Local Legend IV: Savoia-Marchetti S.55

i picked this up on a whim and am really enjoying it so far. the two variants are a neat touch.

is there some kind of manual somewhere that i could take a spin through? i would like to try to understand the gauges a little better as well as what the coolant radiator flap lever does. i’m also a little unclear on the altimeter gradients but i can try to work that out against my reported alt in lnm or something similar if need be.

nice job on a really interesting airplane!

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No manual yet but should be one soon

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@scoobyx Thanks! To answer your question about the altimeter pressure scale, it’s in centimetres of mercury, so divide your reading by roughly 2.6 to get the inHg equivalent. The radiator cooling flap lever controls airflow through the radiator, so best to have it closed on cold days, and open on hot ones, or during extended climbs etc.

@Megadyptes7635 Nice pics. :slight_smile: The compass is quite unusual yes, it’s a Hughes and Sons Aperiodic compass, a style that was briefly in fashion for aircraft and ships in Europe in the 20s. How to use it is explained in detail in the manual (which should be up soon), but the basic gist is the numbers on the spindle arms mean “hundreds” and the scale at the top reads individual degrees from 0-100. So if the “3” needle is pointing to 10 on the top scale, it’s 3 hundreds + 10 = 310 degrees. For readings from north to 100 degrees you put the “0” needle on the number you want on the scale. If you want to fly 70 degrees, then you turn until the 0 needle points at 70, and it’s read as 0 hundreds + 70.

Also the “put put” motor really is that, it’s a Garelli motorcycle engine, which charges a compressed air tank for engine start and provides electrical power to recharge the battery. It’s a very early form of APU.

Cheers!

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I logged the Dornier start up bug some time ago on the forum, but nothing has happened. It’s easy to fix yourself though. Open the apron.flt file that defines the cold and dark state. Set magnetos to true/on. In the cockpit be aware the fuel valve tooltip is flipped - the German text is correct.
Following this procedure it starts up happily. For the price it’s a great plane.

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Thanks for this kind of details!!!
Can not wait to get this aircraft today.

Have to admit I’ve been a bit put off buying the Local Legends due to how middling Orbx’s Fokker was… (also, it’s the heaviest aicraft in my sim at 8.5gb :rofl:, likely due to some misuse by Orbx)
Will wait for reviews on this one. Appreciate that the dev (I surmise?) posts here, though, a good sign he cares about the aircraft.

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The Wal C&D start has not been fixed yet, but The Flying Frog covered a simple work around in his YouTube video on 26/04/2022. It works for Xbox as well as PC.

I’ve never seen that sort of compass before. Really cool that you modelled it.

I was messing about a bit with the X variant, flying on one engine, restarting the engines in the air etc and it all worked pretty good. Did have an issue when trying to restart the front engine on water though. Landed with both engines off and then went through the startup procedures. Rear engine kicked in fine but couldn’t get the front to start. It’d spin a few times and then stop. Worked fine though when starting from a cold and dark state though.

I did get it started again after I did a single engine take-off though. It ain’t the most sporty thing on just one engine but you can just about manage to get up in the air.

Another instrument question involving this doodad on the X:
image
Looks like a crude heading indicator. There’s a dial over on the left of the cockpit to change heading which does affect this heading gauge thing but it acts weird. You rotate the heading dial and after a few seconds the heading indicator thing will line up on whatever your current heading is, not the one selected. Could be a sim limitation thing or maybe I’ve just got this thing completely wrong. Maybe the manual will explain it.

The X cockpit has what look like sliding windows on top of the canopy but I couldn’t find a way to open them. Would be really cool if those could be opened.

Anyway it’s a nice plane, no major bugs and flies well. Recommended if you like these old birds.

could very well be a binding issue on my end but the transponder in the x doesn’t seem to light up for me. not that i care too much about it, just a note. also i am having some issues with the w&b on the x. if i load full fuel the plane is overweight (even with all the crew, pax and cargo at zero). if this is intended, it’s working. if it’s not, it could probably use some tweaking.

i am really enjoying flying around in this plane!

@Megadyptes7635 For your engine start problem on the water, make sure to check the APU pressure gauge on the far left of the panel before cranking an engine. It needs to be almost full to have enough pressure to complete an engine start, and starting one engine will usually drain it. You may need to wait 15-20 seconds for the pump to fully recharge it. If it’s full and still not working then check mags and mixture and fuel load. It’s a simple airplane, not much else you can check!

The heading indicator “doodad” hehe, is an Askania Mechanical Compass. It’s spring based, not magnetic. You use the selector to choose the heading you want to fly (which is only for visual reference), and then the indicators will show your left or right deviation from intended track over time. Because it’s spring based if you then correct and get back on the correct track the needles will return to center. If you select a new heading the springs will reset and you start over on that heading. You need to be flying the heading you intend to maintain when you set the selector. Hope that makes sense. There’s a more detailed explanation of how to use it in the manual.

