliders from one third to a half to the right. The flight models are only accurate if you set the general realism slider to maximum (fully to the right). Without this setting they will not be able to side slip properly or in the event that you provoke one, spin. It is unlikely that you would accidentally provoke a spin, but nevertheless all of these aircraft will spin if they are stalled and the stall is not recovered.
Another new feature is differences in rudder/aileron co-ordination in turns with variations between the different aircraft in the package. The Scout, with its longer wing, now has a little adverse yaw, requiring a little rudder into the turn, the shorter-winged Citabria less so, and the Decathlon has very little adverse yaw. All three aircraft types will need some rudder in a normal turn (as well as some back pressure) to keep the turn and slip ball in the centre. Please note that in FSX the slip ball is by no means perfect and tends to “over-react” to inputs suddenly rather than smoothly. This is a limitation of FSX, and indeed FS9 before it.
Take Off, Climb and Cruise In the amphibian Scout, taking off from water is simple enough. Make sure the Water Rudders are retracted, point as near as possible into the wind and apply full power. All the taildragger aircraft take off in roughly the same manner, although the Scout variants will be somewhat more sluggish. Try to get the tail off as soon as practical by easing the stick forward once speed is established. You may temporarily hear the stall warning in some of the aircraft in the initial take off run, (or even after landing). This is because – especially on grass – the wing angle of attack is much higher than nose-wheel aircraft and the stall sensor is picking this up. Once speed is established the stall warning will die away. Trim in both versions should be about neutral to slightly up for take off. No flap is needed on take off, unless you are confined to an extremely short runway. The Scout is a STOL aircraft (short take off and land) so it can take off and land in very short spaces with one or two stages of flap. Rotate at approximately 50 knots (or less with a light load). Max initial climb rate in the Scout is 1070 fpm fully loaded, and in the Amphibian and Tundra versions around 900 to 980 fpm (the floats and big wheels give more drag). Clean up the gear in the amphibian. The Decathlon and Citabria are more sprightly but the Decathlon requires caution as there are no flaps to get you out of trouble. The theoretical ceiling of the Scout is 17,000 feet, but in practice a comfortable cruising altitude is between 3,000 and 7,000 feet. At these altitudes you may need to reduce mixture (RED LEVER) to arrive at optimum engine power output. As you rise further the engine performance will degrade. By 14,000 feet it will be difficult to climb at all and this altitude is not very practical. For less engine wear pull the prop pitch lever (the blue lever) to reduce prop RPM. Please refer to the in-flight reference guide and POH for more cruise data.
Spinning To fly a controlled spin, take the aircraft up to at least 3,000 feet. Set the speed to around 60 knots and trim so you fly level hands off. Cut the throttle and climb slowly as the speed bleeds off. As the stall warning/buffet kicks in, keep the stick fully back and kick either full left or full right rudder, or wait for a wing to drop by itself and then apply full rudder in the direction of drop. Keep the stick fully back (but with neutral aileron) and hold full rudder. The spin will start, and airspeed should settle at between stall speed and around 60 knots. One new feature in the FSX version of all the aircraft in this package is that spin recovery is much closer to real-world recovery: If you centralise the rudder but keep the stick back, the spin should now continue, with full recovery achieved by opposite rudder and a gradual relaxation of back pressure. It is not yet quite possible to emulate the spin continuation
by holding rudder in the spin direction and moving the stick forward. Normally this will result in instant spin recovery and a steep or spiral dive, indicated by the airspeed rapidly accelerating. But if you use the classic opposite rudder and stick gradually eased forward, the spin behaviour is very near to authentic. One warning here: Do not use aileron in the direction of the spin. This will result almost instantly in a severe spiral dive and quickly exceeding never-exceed speed (Vne).
Aerobatics The Scout is not cleared for aerobatics but will spin if you provoke it. The Citabria is “partially” aerobatic. You must keep a reasonable amount of positive G in manoeuvres as the fuel system is not inverted and the engine will cut if you go into negative G. The Decathlon however is fully aerobatic and you can do an extended programme of impressive flicks, loops, hammerheads, inverted flight and other more exotic flying to your heart’s content.
