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Pidgen Single Seater Biplane

Pidgen Bi-Plane

The Pidgen is a classic, lightweight single seater biplane.
Easy to fly, easy to land, long potential range!


Specs:
Mass: 702
Top Speed: 140 MPH
Fuel Capacity: 470L refillable
Range: 300-700KM (see below)
Power: Small Engine

Controls:
W/S - Pitch
A/D - Roll
L/R - Yaw and gear steering
Down - Wheel brakes (use trim ALT key for parking)
1 - Throttle Down
2 - Throttle Up
6 - Takeoff Gearing

Features
Altitude Hold,
Heading Hold,
Roll stabilisation,
Heater,
Fuel connector on belly of aircraft
Electrical connector for charging on belly
Simple range calculator
Odo (KM)

Instructions and Getting Started:
1. Get in plane
2. Turn ignition key (this will give power to systems and maintain minimum throttle) and press starter
3. The plane will creep forward at a very slow speed use the down key to apply brake to stop it
4. Increase throttle to taxi and use left and right keys to steer on tarmac.
5. Increase throttle to full and pull up when the tail lifts. On liftoff the plane torques/banks may bank to the left. Enable the take-off gear to reduce this effect



Fuel Economy, Range, Speed and Landing

In normal level flying, at full throttle range of the aircraft is around 330KM at a speed of 140MPH.
The minimum throttle for maintaining flight in regular flying is 0.6, speed will drop to around 80-100mph (fluctuating with attitude) and the range of the aircraft will increase to around 600KM.
Plane can be flown with the Take off Gear/WEP, top speed will increase to 160mph, but range will drop to 90km (about 30 minutes of runtime)

Landing
Thanks to the low weight landing is easy and requires little space. Set the roll stabiliser on, get lined up and kill the throttle, the plane come down gently. Hold the down key to apply the brakes, the plane will come to a stop in a short distance



Notes:
-Make use of the trim function on the pitch. Plane is fairly tail heavy. Typically set 0.3-0.4 works well for most scenarios.
- The batteries slowly drain with ignition left on
- Batteries slowly drain at engine idle with throttle below 0.25.
- The autopilot features are quite aggresive, PIDs could do with some more tuning
- Heading hold tries to turn around when crossing South threshold (I'm not very good at maffs sorry)
- Happy to hear any suggestions and improvements