Large Fierce Mammal

AUTHOR’S NOTE: As the title implies, this is the fourth in a series of carefully selected freeware aircraft crafted by various talented developers for use in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 – A Century of Flight, and bearing my own fictional paint schemes inspired by the real world dog rescue and rehabilitation organization jointly operated by Mrs. LFM and me, Golden Mountain Dog Solutions. If you haven’t already read the first article in the series, doing so now will clarify a few things for you before you dive into this one. Enjoy yourselves. LFM

The Grumman G-21 Goose grew out of a request from some Manhattan millionaires for what would essentially be a flying yacht.  Capacious, comfortable, and incredibly rugged, the amphibious Goose soon proved itself as more than just a plaything of the rich. Between 1937 and 1945, when production ended, only 345 G-21’s were built, but an amazing number of them are still at work today, many serving with small air carriers operating in remote parts of Canada and Alaska. Why? Because nothing else quite does what a Goose can do. The following clip shows a Goose owned and operated by Fresh Water Adventures of Dillingham, Alaska making a stop at one of their fishing camps after landing on the Nushagak River in the Bristol Bay area. It was posted to YouTube on 17 July 2008 by FWA guide Travis Wendt to whom I give thanks for his kind permission to embed his video.

So versatile is the Goose that a company called Antilles Seaplanes is now accepting orders for a new, from the ground up version they call the Super Goose that will be available in either the original radial engine configuration or with a pair of Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A turboprops. They make a convincing pitch in this video:

A well crafted resource for all things Goose related is the newly resurrected Goose Central, first put on line in October 1999 and reborn in October 2009 in the wake of the demise of its previous web host, Goose Central describes itself as “… a Grumman Goose database for all the known and lost Gooses,” a claim that, even in its present state of being still under construction, doesn’t seem far from the truth. If you have an interest in the venerable G-21, then Goose Central offers pretty much one stop shopping and is a highly recommended place to have a cup of coffee in. More than one actually.

All this being true about the Goose, it won’t come as any surprise that I’ve added one to the fictional fleet of Golden Mountain Dog Solutions Air Services, and hence the screen shot at the top of this post. The aircraft selected is the formerly payware, now freeware Grumman Goose package created by the famous flight sim development team of Lynn and Bill Lyons, and available from a variety of download sites for use in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 – A Century of Flight (FS2004). For your FSX types, there’s even a version updated for that platform but we’ll get to that. Don’t go looking now; keep reading because all will be revealed in due course.

The version I’m recommending here now does everything I ask of it, but it didn’t start out that way for me. It puts together the efforts of quite a few talented people, and grew out of my tenacious pursuit of fixes and workarounds for some maddening quirks the Lyons Goose threw at me from the get go. Most particularly, a tendency for FS2004 to often, although not always, detect a crash situation as soon as the aircraft came to a stop at the end of a water landing, and to never permit taxi out of the water and onto the beach; something I’ve always done and expect to be possible with all my FS2004 amphibious aircraft. Beaching never failed to result in a crash, and by that I mean the airplane kind, not the computer kind. Turning off crash detection in FS2004 was even more interesting – instead of a flight ending crash, the airplane would be flung high into the air and continue bouncing with each succeeding contact with the ground.

Some of you are probably wondering why I didn’t try on Mike Stone’s very creditable Goose. Well, I looked at it but with no disrespect to Mr. Stone, his version lacks a virtual cockpit, and a reasonably functional and realistic VC is an essential for any FS aircraft I use. No matter how well crafted the model, lack of a VC is a deal breaker. Now back to the matter at hand.

I’ve been fooling around with FS2004 long enough to come up with some theories of my own as to what might be plaguing my Goose, but before I started experimenting with tweaking contact, float, and scrape points (there’s an endlessly useful and highly recommended tutorial on how to do that courtesy of Sim-Outhouse which is a group that every flight simmer should join and participate in), I did a lot of Googling, and posted some forum queries that resulted in a few suggestions, but nothing approaching the kind of help that comes from someone who has already met and fixed the problem I was grappling with. I did find another guy who was having an identical problem back in 2006, posted it to a forum, but never got a reply from anyone. I will confess it was a love/hate relationship for a while, but this airplane was too good to give up on, and I firmly believe that progress is really only made by people who won’t listen to reason, so in the mean time, I started painting and personalizing my Goose.

