Pitot Heat Issue

[drgullen]

I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this problem...

I was flying a 737 (an AI Aardvark that I converted from AI to user and fly with Enerjet livery). The plane works fine in all aspects, but today I
had a strange issue. I was flying in Newfoundland and I use Active Sky so it was very cold (-14C). Prior to taking off, I did have my de-icing and
my pitot heat switches turned ON.

I taxiied, took off and all was well, but suddenly and for only about 10 seconds, my KIAS indicator went to 0.0 as if I had forgotten to turn those
switches on. As I said, a few seconds later without me touching anything, it righted itself and the flight was fine from there on.

The problem is that by the time it corrected itself, I had accelerated to about 290 kts and was still only around 6,500 feet, so at the end of my
flight, FSPassengers rightfully flagged me for the 250 kts violation. I don't really want to have to disable that in the configuration options as a
workaround.

Is there a solution or a configuration change to handle this kind of thing?

[whiskey-zulu]

Did you check your groundspeed indicator to see what that read?

Could be any number of things that happened: windsheer would have been my first thought, but that all depends on what the groundspeed readout was.

I would also suggest flying another few flights with similar conditions to see if it occurs again.

[Joeflyer]

Actually I have experienced the same thing with certain aircraft like the CLS A330/340 series, PSS 777, and the QW 757. Typically this situation
involves Active Sky Advaned or AS Enhanced. I usually switch the pitot heat off and on again when the airspeed tape goes to zero, switch off AP and
AT, reduce throttle and hand fly the aircraft to maintain course until the airspeed comes alive again. I know this is a AS problem, as I have cleared
the wx via FSUIPC, shut down ASE and performed a flight without ASE running. No airspeed issues at all. Every once in a while the airspeed problem
creeps in shortly after takeoff...before reaching the first waypoint, but most of the time it happens when I'm climbing through FL250. Yet, I never
have this problem with the PMDG aircraft.

[drgullen]

Thanks for the replies, gents.

I did some google searches and many say that there is no real permanent solution to this problem, which is sad. Joeflyer, I think I might try a
variation of what you suggested. I typically ascend with the IAS on the AP enabled and set to 225 until I pass 10K', so if I was to just disengage
that temporarily when this occurs, in theory, the engines should hopefully stay more or less status quo. I might also hit F2 a couple of times just
to ensure that power is slightly reduced and that I remain below 250 until the problem goes away. I'll try this and post my results.

Whiskey, I'm just trying to educate myself here...what would ground speed have to do with it? I was climbing through 7,000' with KIAS at around 219
kts when this problem happened. While I don't know what the actual GS was at that point, I did have some decent tailwind so I'm sure it must have
been in the 250-300 kts. range. Regardless of what it actually was though, what is the relevance of that in this situation?

[gbapache]

Dr.G,
Here is the fly in your soup, when you turn off the AP your engines will go to wherever your throttle quadrant is sitting. If you took off with
your throttles to the fire wall and turn on the otto at the speed you wanted then that's where your engines are gonna go when you turn it off.
Using your GPS groundspeed is nothing more than a general guide as to your speed. It is helpful when you have any one of several
emergency situations. If you want to know your actual airspeed hit shift + Z and you will get a nice line of info at the top of your screen.

[drgullen]

gbapache,

Yeah, I figured the throttle would be high, that's why I say that I'll try disengaging the IAS on the AP and then hit F2 a few times to throttle back
and hopefully keep myself under the 250 limit and then when the pitot problem goes away, I can just re-engage the IAS again.

Regarding the shift + Z readout, yeah I have enabled by default in all of my saved flights, but actually when this pitot problem happens to me, that
line of info indicates a KIAS of 0.0 when the problem is occurring and then goes back to an actual real speed when the problem subsides.

[gbapache]

Your right about getting the zero reading when the pitot tube freezes but shift Z works good for elec failure