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Cessna Engine will not engage with autostart

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Cessna Engine will not engage with autostart

Postby barriebarry » Fri Jan 29, 2021 3:50 pm

I'm still rather new with FG and love the program, however, with my recent install of the latest has suddenly prevented me for getting the engine to engage. It did work the first time I did the tutorials however when I tried it on my own guidance (memory) it never starts and I get the message to use the primer. So I restart the program and use instead the auto-start option, the engine still won't engage and I get the primer message. I try again the tutorial and still no go. My guess is I probably made a mistake in the start sequence when I attempted it by memory and therefore the engine rightfully shouldn't start. However, FG seems to be remembering this mistake and applying it to each new attempt. How do I clear any previous settings to give FG a clean start? I really don't wont to do a fresh install unless I have to. And to clarify, the "s" does cause the starter to work and the prop does turn but the engine never catches.

I'm using Windows 10 and FG 2020.3.5. I can upload the fgfs log file but I don't see the option here in making this post.

Also, I have been using the default start location which is some airport in the USA. I then tried my local airport in Ontario and got the same.
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Re: Cessna Engine will not engage with autostart

Postby wlbragg » Fri Jan 29, 2021 5:43 pm

When it tells you to use the primer then you should pump the primer 3 times. Watch the count in the tool tip and make sure it gets to 3. About 20% power and make sure the fuel selector is switched on. Mags should automatically switch to two if using the key or s to start.
Auto start should always start the aircraft unless your beyond altitude limits of the aircraft. It doesn't remember what you did on previous sessions as far as starting it. But it does have settings for realism where you have to keep clean fuel and correct oil, if those are turned on then that could cause issues if your not caring for the aircraft in the proper way and have low oil or water in the gas.
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Re: Cessna Engine will not engage with autostart

Postby barriebarry » Sun Jan 31, 2021 5:49 pm

The problem is solved: the Aircraft Options "Complex engine procedures and failures" was selected. I unselected that and clicked the "Repair" button, then the Autostart worked - first time ever for me. And then I did a manual start and this too worked.... after the prescribed number of primes of course. So why that particular option was selected, I'm not sure. Maybe because I went through the pre-flight tutorial which required me to check the fuel color. Anyhow, now I'm off flying :D .

A message to the developers: FG is a fantastic piece of software and more like art! I do enjoy how real it is trying to be, but maybe too real for the beginner! So please add to the messages when autostart fails, a hint as to why. Or make sure the Aircraft Options "Complex engine procedures and failures" doesn't get turned on by default and when it is turned on, give warning to the newbies like me. FG needs some sort of "beginner" and "advanced" mode selection. I'm sure there have been many others who simply gave up on FG for these sort of first time user experiences.
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Re: Cessna Engine will not engage with autostart

Postby wlbragg » Sun Jan 31, 2021 7:05 pm

Not bad advice, but coming from a position of being one of those developers. It is really hard to anticipate every potential pitfall a user might fall into. We do think about it at some point and try to anticipate these things. For example, the auto-start, that is what it is there for, start this aircraft no matter what, I just want to go fly, right. So when it doesn't, we want to know why. As far as I know, complex procedures shouldn't have hung you up once you hit the auto-start. Any chance you can provide the steps to reproduce this behavior?

Complex procedures is opt in and not on by default.
Auto-start does a repair and is supposed to set every parameter to achieve starting the engine, no mater what conditions are set including altitude up to max ceiling.

So this should have not happened in the first place.
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Re: Cessna Engine will not engage with autostart

Postby barriebarry » Tue Feb 02, 2021 3:35 am

So I managed to repeat the process and it was what I suspected. The pre-flight inspection tutorial enabled the "Complex engine procedures and failures" option and it got checked very shortly after the tutorial started. And this fits exactly to when I started to experience the failure to start the engine, even with autostart. Kudo's to the developers since the behaviour of the engine suggested to me that there was trouble with the fuel including not able to idle and the engine rev'ing up momentarily right after catching and then immediately dying out. So I started googling for flight gear fuel problems and it was from the Cessna's wiki page that gave me the hint there was a setting for such a thing. In the Q and A section of Why will the engine not start?, it was written.... "If fuel contamination is activated...." and this sent me searching for this setting.

In conclusion, all is good now and I would revise my recommendation that the autostart procedure check that the "Complex engine procedures and failures" is dissabled. Better still, prevent the tutorial from turning it on.

One other item that confused me was how to reset FG back to all default settings. I found the "autosave_2020_3.xml" file which someone had suggested was the saved settings but deleting this did not restore back to defaults. The selection of the aircraft options seem to be saved somewhere else.
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Re: Cessna Engine will not engage with autostart

Postby wkitty42 » Tue Feb 02, 2021 2:26 pm

the autosave file is for all the sim settings... nothing more...

in the same directory where you found the autosave file, there is also an aircraft-data directory... inside there you should find c172p.xml... this file contains the c172p settings IF you have enabled "save craft state" in the c172p options in the in-sim F10 menu... if you delete/remove that file, the c172p's settings will be returned to defaults the next time you load the sim with it...
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