On the outside …

And on the inside, by replacing the stock pinup photos with some of my own; this one of my beautiful wife Diana …

And this one of the two of us; both shots taken on our wedding day.

Before you get all excited, the textures I’m putting on my downloads page will be suitable to a Goose belonging to a dog rescue and rehabilitation company, but not quite so romantic. After all, I’m not having anyone else flying around with pictures of my wife in his airplane.

I also made sure that the name plate on the pilot’s window sill was properly engraved …

And changed the cargo from the original crate of Coors beer to something nearer and dearer to every dog’s heart – food! The paperwork on the other crates now also bears our Golden Mountain Dog Solutions “Leaping Milo” logo.

In the end, and just as I was rolling up my sleeves and rolling out the Sim-Outhouse scrolls in preparation for some heavy contact point heaving, salvation arrived from across the continent in the form of the gang at the Nor-Cal Prop Club and their updated version of the Lyons Goose that is kindly offered in a stand alone FSX version on their “Commercial Aircraft” downloads page! You’ll need to sign up for a free membership to access their downloads, but this is such a fine resource you should anyway. I downloaded the Nor-Cal version and looked it over with particular attention to the contact point settings in the aircraft.cfg file. They were noticeably different from the originals I was using and, with some very fast and helpful advice from Ted, the owner of Nor-Cal, to identify what kind of compatibility issues I could expect if I used parts of the Nor-Cal FSX model in FS2004, I experimentally replaced my existing contact points with Nor-Cal’s and suddenly found myself with a fully reliable Goose! There was only one small and easily tolerated limitation – Nor-Cal specifically instructs those operating this aircraft to do so with crash detection turned OFF. Since I can tell the difference between good and bad flying technique, I can live with that.

So now we’ve come to the part where I tell you how to get from here to the pilot’s seat of this fabulous Grumman Goose. First, you need to download the Goose package itself. While there are a number of sources, my own first stop for reliability is always FlightSim.com. Unfortunately, since my last post, the gang at FlightSim.com seems to have taken steps to prevent direct linking to their files, so the links I’ll be providing will take you directly to the download page applicable to each.

For the FS2004 Grumman Goose, take a look at the file list and then go for the download. After receiving and unzipping, you will find that the download contains an executable file that will install the Goose and a lot of extras that include 1930’s period AI aircraft, scenery files, and a bunch of special effects like an erupting volcano. on a tropical island. While the extras looked and sounded great, all my virtual flying in FS2004 is in the current era, and I tend to shy away from weighty add-ons that I probably will never use, so my instructions here will describe the way I installed the Goose only. If you want to install everything, just fire up the auto-installer that came with the download and then make my recommended changes to the “G21” folder that will appear in your FS2004 “aircraft” folder as a result of the installation.

I personally rarely let an auto-installer do anything to my FS2004 setup without taking a look at the expected result first. I’m not promoting the following method as the only way, but it is the way I do it, it does work well, and it works for me every time.

First create a folder somewhere easy to find; I put it on my desktop. Name it anything you want, but for simplicity and to protect myself from the ever present danger of late onset stupidity, I called mine “FS2004_Goose”. Inside this folder you will now create twenty-two additional folders and name them as follows:

• 1033
• Addon Scenery
• Adv
• Aircraft
• Autogen
• Charts
• Config
• Effects
• Flights
• Fonts
• FSweb
• Gauges
• Indeo
• Lessons
• Messages
• Modules
• Scenery
• Script
• Sound
• Texture
• Uires
• Weather

You won’t need them all in this case, but this is a habit that will ensure you always have every FS2004 folder represented. These folder names mirror the ones inside FS2004 and will present the self-installer with valid folder destinations for its files. Now activate the self-installer but choose as the destination folder the “FS2004_Goose” folder you just created. That done, let ‘er rip. When the installation is complete, we can go back in and see what the installer put where, and move things manually.

