Looking for PA-28 setup

[Crash'n'Burn]

Hi! I got the C172 setup but will be flying a PA-28-161 in real life so I was looking for an Air Manager setup for this aircraft but I can't seem to find any. My search skills are weak but I did try and didn't come up with anything. Google only brought up some PDF plans for a cockpit builder, not the actual instruments. I'm just looking for a layout/setup I can use on my touchscreen so I get more and more familiar with the checklist and knowing which area in the cockpit to look.

Any help appreciated! Thanks!

[SimPassion]

At least we could pick some instruments on the Online Store and dispose them in a panel with Air Manager
knowing the work Russ Barlow already shared here, around ready made and customizable instruments, on the fly, it's like a very easy thing, to adapt some of available instruments too

Gilles

[JackZ]

As a PA 28 and a C172 are very similar in size, engine and performances, I have no doubts that you might be able to use the Cessna panel « as is ».
The only difference being that the PA28 has somewhat a different layout for its instruments, at least for the old model, and that the indicators for the engine/elec/fuel are different as well.
Guess that you could reuse these Cessna Generic instruments, including the Engine RPM, and complete the design of your own panel by using the fuel, oil and Amps PA28 cluster from Russ Green, available on the store. Search for PA-28
Guess you will have to provide more informations about your setup though (addon, platform)

Jacques

[Crash'n'Burn]

I'd like the cockpit layout to be as close to the PA-28-161 as I can so that I can get more familiar with it and know where to look for the info that I need. While the main instruments are similar between the PA-28 and C172, it's the layout and actual look of other things like the location of the switches and the look and location of the engine, oil, and fuel gauge.

I did have a quick look at the store and did find some work by Russ Green and Russ Barlow, but I'm not very well versed at how to add these or even make a whole new PA-28 panel. Are there no pre-made ones available? I assumed there would be as the PA-28s are popular training aircraft as well, aren't they?

Platform is PC running Win10 and XP11 with Air Manager on a separate touchscreen.

[JackZ]

No PA28 panel as for now, it takes a while to make ready made professionnal panels, but it is quite easy to build one yourself, that's one of the main advantages of AM over it's competitors, so it's time to have it a go!

1-Add (download) one by one the instruments you need from the store (Online Tab/Free Community instruments)
2-In the first Tab (Panels), just create a blank panel, give it a name, then select a background color.
3- With this panel selected, just right-click and select "Add Instruments", then choose to add the instruments you previously downloaded one by one.
4-For each instrument added, you can in the preview panel, select, move and resize the instrument with the mouse to suit your panel layout. If needed you can even play with the numerical value to ensure a precise positionning.
5-Once you are done, simply click on the bulb icon in front of your Panel name and Voilà!

It is that simple. The only problem I see is that if you are using a specific addon, or are using FSX/P3D, as I think that the Oil/fuel/elec panels are for XPlane only.
By "Platform" i meant "simulator", and also the addon make you are using, since the PA28 is not a generic airplane in any of the sims I know of.

If you need to add some switches to your panel, I made a while ago some switches (vertical and horizontal versions, red and white ones) that are exact replicas of the PA28 ones (Look for Generic switches in the Store), the only thing is that they need some customization to be used. Carefully read the description notes on how to use them.

We are here to help in case you are stuck.

Jacques

[JackZ]

As an incentive, here's a quick and dirty "PA28 like" Panel I created in 10 minutes using the method described earlier.
It has a mix of instruments with different sources (PA34 SENECA, C172,C152,Generic), but you get the idea, and I strongly suggest you have a go.
I reduced the main instruments to 330x330 in size in order for the whole panel to fit in a 1920x1080 monitor

For the switches, it is more complicated as the behaviour is embedded in the code (was developped for V2.1.3, and I need to update these switch for V3.X)

This makes me think that a complete generic set of instruments (without bezel) should be designed for the new V3.0 version, with standard user properties, in order to facilitate the task of creating a panel from scratch to beginners.
This involves mostly to create versions of existing instruments without bezels (using the technique with Skinman I exposed somewhere in the forum), also use the generic "all purposes(TM)" instruments that Russ created (for RPM and Speed mostly) and a set of user properties if needed, and also make sure that they are XP & FSX compatible.

Jacques

Note: With more efforts, such a panel of that kind can be achieved, but I must reckon this one took me a lot of hours (especially since all the instruments except the ADF and the VOR were to be created from scratch) .

[Astropilot]

Hi! I got the C172 setup but will be flying a PA-28-161 in real life so I was looking for an Air Manager setup for this aircraft but I can't seem to find any. My search skills are weak but I did try and didn't come up with anything. Google only brought up some PDF plans for a cockpit builder, not the actual instruments. I'm just looking for a layout/setup I can use on my touchscreen so I get more and more familiar with the checklist and knowing which area in the cockpit to look.

Any help appreciated! Thanks!

