This Flight Simulator 2000 aircraft was produced with Abacus FS
Design Studio, Aircraft Animator, Custom Panel Designer and Paint Shop Pro.
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Installation:
-Extract the contents of the main zip file S38NC303N.zip into FS2000's Aircraft folder. This should create a structure something like the following:
- c:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\FS2000
--- Aircraft
----- Sikorsky S-38 NC303N
-------- Model
-------- Model.f
-------- Panel
-------- Sound
-------- Texture
-------- Gauges.zip
-Extract the contents of the Gauges.zip file into the FS2000 gauges folder. There are 11 gauges not provided in FS2000. You may already have downloaded some of these, so if you are asked if you want to replace an existing gauge, you can say no.
-Once these files are extracted, Flight Simulator should exhibit two new entries under Aircraft/Select Aircraft on the menu bar:
--Sikorsky S-38 NC303N
--Sikorsky S-38 NC303N Float
The first plane has retractable gear and is not an amphibian. If you retract the gear and land on most water surfaces, the plane will detect a crash. However, you can taxi the plane into the water near an airport with the gear down. From there you can do a realistic water takeoff by selecting the second plane, which will bob into flying boat position.
The second plane is defined as a float plane. The gear are retracted permanently, but the plane lands and takes off on water, within certain 'flattened' scenery areas. The water around Meigs field in Chicago is an example. The plane will also land on a runway, burying itself in the concrete but remaining viable.
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Flying the S-38:
The plane requires that the engines be started separately (Ctrl-E). They seem to take a lot of cranking. The S-38 had only a tail skid, so handling on the ground is best accomplished with both differential thrust (select left engine with E1, right engine E2) and differential braking (F11 and F12). Using brakes only, it takes a long time to turn the plane around, in many short stop-and-start segments.
When on the ground, use the flap controls (F8 open, F5 close) to open the cockpit windows, passenger hatch, cabin access ladder, and passenger hand hold post.
In flight, the model is a pretty good approximation of actual performance. You should get about 6 hours' cruise at 110 mph at 7500 feet. Top speed is a little higher than the actual 125 mph. The model will climb on one engine at about 300fpm.
The default .air files use constant-speed manual adjust propellors. I provided 3 alternate .air files: Sikorsky S-38 NC303N.airFixPitchProp, Sikorsky S-38 NC303N.airCSManualProp, and Sikorsky S-38 NC303N.airCSAutoAdjProp if you would like to experiment. They differ only in the prop type parameter. The Fixed Pitch .air file may be more realistic, as the actual S-38 advertised cruise at 1750 rpm, 110 mph. However, it requires that the throttle be cracked when starting, and the engines shut off on the ground if you take the throttle to zero. The engine selection seems to occasionally favor one side or the other, and I sometimes have to use keystrokes E-1-2 to select both and get the joystick throttle to affect both symmetrically again.
The fuel selector knob seems to disappear occasionally if you use an engine selection command. Click on it to make it re-appear.
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Known issues:
-Gear retract struts do not remain in contact with wheel hub during travel. I do not know how to accomplish that, so instead the retract struts roughly follow along during the retract cycle and catch up at the end.
-Panel layout not accurate. The gauges roughly correspond to a layout on the Cleveland Model plans. Landing gear hydraulic pressure gauges were omitted. Their place in the middle was taken by the left and right fuel gauges, which were originally at the left and right ends of the panel. Fuel selector, attitude gauge, and radio are fictitious. Magneto switches were actually on a console below the panel. Gear lever would have been on the floor.
-Colors. Only black-and-white photos of NC303N are available, so the bottom of the hull may not have been blue, but rather any dark color. The orange visibility stripe on top of the wing is surmised from other Sikorskys, but I don't know if NC303N had one.
-Frame rates. I occasionally experience disturbances in the scenery painting, particularly if the transparent prop disks occupy a lot of screen real estate. I run Flight Simulator 2000 on a Pentium 3 850mhz and 256 meg of RAM, with scenery set at Very Dense, and it is generally OK.
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Authorship:
The visual model is completely original. It is based on plans obtained from Cleveland Model and Supply, Cleveland, OH. Gene Kunkle provided a beautiful Northwest logo and helpful photographs, as well as the suggestion to model NC303N in the first place.
The flight model is based originally on a model by Alexander Belov, with S-38 characteristics derived from "Sea Wings" (Doubleday, 1972) by Edward Jablonski.
Additionally, I attempted to incorporate some data using the "One Percent" spreadsheet published by the 714 group at http://home.socal.rr.com/flighttest. That spreadsheet is mostly for CFS, but I did use some numbers it generated.
The panel bitmap is original, and an approximation.
Half the gauges are standard with FS2000, and half come from other designers, including Chuck Dome's Rstart1 and Rstart2, Icky Berlein's red needle gauges, and the HGHB fuel selector from Abacus Custom Panel Designer's Bonus Gauges.
I consulted many tutorials in building this model. David Eckert provides tutorials on almost every facet of FSDS development at www.daviator.com. Jerry Beckwith explains .air file parameters at the 714th flight test center. Tom Goodrick explains flight dynamics at http://www.flightsimdownloads.com/pub/FlightDynamics.pdf. Marcelo Canovas Vera and Felix J Rodriguez explain how to make a prop disk at http://www.freeflightdesign.com. Erick Cantu provided helpful textures in aluminum.zip. I am amazed that so many people have given so much of their time.
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Background:
The Sikorsky S-38 was called "Conqueror of the Caribbean" as it served the rapidly expanding Pan American routes from 1929 into the 1930s.
Charles Lindbergh flew the S-38 in surveying the Caribbean routes for Juan Trippe. The S-38 was purchased by many other airlines, including Inter-Island Airways of Hawaii, Northwest Airways of Minnesota, Colonial Western, and Canadian Airways, as well as the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marines.
Adventurer Martin Johnson purchased a special S-38, painted it in zebra stripes, christened it "Osa's Ark" (after his wife) and employed it in Africa making documentary movies in the 1930s. He also used a companion Sikorsky amphibian S-39 "Spirit of Africa", which his wife flew.
An S-38 owned by Papua Oil Development Company was sunk by a crocodile in New Guinea in 1937. The plane collided with the reptile while landing on the Kikori River.
The S.C. Johnson Company (Johnson's Wax) had an S-38 replica built which duplicated H.F. Johnson's pioneering expedition to Brazil in 1935. The "Carnauba" was flown from Racine, WI to Fortaleza, Brazil and back in October and November of 1998.
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References:
Joseph Juptner, 'US Civil Aircraft Vol. 2', Aero Publishers 1964
Edward Jablonski, 'Sea Wings - The Romance of the Flying Boats', Doubleday 1972
William J. Horvat, 'Above the Pacific', Aero Publishers 1966
Boris Sergievsky, 'Airplanes, Women, and Song', Syracuse University Press 1999
John W. R. Taylor, 'Sikorsky', Tempus 1998
Richard C. Knott, 'The American Flying Boat', Naval Institute Press 1979
"Spirit of Adventure" http://www.scjcarnauba.com/plane.htm - The S-38 reproduction of 1998.
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This model is freeware. The gauges are copyrighted and are the property of the gauge designers.
All comments and suggestions welcome.
E-mail: george_diemer@msn.com