The sliding windows do not currently work. They did initially, but there were some bugs with them found very late in development, so they are disabled for now. I’m hoping to re-enable them in an update later.

@scoobyx For the weight and balance issues, that is actually by design! S.55s were regularly flown in severely overloaded states, and for the longer journeys that is sometimes required. Maximum takeoff weight is kind of a fluid concept with these planes, no pun intended. The performance will suffer, especially takeoff distance and climb rates, but since runway length isn’t often an issue on water there is no danger in flying them overloaded, at least in calm seas. If MSFS at some point in the future features real sea states and wave interactions then this would become more of an issue.

The transponder not working appears to be a cold and dark start problem. A specific circuit breaker isn’t being set properly there for some reason. It will be fixed for the first update. Thanks!

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I am really impressed by the level of research that went into the development of the S.55, your prompt answers and thorough explanations clearly demonstrate how much dedication and attention is placed in this project.

Bravissimo!

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Agreed, quality and developer interaction seems to be on a different level to the previous Asobo local legends, and a big improvement!

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I saw this in the Market Place and checked out the photos, and new I had to have it. The red photo for it does it zero justice. This thing is awesome. Packed full of EXTREME DETAIL and graphics. Very glad I got it.
I had to figure out what the instruments are, and will need to research some, but quickly learned what the basic versions were.
My fave model is the S-55X with enclosed cockpit. Its like a flying wing with beautiful ship hulls attached underneath the wings. The engines are like something out of an Animae movie ‘Sky Crawlers’ with banks of exhaust tubing coming out of everywhere, and Bugatti Royale looking engine casings on the bottom of the engines.
The cockpit is brilliant. You had to lay down in it, like a Corvette. Not as extreme as a Lamborghini Countach. The instrumentation is brilliant. Who ever did this must have had access to the real one to produce all the gauges and things. In the Market Place, it says its by Microsoft / Mike Johnson.
I thought it was an amazing deal for $15.00 USD. Glad I got it.
First flight was out of Kyvv Ukraine, their river that flows through the heart of Kyvv. This is going to be fun. I do love landing on land, so I’ll have to adapt.




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Some photos of the panel and beautifully done instrumentation.


Those sliding doors must take you down into the fuselages.


The rectangular gauges; left is VSI, right is ASI (speed in KPH) and center is your compass.


That linkage assembly is beautiful work. Same for the leather and wood, metal, the graphics. Awesome work on this girl.

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The Wind Rises is another Animae of this era and shows some versions of Savoia Marchetti. I couldnt find the ones of this plane, but they are in the movie. The famous aircraft designer in the movie, appears to be teaching this young Japanese engineer inside his mind and thoughts how to build planes. Great movie.

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@Ramasurinen Really appreciate the prompt dev answers to feedback and questions about systems. This, more than anything else, convince me to buy this. I look forward to giving her a go.

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@FivePeach767757 @RagingWombat839 @LyonHaart001 Thank you all very much for the kind words! Made my day. :slight_smile: I’m very happy you like it.

Well, that would be me. Jorg basically accomplished mission impossible in getting access to the only surviving S.55 for a 3D scan, in Brasil, in a closed museum, in the middle of a pandemic, and it was a huge help. Unfortunately that plane does not have a restored cockpit, or much cockpit left at all really. A lot of the reference for both cockpits came from hours upon hours of research, scouring 100 year old flight and parts manuals (in Italian), and some kind gifts from a couple of S.55 enthusiasts. There are only 6 or 7 surviving photos of S.55 cockpits actually, all of which are of somewhat poor quality, and in black and white only of course. Luckily the plane did share a couple of instruments with other Italian aircraft of the period, so that helped a bit.

It’s such a shame that more of these beautiful planes weren’t preserved. Savoia built around 250 of them, but I think most were unceremoniously scrapped for raw materials during WW2. There is a group in Italy building a full scale non-flying replica of the S.55X though, from the original Savoia drawings. It will be many years before it is complete I think, but one day we might be able to step inside a ‘real’ one again.

@OrigBullethead Thank you! I’m here to help. Any questions, please ask away. :slight_smile: Hopefully the manual will be up on the website very soon as well.

Thanks again!

-Mike

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This looks very promising. Will be adding it to the hangar tomorrow for sure. Has anybody attempted to fly this one in VR? It looks like it’d be a blast.

I LOVE this gentle giant. It is addicting with it’s slow and graceful way and the details included with the unique instruments is intriguing. I am hooked and never thought I would be. My favourite local legend by far, thank you to the developers! I never expected it to be so much fun :star_struck: Can’t wait to memorize the manual.

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Others can say if it was successful or not, but I can at least state that the airplane was designed with VR in mind from day one, as that’s the only way I personally fly for enjoyment in the sim. The prop animations in particular are set up to minimize artifacts from motion reprojection / ASW as much as possible, and it has been extensively tested on the Reverb G2 and Index.

Cheers!

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