Blackbird Sims / Milviz Forum Archive

So I'm flying my Saber, RAF colors, headed out to run the "Mach Loop" using ORBX EU-England & EU-Wales scenery.

Under normal circumstances, in the real world, I read somewhere that some tactical aircraft usually don't draw fuel from their wing tanks on takeoff and landing - depending on how the aircraft's few system is set up. So I had started my flight with just the internal tanks selected, meaning to switch to the wing tanks once I was "established" airborne.

Of course I forgot.

I'm about half way across England and I'm at 10K internal fuel. So I switch to the wing tanks. After a few minutes I realize that forgetting to switch the tanks–would impact the "mission" as I had planned on dropping the tanks before I flew the Mach Loop low level. I could still do it but wouldn't have enough gas to get home. Time to scrub the mission, head back to the barn and try again. For "fun" I dropped the tanks even tough they still had a lot of gas (or petrol since I was flying an RAF jet).

That's when the engine quit. At the time I didn't know why - I just did the emergency procedure for an airborne restart - right out of the pilot's handbook…nothing…tried again…nothing. That's odd…I had done a relight before when I accidentally turned off the engine - works as advertised…but not this time

At this point I was "running out of altitude and ideas" and couldn't make it to the newest runway. So I set the flaps to full - found a grassy area and did a belly landing (I figured it would be asking too much of the landing gear).

The result: So the good news is that the belly landing feature works.

I think the reason wouldn't restart was because I had not switched from the wing tanks on the fuel control panel after I jettisoned the tanks.

Still I'm scratching my head on this one. When the tanks run dry the light comes on and fuel begins to be taken from the internal tanks, automatically. I guess that is not the case if you purposefully drop the tanks while they are still the engine's fuel source, i.e. no tanks=no fuel=flame out. I also think that had I switched back to the internal tanks after the flame out, the emergency relight procedure would have worked.

Thoughts?

Will investigate this one.

Investigate? Yikes! I thought this was a feature–and a cool one at that–not a bug. That's why I put it in this Forum, not Support.

I was just sharing my discovery of this feature.

Well....Technically the external tanks don't feed directly to the engine as I recall. They feed to the fuselage tanks. So....

JonathanBleeker wrote:Technically the external tanks don't feed directly to the engine as I recall. They feed to the fuselage tanks. So....

…As near as I can tell its a "kind-of/sort-of" thing.

I took off with tanks but kept the fuel/jettison switch to all off. Sure enough my internal fuel gauge started to go down…fast. (BTW this beast eats a bunch of gas to takeoff and get up to speed) Then it stopped at 2200 lbs. It didn't move for a good 10 minutes. The wing tanks feeding the internal tanks automatically?

I switched the wing tanks on. Eventually they went dry - light came on - and the internal fuel gauge starts to move down again.

I tried another tank jettison while they still had fuel and got another flame out. I switched wing external tanks to off, went through the rest of the procedures and got a relight. That said, I may have messed up my air relight switchology last time…so the external tank switch may not have been the problem.

Regardless, I'm still considering this a "feature" and not a bug. For those occasions were you need to punch off the tanks before they are dry, I would think switching fuel/jettison switch to All Off and then use the Jettison Bombs Rockets Tanks button.