I’m a bit confused by the environmental systems on the Duke. I recall reading the knobs are reversed compared to other aircraft, meaning the associated vent is closed when the knob is pulled out?
So to receive cold air when the a/c is on, the knobs need to be pushed in or out?
I do most of my flying out of Arizona where it’s been about 110 degrees every day and not sure if I got it right or wrong. If I have it right the system can’t keep up with the heat…
the knobs are different even in the same plane. pan the camera towards the knobs and zoom in and you can see the writing next to the control telling you what action does what. some are push in=closed and some are push in=open.
also, pull up the Cabin page on the tablet, and you can see animations for each valve to see what the knobs do. also the air temps change color on that page so you can see if you’re pumping in hot or cold air into the cabin. its a really awesome feature
Pull them out for more Cooling or Heating.
It’s hard to get them cooled down in Az but you can do it.
Also on the ground you mey need to keep your engine RMP up.
Hope that helps…
Nope, hit NAV a bunch of times when right on and tracking the magenta, NAV never engaged…it stayed on HDG. This has only happened twice in dozens of flights, so I’m sure it was an intermittent bug.
All of the knobs are basically ‘pull for more’. All in, they are all off. What matters is which knobs you pull. Pilot and cabin air provide cooling air, particularly while in the air. For heat, pull the pressurization air knobs out.
In my experience, while airborne, just the pilot/cabin air and pressurization air knobs are enough to regulate the temperature. You’ll close the pilot and cabin air knobs as you climb and eventually start pulling out the pressurization air knobs for heat. On the ground you’ll need the help of the AC or heater via the cabin temp mode knob. The AC doesn’t really hold its own in hot temps though. Also, don’t take off with the AC on.
They need to reconsider this as the Manuel states the opposite. No idea what is correct on an actual Duke
It’s entirely possible that I mis-remembered how some of these work after reading through the manual and through dumb luck have managed the cabin temp correctly. I revisited the manual and it does indeed say that the pilot and cabin air knobs are “pull-off” meaning you get max airflow with them all the way in.
Again, my standard operation has been to take off with the pilot and cabin air knobs at about 50-70% out and the AC off. As the cabin cools during climb I push them in and start pulling the pressurization air. Then I reverse the process on the way back down. So even through my potential misunderstanding the method still works I guess. I do apologize for the false information though.
Epic autocorrect on my last post.
They’re all labeled as such but some of the knobs are pull on push off and some are the reverse. Why? I could not tell you. But they do have labels if you move the camera close.
I ran into an issue tonight trying to load a flight with the piston Duke. I’ve got one in FSE and I’ve been ferrying it to where I want to keep it and for the first time my trip took me to a small airstrip with no parking. I parked up, shut down the plane and though to myself, I’ll just save the flight so I can do my cold and dark start up next time. When I went back to resume my journey, two attempts at loading the flight resulted in CTDs. I gave up an loaded on the runway and it worked no problem. Does anyone have any experience with this? I’ve never saved and loaded a flight in all my time with MSFS, let alone with the Duke. I don’t know if this is an MSFS thing or a Duke thing. Has anyone had any luck with it? There’s bound to be more small strips along the way and I really prefer to start cold and dark on the apron if I can so I’d love to find a solution.
I too like starting cold and dark in the same spot and yes that’s annoying at small airstrips with no parking option in the menu but I’ve never saved a flight and had something not be jacked up when I load it so I just do not use it.
Fortunately the bulk of airstrips at least have one parking spot to select, otherwise I guess hopefully you’re just taking a break before the next leg and can leave the sim running or else you’ll just have to start on the runway
That’s what I was afraid of. I guess I’ll either try and only fly to airports with at least one parking spot or just deal with having to start on the runway. I’m currently trekking through Myanmar south to Australia and I’m pretty sure there’s going to be more remote strips on my journey so… Guess I’ll have to deal with it. I appreciate the insight.
I do a lot of remote flying and 4/5 of the time there’s a spot for a cold and dark start. Otherwise I just leave the sim running unless I’m like going to bed in which case that just sucks. Unsure of the top of my head and I don’t think so but the tablet on the duke doesn’t maybe have a cold and dark option like the Comanche does it?