Approach and Landing The different variants all have individual handling in pitch, roll and landing behaviour, with the Citabria and Scout being able to achieve reasonably steep approaches with five stage mechanically operated flaps, but the Decathlon often requires a side slip to maintain a healthy rate of descent into short fields. The Decathlon needs just a trickle of throttle to maintain a shallow approach. All variants will achieve a full side slip with crossed controls and this feature can be made more extreme by the addition of thrust which increases the airstream over the rudder for an even steeper slip angle. Please note that as mentioned before, the general realism slider must be fully right (maximum) for side slips and spinning to work. Even if the slider is a tiny bit less than full right, these features will not work! When landing all variants the ideal is to achieve a perfect three point contact at a speed near the stall. You might hear the stall buffet/warning at this stage. Once you are firmly down and the speed bleeds away, relax the back pressure and the stall warning will stop.
Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX
Keys Shift E 1 — Open/close the right window. Shift E 2 — Open/close the left window. Shift E 3 — Open/close the door. Shift L — Toggles the VC gauge back-lighting on and off Ctrl L — Toggles the landing lights on an off L — All lights on (press again to turn all lights off) The Cabin lights and other individual lights can be switched on and off using the light switches on the VC Panel. Note: By default these aircraft load with VC cabin lighting on. This is because FSX exaggerates the effect of darkness on the panel face when flying towards the sun and near dusk or dawn, so we made sure you get good panel lighting at all times. However at night, if you wish to see the atmospheric back-lit gauges without the normal panel lights, you can easily do this by switching off the VC cabin light. At all other times we recommend keeping the VC light on – even in the daytime.
Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX
Bear Gulch Scenery Included with this package is some custom scenery — “Bear Gulch”, set in the rural outback of Washington State in the U.S.A. This scenery is automatically installed with the aircraft. It consists of a small bush airstrip beside a lake. There is a house, a barn which serves as a hangar for your Scout aircraft and a pontoon for operations on the lake.
The Scout Amphibian sitting at the Bear Gulch dock.
Finding Bear Gulch To start a flight at the Bear Gulch landing strip, use the Select Airport function from the main screen to choose the airfield either by name (“Bear Gulch Aviation”) or by ICAO identifier (“WA38”). To start in the barn, select “NE” from the “Choose runway/starting position” drop down list. To start on the runway choose any of the other options int he list. To start at a flight from the Bear Gulch dock (with the Scout Amphibian or another seaplane), select “Bear Gulch Seaplane Base” from the airfield list, or “WA36” from the ICAO list, then select “NE” from the “Choose runway/starting position” drop down list. The easiest way to navigate to the area is to follow the Seattle VOR (SEA — 116.80MHz) outbound on radial 256 for 40.8nm. The field is at the far western end of Lake Cushman. Due to mountainous terrain and tall trees at the western end of the runway, landing is only safe on runway 31, and takeoff is only safe on runway 13.
Installation The scenery is installed automatically into your FSX “Addon Scenery” folder during the installation of the RealAir Scout, and will work perfectly with no further modifications required by you. For the scenery to display you must have “Addon Scenery” enabled in your FSX scenery library. Addon Scenery is enabled by default in FSX, it will only be disabled if you have disabled it manually yourself. Should you wish to move the Bear Gulch scenery to its own scenery folder, the process is fairly simple. All files used in this installation are marked with the prefix “RAS_” and reside in the Flight Simulator X/Addon Scenery/scenery and /texture folders. Just move those files wherever you wish and then add that folder to your scenery library. Note: to see the buildings, your scenery density slider must be set on “Normal” or higher. Lower than that, and you’ll see the runway but little else. Please be aware that if you do decide to move the location of the Bear Gulch scenery files within FSX as outlined above, we do not offer support for any problems you encounter, after all the scenery will work perfectly well in its default installation location.
Technical Details and Trouble Shooting • For the scenery to display you must have “Addon Scenery” enabled in your FSX scenery library. Addon Scenery is enabled by default in FSX, it will only be disabled if you have previously disabled it manually yourself. • This scenery is not compatible with the 9.6m FSGenesis US terrain mesh, or as far as we know any other sub-10m product. It works well with the default FSX mesh. • Although not tested at time of release, it is assumed not to be compatible with vector terrain addons such as Ultimate Terrain USA. • Bear Gulch includes a small patch of high-resolution (30cm) ground textures for the land runway. For full effect, set your terrain texture resolution to 30cm. • In the FS9 version, Bear Gulch Seaplane Port was designated as “WA39”. In FSX, WA39 is already used, so the designation has changed to “WA36”.
Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX
Support Technical information, support and known issues There are no known faults or technical problems running the RealAir Citabria, Decathlon or Scout with a standard version of FSX. These aircraft have been exhaustively tested and if your system can run FSX reasonably well then it should have no trouble running these aircraft. If you do have any problems specific to these aircraft such as graphic problems or long texture loading times it is likely there is something in the way that your computer is set up which is causing this. We cannot guarantee that the files in this package are compatible with any or all third party utilities or add-ons. There are so many of them it is not realistic (or possible for that matter) to test with every third party add-on. If you have made a substantial number of ‘tweaks’ to FSX in order to improve your framerates in FSX, it is quite possible that these aircraft will not display as advertised. The general advice, ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’, apples here. A tweak that improves framerates has probably had an adverse effect on FSX somewhere else, usually by reducing graphic quality in some way. In beta testing we have found that a number of the popular FSX tweaks can disable such features as bump mapping and/or reflection mapping. Our aircraft rely heavily on these features, without them the textures appear to have no detail at all. There is no way of turning these effects on or off in FSX, the only way they can be disabled is by ‘tweaking’ FSX or your display drivers in some way. If this happens to you we suggest trying the aircraft in a standard, or at least near standard FSX installation. Because of the high resolution textures, it is normal to experience a brief pause when switching views, as your PC loads the necessary texture files into RAM. This is the cost of having such high quality textures, and is a minor one we feel. These aircraft feature 16 bit wide-stereo sound effects. To hear these at their best please enable high quality in your sound options in FSX. This setting may require a reasonably powerful sound card. We welcome support queries but please thoroughly read the documentation accompanying our aircraft first, in case you have missed something obvious! You can find our email addresses at: http://www.realairsimulations.com/content2.php?page=support
Citabria, Decathlon and Scout for FSX
Credits Sean Moloney: Aircraft 3D modelling (exteriors + interiors), aircraft textures, panels, gauges, document layout, Config Panel and website. Rob Young: Flight modelling, sounds, lighting effects, support and document writing. Bill Womack: Bear Gulch scenery and documentation. Rob Barendregt: Autopilot altitude hold gauge.
Acknowledgements Thanks to Tim Westnutt, Bill Womack for their fantastic help beta-testing this new version.
About RealAir Simulations RealAir Simulations was set up in 2000 and its first release was a Citabria for Fly! II. Since then we have specialised in, but not restricted ourselves to, high performance propeller driven aircraft with aerobatic capabilities for Microsoft Flight Simulator. All our aircraft have been awarded the highest accolades by magazines and websites. Our Marchetti SF260 is one of the most successful GA aircraft ever produced for Flight Simulator, winning the coveted ‘Avsim Gold Medal For Excellence in Flight Sim Design’ (among other awards), and our freeware aircraft have won Flightsim.com’s gold award as voted by their subscribers. Our Spitfire has won the Avsim Gold Medal for Excellence award, the Avsim Bravo Zulu Award, the Flightsim Armchair Aviator Award, the PC Pilot Classic Award, the inaugural FS Nordic Star Award, and has received high scores in all other reviews it has received.
About the RealAir Simulations Authors: Sean Moloney is a graduate in Visual Communications, with honours. He is a student pilot who first teamed up with Rob Young to design the Citabria for Fly! II while still at university. He also works as a freelance graphic designer/illustrator and resides in Brisbane, Australia. Sean designs all the graphics, gauges and 3D models for RealAir. Rob Young spent 25 years as a professional musician before turning to simulation. He has designed flight aerodynamics for many of the major flight simulator developers. He designed the flight models for Fly! II on behalf of Terminal Reality and since changing to Microsoft Flight Simulator has designed the aerodynamics for a diverse group of developers including Lago, JustFlight, Eaglesoft, and MAAM-Sim, picking up awards for nearly every aircraft he has co-designed. Rob currently lives in London.