I have had several flights where, at altitude the power just slowly goes to idle and nothing I do brings the RPM back up and I have impact with terrain. I have fuel, mixture set to rich, battery and alternator ok, nothing i can see is wrong and i don’t know what’s causing it. It’s only happened a couple of times but it’s making me leery of the Bonanza, which is my go to light single. I do have the turbo mod but it’s happened before i got the mod. Anybody?
Although it’s most likely not related to your problem, please note that the MSFS mixture simulation is way off.
At higher altitudes you need to lean a lot in MSFS.
If you have already leaned the mixture, setting it to full rich will decrease the engine performance even further.
Are you in clouds when this happens?
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The Bonanza has two tanks that you have to switch between and you could have drained one and run out of fuel, even with fuel in the other tank. Are you switching tanks often to balance out fuel consumption across the two tanks?
In this case the engine would have failed.
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Please note i have not tested the Bonanza with SU6 but for sure the Vanilla Bonanza felt a little underpowered at altitude to the point that it would sometimes stall because of the airspeed reduction caused by flying through cloud*
(I think they addressed the cloud issue in an update?)
There are a couple of improvement mods out there which help with this.
As mentioned you also need to manually switch fuel tanks. The switch for that is under the pilots left leg.
Do you mean you simply lose power as PZL mentioned? Or do you mean the throttle is being pulled out? At which altitude? 5000 ft or 15000 ft makes a big difference. What‘s your manifold pressure?
Pull the red lever back until the fuel flow peaks. That gives you best power.
This is the most likely culprit, in the sim the moment you climb above 10,000ft the power basically disappears unless you lean the mixture.
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Im not sure about the earlier instances but the last time a few days ago i was in clear VFR. I suspect incorrect mixture is causing the issue.
Also consider using the following mod which addresses many of the stock Bonanza’s shortcomings:
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I use the fuel valve. I usually switch when the left tank gets down to 5 gallons. I suspect a mixture issue is the problem. Thanks for the reply.
Thanks for that, i’ll check it out.
Yeah i suspect you are right. I have been leaving the mixture lever full rich. Thanks for the reply.
That’s strange, because in this case this problem would have occured on all flights and if you descend, the power increases again.
RPM drops to zero in about 30 seconds, throttle input makes no difference. It happens at higher altitudes. Manifold pressure 27. I realize now after reading other replies that i have been using the mixture control incorrectly. I need to lean at higher altitudes. Thanks for the response.
Thanks for that, im still learning about this airplane.
If mixture is the reason, engine RPM continuously decreases during climb and it doesn’t suddenly drop to zero.
Really weird.
Yeah this has never happened with any other plane i’ve flown. Im going to fly today and experiment with the mixture control. Note, it does not happen during climb it happens in level flight.
It can’t be the mixture in this case.
Furthermore this mixture bug affects all piston engined aircraft in MSFS.
In your OP you wrote that RPM drops to idle, but now you wrote that it drops to zero.
These are two completely different scenarios.
If RPM drops to zero, the engine has failed and since this happens in level flight, fuel starvation sounds much more plausible.
You’re supposed to switch every 15-30 minutes to keep the left and right tanks balanced. Otherwise it will roll towards the full side and you’ll also risk fuel starvation when one tank gets low. I doubt this is modeled in the sim, but in real life, it’s possible to get fuel starvation with fuel still in the tank if you bank steeply towards the almost empty tank. This forces the fuel to move away from the port that sucks the fuel to the engine, and you end up sucking air instead. If not fixed ASAP you may have it quit on you.