I have been gifted a model of an A-440M. the benefactor wishes to remain annonymus.
I have done a quick conversion into AC and scaled it to the right size.
it looks like this in game:-

Images removed - no longer relevent

It looks a fairly low poly model, has no contol surfaces and no interior or doors. the question is, can we turn it in to something worthwhile?
If the answer is yes then I'll begin working on its FDM and then pass it on for the model to get fixed to who ever can fix it ( animations, doors and control surfaces etc. )

Is it texture mapped? Looks pretty worthwhile to me with a little sprucing up!

VooDoo

nope, no texture mapping.

Hi StuartC

I have an old version modeled by Guillaume CHAUVAT but since abandoned.

A400 By G.CHAUVAT

Regards Emmanuel

Thank you Helijah, i will chheck that one out when i am back home tomorrow.

Very exciting indeed!

Ok, going to go with the one helijah has offered.

Its needing a lot of work and its a non flying aircraft as it is.
Animations are present but are all out of whack.
Currently writing a new FDM to see if i can get it to fly.

Checked out Emmanuel's offering as well...it looks very promising!!

VooDoo

First attempt on the FDM didnt go too well.
Looking at he original FDM - the prop diameter was over 8mt !!!

Well i have had it actually flying, so thats progress I suppose.

Flying is *GOOD*!!

Beats "plummeting" every time.

Can't wait to fly it.

VooDoo

Its a long way off flying properly though.

Uploaded a version to the development hanger so others can chip in and fix bits.
Theres a list on its download page of what need fixing tht I cant fix.

The FDM is flyable. Take off is still too high at roughly 160kt, but its High Altitude cruise is only 10kt shy of what they claim it can do. I can squeeze 410kt out at 29000ft, they claim 420kt.
Its fuel payload is correct, but its not tested for range yet.

Im still working on the FDM Les. I basically came to an end last night with a stonking headache and uploaded it as far as I had got.

As far as the weight is concerned, the beastie is neutrally ballanced without fuel in the tanks at the moment. If i made the front any lighter, it would be tail heavy in low fuel situations = fatal upon landing.
As the saying goes - A nose heavy aircraft may fly badly, but a tail heavy aircraft will fly once..........

The weight data im working from shows :-
Empty weight: 76,500 kg (168,654 lb) ; operating weight - I take this is the weight including fuel load since it says "Operating weight"
Max takeoff weight: 141,000 kg (310,852 lb)
Fuel capacity: 50,500 kg (111,330 lb) internal fuel - I subtracted this from the operating weight to arrive at a figure close to the basic weight of the aircraft.

The Original FDM ( from the original author ) had the Operating weight as the aircrafts basic weight then its fuel load on top of that.

If i can find more accurate data on the number and positions of it internal tanks and their capacities the ballance issues will be more realistic. Currently its using 2 internal wing tanks and a fuselage tank all holding the same ammount of fuel ( total capacity / 3 ).
Did you reupload the Dev version with the current fixes? If not, please do, and remove what you fixed from the fixit list.

Tonight Im working on the Gazelle release. once thats done im back n the FDM for this.

Bollocks. I linked the wrong image. And it wont let me edit it, and it deleted the topic.
Im going back to bed to start again...........

Restored most of the topic. Wont let me restore les's last post. if someone else can try please. You can leave my last post with the cutaway deteled as it the wrong one.

StuartC wrote:
I should have posted a notice up about the improved FDM and animation fixes, they're in the development uploads as of,( Pacific time )late last night.

Well in it's FDM there's always the weight of the engines, in this case over 16,000 pounds worth that should be subtracted from the "dry weight".

I've tried taking off with all sorts of fdm fixes to try and imrove the take off speed. It seems to not want to part with terra firma with it's present wing area and weight at less than 140 knots.

That's too damn fast in my book. So I subtracted 16,000 pounds from the base weight and have tried with half full tanks and now you can just squeak a 120 knot take off out of it. I suspect the real thing can do a fully loaded pop-off at about 100 knots. There is a large amount of lift to the fuselage that is never accounted for in YASim aircraft, so I added an <mstab> entry to emulate this. It's slightly better now The animation fixes includes the RGB file link, ( Can we get VooDoo to convert this? )

I like this aircraft a lot.

The dry weight of each engine should be 4,167 lb.
Its possible I forgot to edit that in the last FDM though ( i have had several break beyond repair for no reason ).
Yasim takes the engine weight as a ballast point and the weight is a part of the total aircraft weight, it doesnt add the engine weight on to the defined weight of the aircraft.
The FDM thats in use is just called a400m.xml, the other one is a saved very basic working FDM that i can fall back on if the active FDM breaks again. Strangely enough, the basic FDM could take off at 100kt............

Engine data:-

www.europrop-int.com/pages/tp400/technical_details.htm

Is there any mention of how much thrust is added to by the downward deflected exhaust pipes? Most turboprops get a portion of their forward thrust from this, and at 10,000 shaft horsepower I suspect it's not an insignificant contribution.