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Post by andqui on May 10, 2015 9:04:11 GMT -5
I had an electrical failure around V1 during take-off with the CS 707. I'm curious as to what this is supposed to represent. The aircraft has four generators on the engines, and all the engines kept running no problem. What exactly is supposed to have failed to cause a complete loss of electrical power? Surely the odds of all four generators on four healthy engines failing at once would be infinitesimally small. I think this particular failure only makes sense on smaller, single-engine aircraft. I can see one IDG failing, but not all four. There are so many layers of redundancy; multiple IDGs, then the APU (no APU on the 707 though), then the battery and emergency power. It doesn't make much sense for all electrical power to just fail on a large airliner as if someone had thrown a switch. Is there a way to tailor the possible failures for different aircraft?
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Post by peter on May 11, 2015 4:42:57 GMT -5
Hi Andqui,
without knowing exactly what was going on I can only speculate, but I could imagine the following scenario. The 707 is rather old and not at all automatized. I think the default generator one picks is number 3. If generator 3 fails then (if I am not mistaken, I don't fly the 707 every week) the flight engineer would have to select a different generator. If that doesn't happen you would lose your electric power. One could test on the ground whether that is the case.
Cheers,
Peter
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Post by Travis on May 14, 2015 12:03:40 GMT -5
Actually due to the restriction of the SDK, we can only force a complete electrical failure - we can't target individual generators.  |
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Post by andqui on May 15, 2015 11:40:23 GMT -5
Actually due to the restriction of the SDK, we can only force a complete electrical failure - we can't target individual generators. Would it then not be a good idea to disable this particular failure for larger aircraft where such a situation would be pretty much impossible? A complete electrical failure on something like an airbus is pretty much certain death- that's why you have multiple generators, APU, batteries, backup systems, and a RAT if all else fails. |
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Post by Travis on May 16, 2015 10:12:04 GMT -5
Actually due to the restriction of the SDK, we can only force a complete electrical failure - we can't target individual generators. Would it then not be a good idea to disable this particular failure for larger aircraft where such a situation would be pretty much impossible? A complete electrical failure on something like an airbus is pretty much certain death- that's why you have multiple generators, APU, batteries, backup systems, and a RAT if all else fails. That would pretty much be true for any aircraft - no matter the number of engines. Ditto for a complete hydraulic system or vacuum system failure. I guess we could work in an option to DISABLE_TOTAL_SYSTEM_FAILURES which if chosen by the Captain, would remove those failures from the possible choices. I'll mull over the idea and if nothing jumps out at me as being a mistake, I'll look to implement this during the 1.6.3 Beta process. Until then, if this happens again (you'd be well struck by luck, so buy a lottery ticket immediately) just go to the FSX/P3D "Failures" menu and untick whatever it was that failed. |
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Post by andqui on May 16, 2015 13:24:44 GMT -5
OK, thanks. My main point is that the backup systems are there for a reason, and in the last 50 years of aviation you can pretty much count the number of total electrical or total hydraulic failures on one hand. I don't know how they're coded, but if you're in an aircraft with more than one engine they should be so exceedingly unlikely as to pretty much never happen.
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Post by Travis on May 16, 2015 16:12:55 GMT -5
I've started planning on the DISABLE_TOTAL option, that's about the best I can come up with now.
I had an idea, laughed at by the rest of the crew, that in the case of an "electrical failure" to use the internal simulator commands to turn nn-1 generators / batteries off - and to force them off again should we detect they were on. So in a two engine aircraft, I would turn off generator 1 and should I ever see generator 1 on during the remainder of the flight to turn it off again.
Granted that doesn't "feel right" but it's the next best thing that we could offer. Then too for advanced aircraft we may or may not be able to effect a change in certain switches, so it's likely better to give Captains the option to phase this out for now.
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Post by keng on May 26, 2015 4:44:24 GMT -5
I've started planning on the DISABLE_TOTAL option, that's about the best I can come up with now. I had an idea, laughed at by the rest of the crew, that in the case of an "electrical failure" to use the internal simulator commands to turn nn-1 generators / batteries off - and to force them off again should we detect they were on. So in a two engine aircraft, I would turn off generator 1 and should I ever see generator 1 on during the remainder of the flight to turn it off again. Granted that doesn't "feel right" but it's the next best thing that we could offer. Then too for advanced aircraft we may or may not be able to effect a change in certain switches, so it's likely better to give Captains the option to phase this out for now. Not that bad of an idea. To me it would represent a generator that is in an undervoltage situation and the GCU was taking it off-line when the pilot attempted to reset it. Couple it with a comment by the FO that the nn Generator won't stay online and you have a fairly good electrical emergency. What is really interesting is does the Captain perform a precautionary landing at an alternative aerodrome or continue to destination... |
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Post by Travis on May 26, 2015 17:19:18 GMT -5
I've started planning on the DISABLE_TOTAL option, that's about the best I can come up with now. I had an idea, laughed at by the rest of the crew, that in the case of an "electrical failure" to use the internal simulator commands to turn nn-1 generators / batteries off - and to force them off again should we detect they were on. So in a two engine aircraft, I would turn off generator 1 and should I ever see generator 1 on during the remainder of the flight to turn it off again. Granted that doesn't "feel right" but it's the next best thing that we could offer. Then too for advanced aircraft we may or may not be able to effect a change in certain switches, so it's likely better to give Captains the option to phase this out for now. Not that bad of an idea. To me it would represent a generator that is in an undervoltage situation and the GCU was taking it off-line when the pilot attempted to reset it. Couple it with a comment by the FO that the nn Generator won't stay online and you have a fairly good electrical emergency. What is really interesting is does the Captain perform a precautionary landing at an alternative aerodrome or continue to destination... We may revisit this in the future - as an optional item of course. I've just implemented the DISABLE_TOTAL_SYSTEM_FAILURE code for multi-engine aircraft, and I'll test that in my evening... once I remember how to force a failure from the FCDU....  |
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