Classic British Flight Sim

Contrails have nothing do do with being jets

All will contrail given the right altitude and conditions

I have see Viscounts, Britannia, Hercs, Electras AN.12 Vanguards contrail.

I don't think FS contrailing was the normal thing at the time of the Vanguard models making

Garry

Pistons will contrail in the right conditions as well. Think of all of the WWII footage of bombers at 20,000+ feet and the massive contrails following behind.

Tomb had already mentioned the pistons trailing but wondered about TP.....which is why I mentioned the types I did

As I said All will contrail given the right altitude and conditions.

Garry

You can say that again.....

Whoops... browsed through the topic and missed Tomb's (in the middle of the scroll, now adjusted so I don't skip over it anymore).

I do believe that within FS you can get contrails on any aircraft by adding the following line into the Aircraft.CFG under the [GeneralEngineData] section -

max_contrail_temperature=-39.0

The temperature is in degrees C and the default setting for turbine (jet) aircraft is -39.0 and it will not show in turboprops or pistons unless that line is present. Once you add that line though, they'll appear clear as day. Being that both turboprops and pistons have a lower EGT than Turbines, I would revise the value warmer by a bit to something like -33.0 for turboprops and -25.0 for pistons as the water in the exhaust will condense out at a much higher temperature than with turbines.

Piston engines need to have contrails added manually to the aircraft.cfg:

In the [GeneralEngineData] section, add this line...
max_contrail_temperature=-39.0

From the Container SDK:

Ambient temperature, in Celsius, in which engine vapor contrails will turn on. The default value is about -39 degrees Celsius for turbine engines. For piston engines, the contrail effect is turned off unless a temperature value is set here.

Hi Tom

What about the turbo-props...are they like piston engines to FS in this case?

Garry

Just tested the default King Air with custom weather set to below the default contrail point. I had to add the contrail line to the plane to get contrails active, so that means that if it has a prop or props, you have to activate contrails manually. Only pure "jets" will have them by default.

That contrail clause works fine for the turbocharged piston engine:-


It was exceptionally cold over Alaska today and the trail started quite low...


This was about as high as I could get today with -60C.

Garry Russell wrote:Hi Tom

What about the turbo-props...are they like piston engines to FS in this case?

Garry

Garry, if you'll read my post from early this afternoon (your time), you'll find your answer.