[INTRODUCTION]
This is the Seruphum Turboprop multi platform aircraft. This model features retracting landing gear, steering nose gear, dynamic shine, working elevons and spoilerons, retracting skystair, retracting rear loading ramp, working suspension, and custom panel. The panel features a nose down window in the front floor area for high angle STOL approaches.


[ABOUT THE SERUPHUM DELTA WING CONCEPT]
The Seruphum Delta Wing concept was born years ago as an inexpensive solution to an airborn ambulance for 3rd world countries that required a Med-Evac aircraft that had the durability of a Land Rover but the cost of an Economic Chevrolet. The principal is based partially on a lifting body that utilises a stressed inner frame and semi non stressed composite skins that are fitted over the inner frame sub assembly. In theory, it is designed and constructed similarly to the Land Rover and the Lotus Esprit, having a seperate structure that takes the main loads instead of the body structure. Think of a bird that has a skeletal structure.

The inner frame structure is comprised of 2 runners longitudinally that are made up of flat honey comb composite structures that are formed into 3 sided beams that run front to rear. From that, all components are attached to it. Near the end of the construction phase, the composite skins are fitted and bonded to the assembly and foam is injected into certain celled areas which create a very strong multi composite structure. One of the attributes for such a form of structure and its assembly, is being able to start the assembly on interior components, landing gear, wire loom, etc before there is a skin around the structure, instead of starting out with a skin and working your way in. This greatly enhances the process of assembly making access to normally difficult components very open and easily fitted and aligned as well as tested. You would note that some of these process' are borrowed from automotive assembly procedures based also on 'sub assemblies' that are fitted in packages, like the Land Rover Range Rover Classic's previous form of assembly.

The shape of the Seruphum Delta is based on the requirement of having enough room to stand up, and large enough to carry an emergency room as well as being a cargo plane and an executive class bizjet. Thus the solution was chosen to go with a rectangular cross section shaped fuselage. However such a roomy fuselage would normally mean alot of drag, This concept went into the direction of incorporating the fuselage into a lifting body, which also minimizes the wing area usually needed for such weight. Thus what I came up with was a wedged lifting body hull that has smallish delta wings that act as a massive STOL feature when coming in at high angle approaches.

Information on the operation of the Sky Stair and Rear Loading Ramp are below.


[INSTALLATION]
Scan your zipped folder with an anti virus program.
Unzip your download into a temporary holding folder.
Navigate into your Seruphum folder and locate the Guages folder.
Copy/Paste or Drag/Drop your guages (without their guages folder) into the main Guages folder in FS2004 or FS9.
Go back to your Seruphum folder,
Copy/Paste or Drag/Drop your Seruphum Aircraft folder into the main Aircraft folder in FS2004 or FS9.
You are ready to fly.
If you are missing instruments, then you might have put the entire guages folder into the Guages folder in FS,
or you didnt place the guages in there to begin with by mistake.


[FLYING THE DELTA WING SERUPHUM]
Upon Takeoff, rotation occurs at roughly 70 knots and lift off shortly after.
Landing can be done with moderate 'nose up' or when flying straight in... Low speeds will require nose up and shouldnt come near or below 70 knots or you will stall and drop in. You can ride the Seruphum at 70 knots with throttle and up nose, but power will usually cause alt. gain. Try to keep your airspeed at 75+ knots and you should be ok. When you are right on the deck and near 70 knots, go ahead and raise the nose and she will settle to the runway with ease.

Use full flaps and airbrakes [/ spoilers] together for maximum air-braking for STOL landings. (Touching down in a bird this big at 70 knots is actually quite good). I should wish to say that a true delta wing doesnt have flaps, only a mixture of elevons which are both elevators and ailerons. I hope to retune the air.file someday to a more realistic 'feel' of a delta wing. I had included airbrakes that act also as spoilerons just for that purpose. The airbrakes work with the elevons to kill lift on the wing that is dipping down. These however are designed to be moderately powerful for the purpose of landing on short fields in the use of being a Med Evac and mobile deployable hospital plane.

I have installed a Air-Brake light in the center pylon on the perspex in the cockpit which turns yellow when your airbrakes are on. There is also one located on both Panel Pods to alert you as to if you have left your Air-Brakes on.

A note on flying a delta wing with turbo props. The turbo prop turbine engine idles high during flight. Low idle is only for taxing purposes. Thus your airspeed will not bleed off as with a prop engine. This is done incase of a missed approach and emergency power is suddenly needed, as jets take a moment to 'spool' up, thus they have a high idle in flight. Thus, the Seruphum Delta comes in fast. You will need to lower your airspeed with airbrakes and flaps and try also not to come in at too high an angle. As with the Lear, the Concord, and several other such jets, you have to calculate for slowing down due to the superb aerodynamics of the craft.


