An X-Plane 12 recreation of the Safe Flight N1 Computer/Display (P/N C-12732-1) — the three-digit amber panel instrument that tells a Citation 525 crew what fan speed to set.
It reads ram air temperature and pressure altitude straight from the aircraft, looks up the performance charts, interpolates between them, and shows you the max N1 for your conditions. No configuration, no data entry, no switching to a tablet.
Requires the payware TorqueSim CitationJet 525
This is an instrument for one aircraft. It stays completely inert with anything else loaded — it is not a general-purpose N1 calculator.
What it does
- Four schedules on a mode knob: TO/GA, CLB and CRU, each in a normal and an anti-ice version
- Reads ram air temperature and pressure altitude from the aircraft continuously — the number on the display is always current for where you actually are
- Interpolates between the four surrounding chart points, doing by machine what you would otherwise do by eye
- Follows engine anti-ice automatically and switches to the anti-ice schedule
- PUSH TEMP SET for an assumed temperature, exactly like the real unit: dial in a warmer temperature for a reduced-thrust takeoff. It saturates at ±99 °C and is discarded at liftoff
- Dashes rather than guesses when you are off the edge of a chart — it never extrapolates
- Power-up self-test, avionics bus dependency and a working N1 IND breaker, so it fails the way the real one does
- Tenths below 99.95 %, whole percent above, because the real unit only has three digits
Installation
Unzip and drop the SafeFlightN1 folder into X-Plane 12/Resources/plugins/, so you end up with:
X-Plane 12/Resources/plugins/SafeFlightN1/
Load the CitationJet 525 and open it from Plugins → Safe Flight N1 Computer. To remove it, delete the folder.
Requirements
- X-Plane 12.3.0 or newer
- The TorqueSim CitationJet 525 (payware)
- macOS 12+, Windows 10+, or Linux
macOS builds are universal (Apple Silicon and Intel), signed and notarized, so Gatekeeper lets them through without a right-click dance.
Manual
A 21-page illustrated manual ships inside the download as SafeFlightN1-Manual.pdf. It covers normal procedures, limitations, systems description, troubleshooting, and the published datarefs and commands for home cockpit builders.
It is also a standalone download, so you can read it before installing anything: SafeFlightN1-Manual.pdf
Staying up to date
Two ways to get new versions:
- SkunkCrafts Updater. The plugin ships a SkunkCrafts manifest, so the updater offers new versions automatically once the folder is installed.
- GitHub releases. Every build is published at github.com/RISCfuture/c525-n1-computer/releases with notes on what changed.
For home cockpit builders
Every piece of state is published as a dataref and every control as a command, so you can drive a real knob and a real display. There is also a test-override mode that feeds the device synthetic conditions in any aircraft. See section 7 of the manual.
Credits and acknowledgements
The N1 schedules are not my work, and this plugin would have nothing to display without them.
They were transcribed from the TorqueSim Cessna Citation 525 Performance Manual, a community-built chart set — not a TorqueSim, X-Aviation or Textron document — assembled and published free by hornetaircraft, with Aviationsocal, Kaboom, Jetpipeoverheat and Cptlee assisting:
TorqueSim Cessna Citation 525 Performance Manual
Licence and disclaimer
The plugin is MIT licensed and fully open source: github.com/RISCfuture/c525-n1-computer
Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Safe Flight Instrument, LLC, Textron Aviation, or TorqueSim. The performance data is community-sourced and approximate. This is an advisory simulation for entertainment — not for real world use.
Support
Bugs and feature requests: github.com/RISCfuture/c525-n1-computer/issues