Hello everyone,

first, I have to say that this is really a stunnig aircraft. I bought it a few days ago and today I finished working through all 3 manuals and the next one will be the CIVA Manuals. So there´s still a lot to do

While reading the manuals and having some flights (I can memorize things better when I do them after reading)  a few questions came up.
If answers to these questions are in the manuals, then please forgive me and just point to the manuals. I do not want to steal anybodies time.

So here they come:

Cabin Air Temp Gauge
In the manual they say (and so does the picture), that it shows values in Degrees Celsius. I was a bit puzzled, because it goes way beyond 200 Degrees which would be enough to cook your passengers. In the Airplane it´s showing Degrees Fahrenheit, so I guess the manual is just wrong here? But then it´s fairly cold in my Cabin, because when in flight the Temperature is way below 100 degrees.

Fuses / Circuit Breakers
In the overhead panel, there are also a few switches and CBs which are not described in the manual. I can press / depress them, but could not figure out what they do. Are they just there for eye candy?

Engine Gauges on the F/E panel
What is the source selector doing exactly? There are already gauges showing values for all 4 engines, so what are the 2 switches for?

Fuel dump
The manual says that if you dump fuel, it stops at around 16.500 lbs automatically, to prevent that you dump all your fuel by accident and fall out of the sky like a stone. When I dump fuel it does just that... it empties all tanks until there´s nothing left.

Fuel distribution / valves
I was trying to figure out how they work. So I dumped the fuel of all Tanks. Instead of dumping fuel of all tanks simultaneously, it started to dump the fuel from Tank #1. After that Engine #1 stopped. I opened the Manifold Valve Switch for Engine #1 and I was able to do a windmill start. So far so good. But I ask myself, from which tank it´s then feeded? All other Manifold valves where closed. How does Fuel distribution exactly work? When I open a Manifold valve, does the engine gets feeded from all tanks at the same time?
I expected, that I have to open 2 valves (1 source, 1 destination), but I seem to be wrong here.

What about the Transfer valve switches for the 2 reserve tanks? Do they just feed Tanks #1 and #4?


Ah, yes and I should not forget CoolP. Thanks for the CIVA double integration, It´s much more fun this way (this is when I don´t use the Doppler Navigation, which is really great also)  


Kind regards!

I was hoping that Lou might answer this for you. After all, he flew these beautiful planes in real life.

Fuses / Circuit Breakers
Just eye candy. I thought at one stage they did do something, because of a problem with my navigation lights, but they work fine now regardless of where I place those fuses. I try to make sure they are "IN" before a flight, but sometimes I forget. My flight goes the same way anyway. No known effect on my part. Not now anyway.

Fuel Dump
When I did it, it dumped the whole lot! Not a drop of fuel was left. That was back in v1.1 or 1.2 (I think). I have dumped fuel in v1.3, but because of my previous fuel dumping experience, I monitor it very closely and have never let it get to that point again. The fuel is dumped from the outer tanks to the center tank. Left Tip, Right Tip, Left Aux, Right Aux, Left Wing Tank, Right Wing Tank, Center Tank. It might be right then left, but this gives you the idea of dumping the fuel. When you get to the larger tanks, because they drain one side first, this creates a large weight discrepancy between the left and right side, make sure the autopilot is on first!

Fuel distribution / valves
As long as the Fuel Valves are open (horizontal) (vertical), all engines will receive fuel from any tank that has its Fuel Boost Pumps on, while all the other Fuel Boost Pumps are off.
I.e. If I turn the Fuel Boost Pumps on for the Center Tank, while the rest of the Fuel Boost Pumps for the other tanks are OFF, then the Center Tank will provide fuel to all engines. I usually have the Center Tank feeding all the engines after takeoff, when everything is performing as it should. Sometimes I wait until I'm at cruising altitude.
The Reserve Tanks fuel flows into the #1 and #4 tanks if the Fuel Valves are open and as fuel is drained from them. If fuel has already been drained from the #1 and #4 tanks, fuel from the Reserve Tanks will immediately start flowing into them when you open their Fuel Valves.

Hope this helps.

Mark

Edit: Fixed error in Fuel Valve position when open. As pointed out by buedi here: http://www.captainsim.org/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1310307246/4#4
Sorry.

Hi Mark,
Hi Brian,

first: Thank you very much to both of you for your replies. I appreciate that very much!

Fuses / Eyecandy:
OK, that also carifies why these are not mentioned in the manual.

Fuel Dump:
So the same happened to you like it did to me. That does not behave like described in the manual then. Let´s hope this can be fixed in one of the next Updates. It´s not a top priority thing, but it can be improved to make a outstanding aircraft even better

Fuel distribution:
You mention that the Valves are open when they are horizontal. I thought, that they are open when they are vertical (and in line with the lines drawn on the panel). At least for the Reserve tanks it seems to be that they are only open when the valves are vertical. This is also mentioned in the Document Brian put a link into this thread (it´s a great read btw, I´ll keep this on my HD for the future!).
I still do not fully understand how it works, but Marks description and Brians document will help me here. I´ll just have to tinker with it and practice fuel distribution in my next few flights. It seems like fuel distribution was a little bit of work for the flight engineer especially on longer flights and for sure when one engine stopped working.


Thanks again for your help to both of you

Haha  
No problem at all. I´ll keep my fingers crossed that you never mix that up while in flight... oh well... a 707 performing a knife edge would look pretty spectacular  
AFAIR there was a Pilot doing a barrel roll in a 707 at least, but I´m not sure if it was another plane.

Thanks again for your help. I played around with the Fuel distribution a little bit today, and I think I get a grip on it slowly. Next step will be to go properly through the Checklists and try to plan the fuel amount I need for my flights.