IS there a way to select a default Tow Plane?

[MSFS 2020] Questions & Community Discussions Aircraft
1

If I select my glider, is there a way to select a default towplane somehow in
the cfg files or is there a way via a K event. With the default 172 in the sim
and I have a second aircraft as a tow plane I must go into the menu for the
glider and select the tow plane there. Can I associate a glider with a
specific tow plane without going into the gleder selection menu?

2

Unless Asobo post an authoritative answer here, I would suggest a definite no.
None of the .cfg files (or, a remote possibility, the .flt files) have
anything close to this (AFAIK) and the ‘request tow’ event doesn’t (AFAIK)
even allow a choice of winch or aerotow so I really don’t see any hint of a
more functional unannounced/documented feature for glider launches as you’re
asking. Irrelevant point: there’s a ‘waggle the rudder to request a launch if
not already connected’ feature in the AS33 interior model XML implemented as a
single Component, if you want to snarf that. If the tow is connected then my
XML RPN does nothing and lets the MSFS launch do its thing. It’s useful partly
if you land at an airfield and want a tow out, but mainly if for whatever
reason you’ve done a plane reload of some kind while on the tarmac so the tow
gets dropped you can reconnect the tow without a quit back to the Main screen.
It would be good to have the ‘select a plane/winch and request a tow’ as an
optional in-game panel mod so you could do that after loading into the sim,
but I haven’t found any API’s necessary to interact with the launch (other
than the ‘request tow’ event).

3

Be nice if //42 could do a script for this in their Flow add-on ?

4

Is this the answer … maybe … the description name differs from the
explained function

Glider

This section is only visible if the aircraft being defined is a glider. It has
the following parameters:

  • Default Towplane Title: The container title of the winch SimObject that should be used for winched launches.

EDIT: looks like no to this - the name of the variable is misleading ASOBO
please fix.

5

Correction - The tow plane default with the aircraft name is working.

6

ah, interesting. For completeness Google found the reference in here:
https://docs.flightsimulator.com/html/Content_Configuration/SimObjects/Aircraft_SimO/AI_Config_Definition.htm
I never spotted that stuff, strange there’s other entries in the glider
aircraft.cfg that seem to overlap with those, e.g. the DG1001 aircraft.cfg has
[SERVICES] WINCH=1 but the LS8 doesn’t, maybe that’s obsolete . I assume that
tow plane has to also have the required ai.cfg settings for the glider default
tow selection to work which would limit the portability of the glider unless
it came with a towplane.

7

Seems I spoke too soon. The sim “remembers” a lot of setting and aircraft
selections you use. As long as you select the tow plane of your choice in the
beginning. Every flight there after will remember the tow plane selected. If
you change aircraft your “remembered” selection is lost. So I thought the
ai.cfg info was triggering the tow plane while it was not. The sim just
remembered it across starts. So back to ASOBO - please fix this or update the
description.

8

I have actually done this. I never get the C172 in the tug list.
Navigate to:

For MS Store installation
C:\Users[your_user_name]\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Official\OneStore\asobo-aircraft-c172sp-as1000\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_C172sp_AS1000_TowPlan e

or on Steam:

Packages\Official\OneStore\asobo-aircraft-c172sp-as1000\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_C172sp_AS1000_TowPlane

Backup aircraft.cfg by making a copy of it (just in case).

Replace with the attached.

or…

edit the aircraft.cfg file so that the following line reads:

CodeSelect

isTowPlane = 0 ; Can the plane be used as a tow plane for a glider
The C172 should now not appear in the list and it will default to once of the other aircraft you have specified as tugs.
If you have more than one it defaults to the first one.
So far this hasn’t been reverted back to the C172 after updates.

9

Hello, i m new here but i read the tutorial and i dont understand it