It doesn’t appear to unless I (quite possibly) missed it last time. I sure wish it did. Even if I were starting at the end of the runway, I’d still much prefer to start up cold and dark and run all the checks because I’m a systems nerd. It’s not really critical though. I was just wondering if this was an issue with the Duke since I’ve never loaded a custom flight before and have zero baseline information. I suspect because of the more complex coding and systems logic in the Duke that it probably doesn’t work well with custom flights for any number of reasons.
I mean as I’m sure you’ve noticed stuff like the Comanche and Duke clearly have some sort of start up process they’re running right after the flight launches when nothing works and the controls all move around on their own for the first few seconds so yeah I could definitely see that not playing nice with the already flawed save logic. i can see why saving and resuming a flight here would frankly be more complicated and error prone than like saving a regular video game(im a software engineer) but seems like a very important feature I really hope works in 24
RE: Nav not working on the autopilot
I never had this problem until my current flight. Selecting Nav on the autopilot didn’t do anything at all. But I noticed the aircraft not following the heading bug either. Through a little experimenting I realized that this is actually an annunciation issue, not an autopilot mode issue. My autopilot is happily tracking the GPS flight plan because I realized hitting the button did engage Nav mode, it’s just that the mode annunciator is still stuck on Hdg.
That just seems like a bug, however, I am also seeing a discrepancy of about 5 degrees between what the GNS530 is saying my TRK is and what the compass and HSI are indicating. What I’m seeing is that tracking the GPS, the GNS530 shows that magenta line and green arrow are showing straight up as they should. The HSI is set to the GPS DIR TRK which is what the GPS says I’m currently flying but the CDI and whole compass card is skewed about 5 degrees left and is showing a current 5 degrees right of course and the compass agrees. This would be normal in a cross wind but everything would be in agreeance in indicating a cross wind correction angle. I don’t know if this has anything to do with why the Nav mode is being finicky but it’s the first time I’ve seen either of these anomalies.
What’s more, this flight was initiated on the runway because my flight departed a small airstrip. This is only the second time I’ve started a flight in the Duke on the runway and thus already up and running and it really doesn’t seem to like starting that way. I always start cold and dark except in these two instances where a ramp start wasn’t an issue, and I’ve encountered weird things on both occasions. If you’re starting on the runway and seeing issues, maybe try starting from the ramp C&D and see if they go away.
Your situation definitely sounds different than my two instances of this behavior. I use the PMS GTN750, and HDG mode was working. NAV mode would never ARM or go active when I tried intercept the magenta. All of flights started from cold and dark; I don’t think I’ve ever done a runway start except when doing a quick test or something.
I’ll be curious if your Pitch selector works on your descent. Mine did not, and I had to hand fly the entire descent (which is good to practice occasionally).
Interesting. On some recent flights in the piston Dukes, I was able to manage descents in V/S, mode and rates selected by hardware. Wonder if this is a workaround or peculiar to the Xbox version (not sure what if any differences there are from PC).
No, I could not use the pitch wheel on descent. And my altitude selector was behaving strangely too. The hundreds place digit would spin all the way around every time I passed through another 1000ft while dialing in my target altitude.
I’m at an airport large enough to have ramp spaces so I’ll be starting my next flight cold and dark. I’ll report back about how that goes (whenever I get a chance to fly this weekend that is).
On Xbox here and using the PMS750, just putting it out there, for me nav mode works perfectly, if I’m on heading mode and nav mode is armed once I’m near the track it(rather abruptly but I think that’s just how these older autopilots were) captures and adjusts to track the course.
My pitch works perfectly for descent. I’m using the hidden click point next to the autopilot display on the panel, not the wheel on the pedestal or a physical control. Seems obvious but you’ve made sure you’ve switched to attitude mode right lol? It doesn’t anything if you’re still in altitude hold or if you’re on enforce glideslope mode it’ll do that instead of listen to you.
One weird bug I’ve noticed sorta relatedish to what you all are talking about is that the ILS crosshair thingy I forget what the real name for is appears to not work, however it does capture and follow an ILS glide slope on autopilot for me. I often tune the ILS frequency as a reference even when doing a visual approach and very weirdly the instrument does nothing, but if I switch autopilot back on and use approach/enforce glideslope it happily obliges. I swear the visualizer instrument used to work despite no updates(I fly a lot of older planes with that instrument so I may be misremembering it working). Now that I mention it that could’ve been when I was using the 530, maybe a PMS bug. The Dukes and Lear were the first things I was flying enough with Xbox compatibility to spring for the 750.