The first thing you’ll notice is that there are now twenty-three folders where once were only twenty-two, the installer having created a new one called “Custom Classics Extras”. This contains some interesting add-ons that you may wish to explore. Since these are a matter of personal taste I’ll leave you to explore those areas on your own. Since our objective is to install only the Grumman Goose and the files it needs to work, you will now need to copy/paste only some of the new files from the folders you created in your “FS2004_Goose” folder into the appropriate folders that exist inside your main “Flight Simulator 9” folder. That’s the one that gets created when you install FS2004 and if you don’t know where to find that, send me a message and I’ll help you out. Here’s what you need:

First, from the “FS2004_Goose” “Aircraft” folder, copy only the folder named “G21” and paste it into the folder named “Aircraft” in your main “Flight Simulator 9” folder. This will install the original Goose in several variants and paint schemes with a lot of excellent documentation.

Second, from the “FS2004_Goose” “Effects” folder, copy only the files named below:

fx_dustrun.fx
fx_314_spray.fx
fx_engstrt_g21.fx
fx_goose_spray.fx
fx_goosefire.fx
fx_test1.fx
fx_vclight_goose.fx
fx_bowg.fx
fx_vclight_goosef.fx

… and paste it into the folder named “Effects” in your main “Flight Simulator 9” folder.

Third, from the “FS2004_Goose” “Sound” folder, copy all the files you find there and paste them into the folder named “Sound” inside your main “Flight Simulator 9” folder.

OK, so your Goose is now installed, but don’t get too excited just yet. There’s still more work to do.

The original Goose will come with a beautifully crafted virtual cockpit but only a vestigial 2D one. Fortunately this has been fixed by Erwin Henkel in yet another download available at FlightSim.com. This will not only provide a 2D cockit environment that closely matches the VC, but includes a smoother interface with some more modern avionics. Take a preview of the file list and then download the necessary goodies. After that, install the 2D replacement panel as described in the text file that comes with it titled “how_to_install.txt“.

On the subject of your shiny new 2D panel, you will find that there is non-matching functionality between some of the switches it contains and those in the VC, particularly the ones controlling various lights. I prefer to operate navigational instruments and lights from the 2D panel and fly using the VC, and doing that you will find that the small light switch issue won’t affect you.

I adjusted the lights that come with the original aircraft to bring them more into line with modernity and personal taste. To implement my changes, go into the “G21” folder in your “Flight Simulator 9” “Aircraft” folder and make a backup of the “aircraft.cfg” file. Now open the “aircraft.cfg” file and find the ” LIGHTS” section. Replace the light assignments with the following text:

[LIGHTS]
//Types: 1=beacon, 2=strobe, 3=navigation, 4=cockpit
light.0=3,  -0.0, -21.4, 6.10, fx_navredc
light.1=3,  -0.0,  21.4, 6.10, fx_navgrec
light.2=2, -21.0,   0.00, 10.70, fx_navredc  //whi
light.3=1, -21.0,   0.00, 10.70, fx_beacon
light.4=4,  -3.0,   0.00, 2.5, fx_vclight_goose
light.5=4,  -10.0,   0.00, 4.0, fx_vclight_goose
light.6=4,  2.2,  0.00,3.2, fx_vclight_goosef

I’ll probably revisit these at some point, but right now I’m happy.

At this point you have a Grumman Goose with the same cockpit and lighting arrangements I have, minus the texture and contact point adjustments yet to come. Are we having fun yet? Go refill whatever it is you’re drinking and then let’s move on to the final stages.

