I hope you will forgive a new guy's post on this topic if it's been well covered before. I'm wondering what sort of experience people have had tuning the default FSX Beaver flight characteristics via the aircraft.cfg file. Specific settings that is. With my Saitek yoke, I found the elevator sensitivity excessive to my taste, even with the setting as low as possible in the sim. After modifying the elevator_effectiveness, one thing lead to another, and I ended up tweaking a number of the control surface settings, including those for the trim tabs.I'm now experimenting with one of the drag modifiers. Have others done this? The rationale was that my impression has been that the real plane can descend more rapidly without gaining excessive speed than can the sim airplane, with the same flap setting. As a start, I'm playing with the flaps drag scalar, having also experimented with the parsitic drag scalar. Seems to work, but there are a *lot* of numbers one can play with. Besides, I get suspicious when so many entries are set at the default values. :-) I'd be most interested to hear what's been done. Larry

It'd be best if you used utilities such as AirEd to modify the flight dynamics. The Beaver itself does not seem to have been that sensitive, at least on my Logitech flightstick. Yet again, it has been overpowered for quite a while right now...Dave.

I hope you will forgive a new guy's post on this topic if it's been well covered before. I'm wondering what sort of experience people have had tuning the default FSX Beaver flight characteristics via the aircraft.cfg file. Specific settings that is. With my Saitek yoke, I found the elevator sensitivity excessive to my taste, even with the setting as low as possible in the sim. After modifying the elevator_effectiveness, one thing lead to another, and I ended up tweaking a number of the control surface settings, including those for the trim tabs.I'm now experimenting with one of the drag modifiers. Have others done this? The rationale was that my impression has been that the real plane can descend more rapidly without gaining excessive speed than can the sim airplane, with the same flap setting. As a start, I'm playing with the flaps drag scalar, having also experimented with the parsitic drag scalar. Seems to work, but there are a *lot* of numbers one can play with. Besides, I get suspicious when so many entries are set at the default values. :-) I'd be most interested to hear what's been done. Larry

Hi Larry,A friend pointed me over here to your thread since I'm a former RW Beaver pilot. He thought I might be able to help.On your sensitivity issue with the Saitek, I've heard this from a number of other Saitek owners, including myself when I go to fly the Super Cub. It seems to be ok with helicopters, but when it comes to fixed winged aircraft, there does seem to be a very large over-sensitivity built in to most Saitek sticks (others may disagree, and that's fair, but I am speaking from personal experience and from others who have commented the same thing). So the problem isn't with the Beaver, but with the stick, and honestly, I'm not sure what you can do about that. I use the CH Yoke, throttle quadrant (strictly optional for the Beaver) and CH rudders, and they seem to work extremely well for me, if that's any help.Now, on your other tweaks, I'm hoping you backed up the original files before you started tweaking. In all honesty, the default Beaver is very, very close to the real thing in terms of how it handles. Yes, it's a bit too fast and will take off with a full load a bit quicker than the real thing, but if you want to adjust for that, you will certainly mess up the lower end (i.e. performance with less weight). It's a bit of a trade-off that FSX forces you into. I'm trying to remember if I ended up making any adjustments in my files, and I think I did, but they were very minor in nature. I can look this evening and let you know then. But the scale on which you are working will change the entire flight characteristics of the aircraft to the point where you'll lose the "feel" that the Beaver has, and probably adversely affect the overall aircraft. If I made any adjustments, I've perhaps upped the drag a bit so that with a full load, I can't climb at more than 400 to 500 fpm (max!) using 30"/2000 RPM with flaps set to "Climb" (always climb with Climb flaps - never with no flaps). Other than that, I won't have done anything to that machine as it is extremely good right out of the box.I hope that helps some. I'll check this evening and if I made any adjustments, I'll let you know what they were, but for now I would set everything back to default. As for the stick, other than getting something other than the stick you have (and not another Saitek), I'm not sure what to recommend there. Don't get me wrong - for helicopters I love the Saitek. It's perfect for that. But, I, and others, have had too many issues with oversensitivy problems.Glenn