Hi,
I concur with Jacques. I had been in a similar situation with the PA44, but at the end of the day, the actual panel layout is different from plane to plane anyway with the basic T-stack being the only constant. All PA28s I have flown were different in terms of switches, backup instruments etc.

The beauty of AM is the ability to constantly change and update your panels. So, I would also recommend to start with something basic and build your way up from there.
Berthold

[Crash'n'Burn]

Cheers guys! I must say that I'm disappointed and a bit surprised at the lack of PA-28 love, but I agree since the PA-28 161 panel is different from the PA-28 180 that my school uses. I thought that the staple trainer aircraft would be covered but I guess I was mistaken in my expectations. Pity that the school with the C172 in my area closed down.

I will try to make my own setup but I'm not very technical so I wonder how my adventures "under the hood" of Air Manager would go. I'll reference some pics of my actual cockpit. I would really like the second example JackZ showed as it looks more professional compared to the first picture, but beggars can't be choosers I guess!

Will the choice of 3rd party add-on really affect the usage of Air Manager? Like I said before, I have the C172 payware panel from this site; will it not work if I take a Just Flight PA-28? Doesn't the aircraft send data out via XP11 and Air Manager reads off of that and translates it into the panel? I was planning to buy the Just Flight PA-28-161 since I don't think anyone else makes this aircraft? Or at least the 161 model.

[JackZ]

Berthold is perfectly right, you'll never find the perfect panel (especially for the PA28 which had seen so many versions over the years) unless you create it yourself as per your liking.

But, I guess you are lucky: Was bored tonight so I just created with Skinman a textured background "Piper 28 like" for a PA28 Panel (the old model, with two rows of gauges) using the instruments I mentioned in my previous post.

You will still have to create your panel as I described (no pain, no gain ), but this instrument will allow you to add this background as a new instrument, whose sole purpose is only to display and cover the bezels of all the instruments.

I figured that instead of giving you the full instrument ready to use, I'd rather explain you how to create it, starting from the graphical background provided (a png file, with Alpha channel enabled, in order to have the transparency available).

In order to create this instrument:
1- Go to Create/Edit Tab, then:
2- Click "New" to create a new instrument. Give an Aircraft type PA28 and a Name Background panel. Dimensions are 1920x1080
3- Should be compatible with all simulators, so tick all the boxes, then press Okay
4- Click on the "Folder" icon to open the resources Root folder of your newly created instrument. Open the resources folder of this instrument. The resources folder will contain all the graphical assets of your instrument. Copy/paste in the resources folder the file PA28 Panel Bkg.png included in the zip file below.
5-Now that you have populated the resources folder, it's time to create your instrument script. No big deal, it's only ONE line of code!
6-Click on the "Script" icon to open the text editor with a bkank page for the script whose name is always logic.lua.
7- Enter exactly this piece of text:

Code: Select all

image_id = img_add_fullscreen("PA28 Panel Bkg.png")

then save your script.
8-Your instrument is finished! To test it in the Edit/create mode, press the Green arrow. You should see the background displayed full screen.
9- Add this instrument to your newly created panel.
This background instrument should be added as the last instrument of your panel, so it covers the other ones.
After that it is only a matter of careful positioning each individual instruments.

The end result should be something like this:

I reckon it's a little bit of a work, but once it's done you'll be rewarded by the "I did it" feeling that every AM creator have once its own instrument is running!

Enjoy & good luck.

Jacques

PA28 Panel Bkg.zip

(822.18 KiB) Downloaded 252 times

Note: As for the addon you mentioned, it will have definitely an effect on the panels, if it doesn't use the standard variables. But to have more clues, we need more info, we don't even know if you are using FSX/P3D or XPlane!

A final remark: Air Manager is in no ways a "magical wand" for an obvious reason: there exist on the market at least three simulator platforms and dozens of addons developped by thrid parties developpers. These addons are often creating new specific variables and often use their own code to perform standard functions. So It is absolutely impossible to have a standard panel that works with EVERY configuration/addon/platform. The Prepaid panels are made to be compatible with the generic airplanes on both platforms and this feat alone is a lot of work..
For the rest, you have either to pray and hope that someone in the community has the same interrest as yours and has already created the panel of your dreams, or you bit the bullet and dive into the learning curve, like all the power users do. Even if the learning curve is steepo at first, this is not so difficult, and believe me worth the effort.

Personnaly, instead of a "Magical wand", i would rather call AM as a "Swiss Knife", and considering the high level of quality attained by the current development of community gauges, it makes wonder when compared to its competitors.

[Crash'n'Burn]

Wow! The help is much appreciated! Like I said, I'm not very technical so gimme a few days to sort this out!

Note: As for the addon you mentioned, it will have definitely an effect on the panels, if it doesn't use the standard varaibles. But to have more clues, we need more info, we don't even know if you are using FSX/P3D or XPlane!

Platform is PC running Win10 and XP11 with Air Manager on a separate touchscreen.

So yeah, XPlane 11, with the Just Flight PA-28-161.