Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II

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Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolt II
A-10.jpg
Type Military aircraft
Author(s) Lee Elliott, Alexis Bory
FDM YASim
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Status Beta

The FlightGear A-10 is included in most default Version 1.0 installations, and offers a wide variety of features and controls. Special features include the ability to simulate ordnance use, and detailed 3D textured cockpit. Many of the A-10's flight systems modeled as well.



About the aircraft

"This is Fairchild-Republic A-10, also named Warthog. It's a U.S. single-seat, twin-engine, very robust jet aircraft designed for ground attack."

User's Manual

In the current version, the aircraft simulation starts with stopped engines.

A big part of the electrical power system and the APU's operation is simulated. Air to air refueling is implemented too.

The navigation instruments are TACAN, ILS and also a VHF so you can have homing on a VOR station.

Several external loads are available and the HUD provides a CCIP (Continuous Computed Impact Point).


Electrical power with APU starting procedure

At FlightGear startup, both electrical power and APU are shut down, and there is no external power supplied.

Everything is asleep...

Electrical control panel

Oh, maybe you will see at the early beginning some needles spinning back on the engines gauges panel and the VSI... that's only a software initialization artifact.

So look at the right console, there is a panel with 6 switches, that's the Main Electrical Control Panel. Hit Ctrl-c and you will have a view of where to click...

Let's connect the battery: switch on the battery switch. A few indicators should light on, but not all of them. Any way, with the battery connected you can start the APU.

The APU start/stop switch is located near the throttle on the left console. Switch it on. Now look at the APU's RPM and EGT on the engines guauges panel.

If the APU started successfuly you should see the EGT (Exhaust Gaz Temperature) climb very fast until 800/900°C and then stabilize while the RPM reach 60%.

Throttle, engines operation and APU panel

Now the APU as enough RPM to provide electrical power trough its generator. So let's turn on the APU generator. This one is on the main electrical control panel, upper left corner of the electrical control panel, right console again.

With the APU generator on mostly all instruments receive electrical power and now AOA indexer lights on, the HSI (the compas) and the ADI (artificial horizon) look much better.

At 85% RPM the APU supplies enough bleed air for starting the engines.


Engine starting procedure

APU running, Engines gauges at stop.

Now that we have electrical power and bleed air supplied by the APU, starting the engines is straight forward.

Just push each engine operation switch forward and the engines will start (left console just forward the APU start/stop switch).

Each engine has his own electrical generator, switch them both on to get the complete electrical circuit powered.

At this time, you can stop the APU if you want. It wont be useful anymore. (This could change whith futur developement of engines failures...)


HUD

The Head Up Display is turned off by default at aircraft startup. To turn it on electrical power on at least one of the three generator is needed as it isn't wired to the battery.

The HUD Control Panel is located on the upper left corner of the main instrument panel. Three knobs are functional.

HUD Control Panel

(A) Mode Selector Switch: OFF, TEST (standard display), NAV (standard display), CCIP (standard display + Countinuous Computed Impact Point), CCRP (standard display), EXP (standard display), STBY (standard display). Actually you will mostly use NAV and CCIP as other modes are not modeled yet. See later in Weapons System about reticles use.

(B) INTEN knob: Adjust the HUD luminosity.

(C) DEPR knob: Changes the vertical position of the primary aiming reticle in the HUD, There is a digital index in the HUD showing its position, range from -1.00 to 1.00 followed by the letter "D".

HUD Symbology:

HUD Symbology

(D) Pitch ladder.

(E) Indicated Air Speed, Kts.

(F) Primary Aiming Reticle.

(G) Horizon Line

(H) Primary Aiming Reticle Digital index.

(I) Magnetic Heading Tape.

(J) Indicated Altitude in feet (ASL).

(K) Radar Altitude in feet (AGL) followed by letter "R".

(I) Aircraft Pitch in degrees, boxed.

(M) Total Velocity Vector indicator.

(N) Pointer showing the rudders deflection.




Weapons system

Be sure to have energy before trying to use the armament panel. The gun's rounds counter (A) should be lighted in blue and the HUD should be active.

There is actually 2 AIM-9 and the gun.

First of all push up the Master Switch to ARM (B).

For the gun, push up the Gun Rate Switch to HI (right of the rounds counter). You should have on the left side of the main panel a red light indicating 'Gun Ready'. Press key 'e' on the keyboard to fire the gun.

For AIM-9, turn (C) the AIM-9 Mode Knob to SEL (click on the right side of the knob). Now a big circle appears on the HUD symbology, that the searching aera of the AIM-9. Now select Pylon #11, you should ear the seeker sound. This sound is audible only when an AIM-9 is available, selected and searching. Press key ',' to fire the AIM-9.

Armament panel

(In Flightgear, the key ',' is usaly used for left brake, in the A-10 a nasal script intercepts the binding for weapons release, this is not a definitive solution).

You can also choose to fly without the AIM-9s ans the ECM pod, press Tab or Ctrl-I on the keyboard to display the config menu.



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