Photorealistic FS2002 DHC-2 Beaver panel
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By Jean-Pierre Langer and Arne Bartels
Original photos by Larry Smith
July 2003
General
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As usual, I love 2D panel with cockpit views. So, when I found
Larry Smith great Beaver pictures I asked him if he would agree
to let me use them for a reworked version of his great panel.
Which he did. So here it is with three different type of gauges :
1) Specially made gauges for this Beaver according the photos
made by Larry Smith. Some modifications: the altimeter has
2 settings: Mb and Inches of mercury to satisfy all pilots.
2) The radios are the King Silver Crown series made by Gerd R. Nehr
as I found them more realitic than the defalt FS2002 because
they are off when the plane is loaded and you must switch them
on.
3) The GPS is a Garmin type GPS made by Ike H Slack from Coyote
Avionics Design 2001 as on the pictures this GPS was installed
on the real plane.
This panel is suitable for the Yannick Lavigne-Fred Banting Beavers
as well as for the Steven Grant Beavers as they both use the same
fuel tank system.
Air file
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These panels work with both DHC-2 aircrafts, but depending the
air file, the Engine fuel pressure (entry 545) does not match
the real values shown on my gauge, with a maximum around 5 psi.
If you want to have it matching, you have to edit entry 545
and set the value to 750 instead of 5760 (40 psi).
Special features:
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The principle used for that panel is to have a main panel with all
instruments and radios seen by the pilot with a small outside view,
and a second panel suitable for landing and VFR flying and looking
around. This second panel has less instruments and no radios but the
radios remain accessible with the usual SimIcon button opening a
subpanel.
Note that the radios have to been switched on to function.
If you want to set the barometric pressure, just click on the alimeter
for a zoom on it, set the pressure and click on the center of the
enlarged altimeter to close it. This feature works on both normal
and landing panels.
If you want an enlarged view of the fuel quantity, click on the SimIcon
representing a fuel pump. Click on the center of the enlarged fuel
quantity gauge to close it. This feature works on both normal and
landing panels.
For navigation, normally, the original plane had no VOR, nor ADF.
This is visible on the original pictures which show the extensive
use of a complemetary GPS of Garmin type. So the idea was to keep
the original look and add for FS2002 users the minimum of old type
navigation aids. So the VOR1, ADF, and even a DME have been added
to the plane.
To activate the GPS, just click on its screen in either panel to
make appear an enlarged view on the bottom left side of the screen.
To close it click on the Garmin sign on the top center of the GPS.
The DME is visible on the panel.
As he GPS hides the usual location of ADF and VOR1 indicators, these
gauges appear in the center of the panel, under the thrust controls
where they hide the engine instruments.
You also can check your flight time with the Hourmeter gauge which
stores in the DHC2_Hours.fhr file located in your FS2002/gauges
folder your flight time.
Two panels
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The simmers can choose between two panel configurations. The first
one uses an old type gyro-compass and the second one uses standard
directionnal gyro and has an autopilot installed.
For convenience, I have replaced in the gyro-compass panel the
standard ADF indicator by a RMI where the single needle is the VOR
needle and the double the ADF one.
The gyro-compass panel has the standard airspeed in mph and the
directionnal gyro panel the airspeed gauge in knots.
You can switch from MPH to KTS airspeed by editing the panel.cfg
file where you search the lines like the following one.
gaugeNN=DHC2_Instr!Airspeed_XXX, ....
According the unit you prefer, change the _XXX letters either
to _Kts, or _Mph. That's all.
Installation
------------
Unzip the complete archive in a temporary folder and you will get the
following items :
Unzip the Gauges.zip file in a temporary folder and put all .gau
files in the main FS2002/gauges folder. Keep the text files in
a safe place as it's the gauges documentation.
Unzip the Common_panel.zip file in a temporary folder which you will
rename "panel". In this folder are all cockpit views and all other
common bitmaps used in the panel.
Unzip the Gyro_Compass_panel.zip in a temporary folder, as well as
the Dir_Gyro_panel.zip in a second temporary folder. These folders
will keep all specific elements of each separate panel.According
the panel you want to use, put the content of one of one of this
folder in the "panel" folder where all other panel elements are
stored.
Replace the content of your favorite Beaver panel folder with
the elements of your new "panel" folder (after previous backup).
If you want to check both panels, just put in the "panel" folder
all specific bitmaps of the both panels, but not the panel.cfg
files which are different. Make copies of each panel.cfg file
using a different name as backup, for instance panel_1.cfg and
panel_2.cfg. Then put a panel.cfg renamed copy of one of these
files in your "panel" folder. Fly with one panel then replace
the panel.cfg file by the second one and test the second panel.
Choose the one you prefer.
Unzip the Beaver_Panel_Documentation.zip file in a temporary
folder and look at the documentation pictures.
Credits
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Al my thanks to the simmers who helped me and contributed to this
realization:
- Arne Bartels for his continous help in programming gauges.
arne.bartels@nwn.de
- Larry Smith for the pictures and informations about the Beaver
bushpilot30@onlink.net
- Gerd R. Nehr for his great Bendix/King Silver Crown radios
GAT24 GmbH, Aviation's Butler, Berliner Allee 11-21
Flughafen Gebaüde, D-66482 Zweibrücken, Germany - www.gat24.de
- Ike H Slack from Coyote Avionics Design 2001 for his Garmin type
GPS which changes from the usual FS2002 GPS and looks as the
real thing
Copyright
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This panel is freeware and may not be distributed in any commercial
support without prior authorisation from the authors.
Don't forget to have a look at the documentation folder as well as
the documentation files of the gauges.
