Stagger wing D17 operation manual.

SimTECH Flight Design Ldt.

This manual will attempt to explain the many features of the new Stagger wing release for Microsoft Fs2004 Century of Flight edition.

It is recommended that you do a thorough study of this manual in order to get the best performance and virtual flying enjoyment out of the new Stagger wing D17.

The Stagger wing features many new advancements for simTECH Flight Designs designing team, there are features in this add-on that you will need to get used to and well acquainted with over time to get the fullest benefit from this very advanced flight simulation add-on.

Animation & key commands.

First of all we would like to get you acquainted with the animations of the aircraft. The Stagger wing has many advanced animation features that are not only pleasing to the eye but are an integral part of the performance of the Stagger wing. The Stagger wing has a full-featured engine maintenance bay. You can open and close this at will, there is also opening / closing storage and entry door. On the float version of the Stagger wing you can lower and raise the rear water rudder to better aid you in taxi maneuvers. Followed below are the commands you use to operate these features.

· Open/Close entry door - SHIFT+E

· Open/Close Engine Bay - SHIFT+E

· Open/Close rear storage - SHIFT+E

· Rise and Lower rear pylon rudders - SHIFT+W

There are many other animations that are influenced by the actions of the aircraft it self, Such as shock absorbers, rotating wheels, all obligatory control surfaces. In the virtual cockpit of the Stagger wing the yokes and rudder pedals are animated to give you more of a realism feeling.

In the virtual cockpit there are animated panel controls, which the user operations guide is going to go into for you.

User Operations Guide.

While the majority of the gauges included function just as do their counterparts found in any “stock” FS9 aircraft, a few are unique to the simTECH Stagger wing and bear some explanation. Refer to the diagrams that follow.

Engine controls: These are knobs, rather than the more common levers. In each case, pulling the knob towards you reduces the corresponding setting, while pushing it to the dashboard increases it. To operate these controls in the simulator, click the lower half of the knob to decrease, the upper half to increase the setting. Click and hold for more rapid changes. If you have a mouse with a control wheel, scrolling the wheel up or down while the cursor is over the desired knob will change the corresponding setting. The visual position of each knob gives an indication of the current setting; hovering the cursor over any knob will also show the exact setting in a small pop-up dialogue window.

Landing Gear lever: Clicking the knob will toggle the landing gear setting.

Sim Time & Rate: This appears to be a vintage-era clock, but extra functionality has been added. Hover the cursor over the upper half of the clock to see the current simulator time in digital form; clicking the lower right quadrant will increase the simulation rate one increment, while clicking the lower left will correspondingly decrease the rate.

Panel Switches: While these are not (currently) animated, five of the switches will, when clicked, toggle the indicated aircraft lights. Hovering the cursor over the switches will reveal a pop-up dialogue window detailing which light system is controlled by each; an exception is the ‘all’ light switch, which (as one might expect) toggles every light system at once.

Pitch Trim: This is a vertical dial mounted on the right side of the control yoke. To set the trim nose-up, click (or click and hold) the upper part of the dial; alternately, clicking the lower part will introduce nose-down trim. As with setting the engine controls, you may also use the center mouse wheel while hovering over the dial. The dial itself is animated, as are the external elevator trim tabs.

Flaps Control: The Stagger wing is equipped with two-position flaps. Click the upper part of the handle to raise them, the lower part to lower them. As always, the center mouse wheel may also be used. Hovering over the handle will reveal a popup indicating the current flap setting in degrees. The handle itself is also animated to give an immediate visual cue.

Center Console Enable: Because of the fixed eye point of the virtual cockpit, the control yoke obscures some controls. Clicking any of them (two are depicted in the picture above) will bring up a console pop-up window allowing easy access to all of these otherwise-obscured controls.

Fuel Tank Selector: The Stagger wing has six fuel tanks: one in each wing and two in the fuselage, itself. You may select which tank is in use by clicking the desired tank label; clicking “Off” will, understandably, result in engine shutdown. The fuel gauge (indicated above) registers the number of gallons in the currently selected tank, only. Hovering the cursor over the gauge will reveal a pop-up dialogue giving the exact fuel load for the selected tank.