[PANEL]
The interior of the Seruphum cockpit is quite a new world in aircraft architecture, born of both modern Glass Cockpit instrumentation technologies, as well as the need of a rectangular profile fuselage which then required the body to be a lift generating shape, thus a wedged nose. Further more, for the sake of safety, the nose floor in the farthest forward area has a Plexiglass panel for seeing through the floor of the nose upon steep nose-up approaches. Where the Concord approaches with her nose folded down, the Seruphum is equiped with the window feature so that your eyes never have to leave the runway and you may remain comfortably seated without having to lean forward looking over the panel.

The original design of the instrumentation is as follows,
Pilot and Copilot instrumentation pods that have a keyboard and a new 24 inch by 8 inch glass panel or screen,
Joystick controls,
A low center mounted mounted 17 inch by 20 inch monitor glass panel that goes through various flight systems, etc,
And the overhead and center panel consoles arrayed with the various switches and controls.

The approach is born from both the space shuttle, common sense in theories of futuristic instrumentation layouts, and admittedly a touch of science fiction. The keyboard feature would enable better 'input' for pilots when programming their FMC information. A standard keyboard seems like a natural 'next step' in the cockpit as well as integration of such systems through these devices.

As with all other panels in FS, Shift/2 thru Shift/9 pulls up the various sub panels such as autopilot, your avionics stack, etc. There are two diffrent versions of Pilot personal instrument pods. One is the regular instrumentation panel, and the second, which is Shift/9 is the Glass panel. Click the left readout 2 times and the far right readout one click and you'll have all your crafts readouts on 4 glass screens.

List of panels pull ups.
Shift 1,,,,Main Interior
Shift 2....GPS
Shift 3....Throttle Quad
Shift 4....Auto Pilot
Shift 5....Analouge Main Panel
Shift 6....Avionics Stack
Shift 7....MFD
Shift 8....PFD
Shift 9....Glass Panel

Note that if you are wanting to just look around on a long trip, you can pull down the instruments pod and bring up the MFD or PFD, which pop up in the far left lower corner out of site and out of the way of the lower floor windscreen. This gives you your heading, speed, etc without clutter.

Note; The Seruphum Delta is designed to utilise thrust/prop reversers for backing up on paved airfields. Damage can occur to the turbines without proper shielding when reversing from a dead stop on a gravel field.


[PASSENGER DOOR AND REAR LOADING RAMP]
The Door is opened with Shift/E, and the Ramp is lowered with Shift/E/2. Yes, there is a cool loading ramp that drops down and enables moderately fast loading and unloading of the aircraft. As with the primary and original design based around being a Med Evac vehicle, the ramp served to enable people being brought onboard with stretchers without having a special side door and difficult ingress up stairs.

Just as well, the regular 'Sky Stair' has a built in telescoping set of panel steps that retract. The height of the seruphum is slightly high. This is because this particular version is fitted with turbo prop blades that are large in diameter and hang under the rear of the wings. Upon rotation for takeoff, the main gear must be high in order to keep the propellars from contacting the ground, thus you have a plane that sets up high. It is quite a neat feature I believe and gives the Seruphum a slightly Concord look from the side view.

[PROPELLORS/NACELLES]
This aircraft being designed for lowcost pusher props in the entry into the aircraft market is equipped with the most latest technology composite propellors possible. The profile is reminiscent of the LHX experimental military helicopters main rotors that are designed for maximum efficiency and yet provide an incredibly low noise frequency. Incorporated into that further is small tuneable prop entry deflectors at the trailing edges of the wings to eliminate the effects of high frequency noise caused be a turbo prop engine mounted aft of the wing. (The Beechcraft Starship had a rather loud propellor noise which was caused by this phenominon).

Furthermore, to incorporate pushers with a jet turbine system, I needed to have the engine in the front of the Nacelle engine pod 'and' have the main gear fold up inside with it as well. To do this required a drive shaft that runs along the inside top of the pod and over the landing gear when its folded up inside the Nacelle. The exhaust also is piped accross the top and exits through the middle of the prop spinner so as to not cause heat related airflow problems with the propellors.


[ABOUT MYSELF]
I am a former car designer, product designer, and artist with a massive enthusiasm for flying, and aircraft design. I reside in Phoenix Arizona and hope to one day get my private pilots license. It was my hopes that Microsoft would have come out with some interesting furturistic aircraft designs with the newest Flight Simulator. Perhaps that might happen with the next version of simulator. I have a website that features alot of my sim aircraft I have done in the past as well as some projects I have worked on; www.lionheartcreations.com

If you have any input or you are having any problems with installing this plane, please email me and I will try to help out as much as possible. My email address is william@lionheartcreations.com

I hope you enjoy flying this plane and I hope to hear from you on your input if you would like to share. I only wish it were a better quality model as I have just learned Gmax. This model was tested on a P4 computer and functioned well. I cannot be held reliable for anything that might occur to your computer when flying this airplane.

The concept of the Seruphum Delta Wing and its sister concepts are property of William Ortis, Lionheart Creations Ltd.

Repainting of this plane is welcome. I only ask that you ackowledge my name.

Take care and Gods blessings.
(Wise men still seek Him)