I’m completely new to flight sims and I don’t have any experience IRL flying aircraft, but I do have some general knowlege about aviation.
I’ve been playing through the very broken career mode and I have the DHC-2 Beaver available for the majority of my missions. I like the idea of flying using traditional “steam gages” as opposed to glass cockpits like those equiped with the Garmin G1000, and I’m enjoying flying stick and rudder without the use of autopilot.
However, one issue i have encountered with the DHC-2 in career mode, is that the 20% default fuel is barely enough to reach the destination on longer distance flights. I’m restricting my RPM to dead centre of the blue:green fields on the gage, and doing the same for the Inches of Mercury gage on the left.
My questions are:
How lean should my mixture be whilst cruising at approximately 11,000ft? - I currently fly at “Full Lean” and then adjust my Propeller to reduce RPM to the desired range. Is that the correct method? Is it normal to cruise at full lean?
Another question is, what is the ideal configuration for cruise at 11,000ft for achieving maximum fuel efficiency whilst maintaining adequate performance?
What speed (MPH) should I expect to be cruising at for this altitude over the UK in the current climate?
Since I’m not a pilot and have no real life experience with the aircraft, I don’t know if I’m flying it correctly.
There have been ongoing discussions about the Beaver’s fuel consumption and issues with leaning it, specifically, and the issues people are having in Career Mode, as a result.
Here’s a post from the Beaver thread that may help:
There are number of fuel consumption-related posts in that thread. Try using the search function for “consumption”, restricting the results to the thread and take a look at the results.
I don’t use the Career Mode, but are you able to add more fuel prior to the flight to compensate for any deficiencies in the aircraft’s fuel flow modeling? In other words, fill the tanks more?
Thanks for the speedy response, I appreciate it. I’ll check it out.
I tried to add more fuel prior to starting the mission but it wouldn’t load in to the aircraft. I kept getting an error message at the top of the page in red.
I have been advised that I can hotkey an “add fuel” button which works during flight if I’m caught short, but luckily I haven’t had to use it yet. I landed on 3% last flight after running the rear and centre tanks dry.
I even went as far as downloading a 1960s flight manual from Avialogs.com to try and learn the standard procedures, but I haven’t yet read anything about mixture and power settings that I understand. Really hoping somebody with real life experience with the DHC-2 could weigh-in on that.