Flaps Control: For convenience the click able virtual cockpit handle is reproduced here in 2D form. Simply click the upper or lower part of the handle to raise or lower the flaps.

Engine Ignition Panel: For those desiring manual start-up procedures. Click either magneto switch to enable/disable the corresponding magneto; clicking the center button will momentarily engage the engine starter.

Aileron & Rudder Trim: Clicking (or clicking and holding) the left or right half of one of these controls will introduce trim correction in that direction. Alternately, an existing center mouse wheel may be used. The pointer of the selected control will animate to show the current setting; hovering the cursor over the desired control will show the exact amount of trim currently set.

Disable Center Console: Clicking this icon simply removes the console pop-up from view.

Flight Model.

The flight model of this add-on was research quite extensively. When it was decided upon how to build it the decision was made to develop it around the new Fs2004 game engines abilities and ‘simulate ‘ the real characteristics as closely as we could bringing in to play as much real world data that the game engine would allow.

The flight model was made to perform at its best with 100% realism settings. It will perform very well at any other realism settings as well.

The Stagger wing in the mid 1930’s was designed to be a fast and thrilling ‘Hot Rod’ so to speak. The design called for a military class engine, which was then engineered into a very lightweight chassis. The result was performance that even by modern times standards is very decent for the weight class of this plane.

Of course things happen when you combine such a lightweight chassis and military class horsepower, and for the unwary it could be disastrous indeed. One of the characteristics we put into the plane was the well known short take off run the real Stagger wings are known for, you have to be careful, the Stagger wing has way more power ratio then weight so if you gun it to soon the tail wont even lift off the ground, the Stagger wing will go about 40 feet and take off, this could cause a stall and crash. This still happens at air shows today for new pilots to the Stagger wing. Thankfully, the designers engineered in a variable prop. Setting the prop to be lass aggressive in pitch will make the stagger wing a lot easier to take off in a normal fashion. It is recommended you do this before take off at ALL realism settings. Also, hold your joystick slightly forward to keep the Stagger wing from hoping a bit on takeoff; this also is a known characteristic of the Stagger wing.

Practice with the flight model for a good time period and you will soon get the hang of how she wants to be handled, then you will be on your way.

Simtech builds flight models to simulate the real thing as best we can, so they can be a bit tricky to handle until you get the hang of it. Once in the air they are beautiful to fly.

Installation

This add-on will install to the DEFALT DIRECTORY OF Fs9/FLIGHT SIMULATOR 4.

If you have your simulator installed to a different hard drive or directory then tell it where you have your copy of flight simulator 9 and it will install there, or if you want, just create a new folder in any location you wish and install the add-on into that directory and then move the add-on manually to the fs9 location. XP/WIN2K/WIN98/ME uses administrator rights. If you are not the Administrator of your operating system then you may experience problems with the installer not properly extracting the files to the proper place. There for it is DEMANDED that you have yourself set as the administrator of your operating system BEFORE you carry on with the extraction of this add-on.

SimTECH Flight Design Ltd. takes no responsibility for the installer not working correctly if the above is not properly held to.

Disclaimer: simTECH Flight Design Ltd. Builds very detailed and very high quality software. Our standards are set to a very high standard. There for it is necessary to have a computer with adequate power requirements to properly operate this add-on. Industry standard is now a min of 1.6 to 2 gig Pent 4 PROCESSOR/512 SDRM/any newer 3d card with a min of 128 DDS ram. This add-on was tested on a system with these stats, 700MGz P III PROCESSOR/512 SDRM/ ASUS G FORCE 4 128 RAM. On this machine with medium settings in fs9 this add-on runs well. It should there fore run well for you.

Use reasonable settings in your flight sim according to the power out put you actually have. Simtech Flight Design Ldt will not assume any responsibility for damages either real or imagined in any or all cases due to the installation of this product, you install at your own risk. This add-on has been tested on many different beta test computers of many different kinds of set up and none have experience any adverse effects due to the running of this software.

Read the end user agreement in the installer and also in the aircraft it self.

Thank you for your kind support.

We hope to see you again on our next release.

Staff

simTECH Flight Design.Ltd