The revised contact points created by the Nor-Cal Prop Club now need to be added. Since you already have your “G21” aircraft.cfg file open, replace the entire “contact_points” section with this:

[contact_points]
point.0 =1, -16.80,  0.00, -1.80, 3200, 0, 0.70,70.0, 0.30, 2.5, 0.90, 4.5, 4.5, 0, 0, 190           //tail gear
point.1 =1,   1.40, -3.91, -3.90, 2200, 1, 1.40,  0.0, 0.50, 2.5, 0.85, 0.0, 0.0, 2, 0, 0               //left gear
point.2 =1,   1.40,  3.91, -3.90, 2200, 2, 1.40,  0.0, 0.50, 2.5, 0.85, 5.5, 5.5, 3, 0, 190              //right gear
point.3 = 4,  4.00, -1.50, -2.640, 36000, 0, 0.00, 47.0, 0.85, 40.5, 1.25, 0.0, 0.0, 0, 0.0, 0.0     //hull                 4th + up
point.4 = 4, 4.00,  1.50, -2.640, 36000, 0, 0.00,  47.0, 0.85, 40.5, 1.25, 0.0, 0.0, 0, 0.0, 0.0
point.5 = 4, -4.35, -1.250, -1.400, 36000, 0, 0.00,  0.0, 0.85, 40.5, 3.25, 0.0, 0.0, 0, 0.0, 0.0    //left wing
point.6 = 4, -4.35,  1.250, -1.400, 36000, 0, 0.00,  0.0, 0.85, 40.5, 3.25, 0.0, 0.0, 0, 0.0, 0.0    //right wing
point.7 = 2, -3.35, -16.250, 0.220, 136000, 0, 0.00,  0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0, 0.0, 0.0
point.8 = 2, -3.35,  16.250, 0.220, 136000, 0, 0.00,  0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0, 0.0, 0.0
point.9 =  5, 0.90, 0.0, 7.300, 1600, 0, 0.00, 50.0, 2.0,  2.0, 2.00, 2.0, 2.0, 2.0,2.0, 2.0
point.10 = 4, -14.35, 0.0, 0.20, 136000,1, 1.40,  0.0, 0.50, 5.5, 0.85, 0.0, 0.0, 0, 0, 0             //water rudder

static_cg_height = 3.20    //(feet) altitude of CG when at rest (altitude when loaded on ground)
static_pitch     = 6.50    //degrees (pitch when loaded on ground)
gear_system_type=0

Lastly, go to my downloads page, get the textures for the Golden Mountain Dog Solutions Grumman Goose you’ll find there, and install them in accordance with the included instructions. As usual, clicking on the thumbnail image of the Goose will expand it, and in this case provide access to a complete preview of the textures I’ve included in the package. In recognition of his help in making this project possible, and per his request, I’ve also given Ted at the Nor-Cal Prop Club permission to include my textures in an update to the Nor-Cal Goose package for FSX with many thanks from the Large Fierce Mammal!

To conclude, this airplane brings a lot to the party including the necessity to de-ice the cabin and airframe when icing conditions are encountered, and some interesting rain effects that I’m still on the fence about. An animated passenger and a one eyed dog come along for the ride with the crew boarded and deplaned by hitting the “/” key.  By the way, the crew appear instantly but deplaning has a built in 15 second delay. Engaging the parking brake with the engines off will cause tie downs to appear when on land, and a nose mooring line when on the water. One note on beaching. At least in my setup, wake effects will persist onto the land if the aircraft exits the water and doesn’t come to a brief stop first. If you stop immediately after popping onto the beach and then proceed, the dust effects should replace wake effects. Doing that, the visual effect is quite realistic in that the Goose looks as though it’s draining water from the hull and floats.

Everything else I’ll leave you to explore and learn for yourselves. At some point soon, I will be issuing a Pilot Operating Handbook and making it available on my downloads page to support this version, but for now all you dog loving flight simulator pilots have your work cut out for you. This is still somewhat of a work in progress, and I will certainly welcome any input that might make it even better, so if you encounter problems or have suggestions, don’t stew in silence. I would also appreciate being notified if anyone finds a broken link to any of the files I mentioned here.

The Grumman Goose, as it will exist in your system if you follow my instructions, is an amalgam of the work of a lot of talented flight simulator enthusiasts who make their work available to the rest of us for free. My mission here was to make sure that this magnificent piece of work, and the bits and pieces that I have found to enhance the experience of flying it, are brought together in one place so nobody else needs to reinvent the wheel. As you download the recommended files, be sure to take the time to read the credits included in the text documents that come with each one so you know who you should be thanking for the end result.