Further to what I said above, my friend says he managed to get his Saitek working by emailing the company and ended up getting all new drivers and software I believe. He did say it took days for them to get back to him, but they were helpful. You can reach them at:[email protected] Glenn

Hi Larry,A friend pointed me over here to your thread since I'm a former RW Beaver pilot. He thought I might be able to help.On your sensitivity issue with the Saitek, I've heard this from a number of other Saitek owners, including myself when I go to fly the Super Cub. It seems to be ok with helicopters, but when it comes to fixed winged aircraft, there does seem to be a very large over-sensitivity built in to most Saitek sticks (others may disagree, and that's fair, but I am speaking from personal experience and from others who have commented the same thing). So the problem isn't with the Beaver, but with the stick, and honestly, I'm not sure what you can do about that. I use the CH Yoke, throttle quadrant (strictly optional for the Beaver) and CH rudders, and they seem to work extremely well for me, if that's any help.Now, on your other tweaks, I'm hoping you backed up the original files before you started tweaking. In all honesty, the default Beaver is very, very close to the real thing in terms of how it handles. Yes, it's a bit too fast and will take off with a full load a bit quicker than the real thing, but if you want to adjust for that, you will certainly mess up the lower end (i.e. performance with less weight). It's a bit of a trade-off that FSX forces you into. I'm trying to remember if I ended up making any adjustments in my files, and I think I did, but they were very minor in nature. I can look this evening and let you know then. But the scale on which you are working will change the entire flight characteristics of the aircraft to the point where you'll lose the "feel" that the Beaver has, and probably adversely affect the overall aircraft. If I made any adjustments, I've perhaps upped the drag a bit so that with a full load, I can't climb at more than 400 to 500 fpm (max!) using 30"/2000 RPM with flaps set to "Climb" (always climb with Climb flaps - never with no flaps). Other than that, I won't have done anything to that machine as it is extremely good right out of the box.I hope that helps some. I'll check this evening and if I made any adjustments, I'll let you know what they were, but for now I would set everything back to default. As for the stick, other than getting something other than the stick you have (and not another Saitek), I'm not sure what to recommend there. Don't get me wrong - for helicopters I love the Saitek. It's perfect for that. But, I, and others, have had too many issues with oversensitivy problems.Glenn

Hi Glenn, Thanks so much for your detailed reply. Yes, I've backed up my original file, and I've been making only the slightest tweaks, one at a time, with // delineated notes of what I've done. Sort of a tinker at heart, I have managed to fix the sensitivity problem in the Saitek yoke, at least to a fair extent. I put trim pots on either side of the elevator pot (forget how many ohms) and adjusted to my taste. I've even toyed with the idea of putting in an exponential pot. I also replaced the springs that resist the fore/aft motion of the shaft so that it slides more easily, and I modified the bearings. My test was to see what was the smallest increment of shaft travel I could accomplish in use. As delivered, it's quite a bit, which results in sort of incremental control. I've now got it down to say 1/32 inch of travel, with much less sense of sticking, then jumping free.I recently flew back from Victoria to Seattle on Kenmore Air, and noticed that we were at 1000 feet about even with Arrowhead Point approaching Kenmore, and yet landed with ease (of course!) with plenty of room to spare. As I remember, the speed stayed around 80 plus knots. This isn't what happens when I've tried it in the sim. :-) Brain failure on my part trying to adjust this by changing the flap drag scalar. It worked going down, but then the climb rate up was better with no flaps. :-) I went back to playing with a more global solution; increasing the parasitic drag very slightly, and then increasing the engine power output to restore the original crusing speed and climb rate. I suppose I could remotely justify this by assuming that all the mooring lines hanging off the wing, the paddle on the floats, etc. were not considered in the sim model. OK, that's stretching it. I guess it's just harmless fun, as I can easily revert to the default. Or try something else. I'm using the documentation on this page as a guidehttp://msdn.microsof...y/cc526949.aspx which appears to be the same as in the SDK. But so far I have not found a way to make the plane 'mush in' and decelerate more quickly on landing. It seems to decelerate much too slowly -- or it's my imagination. The ESP SDK mentions an app that will force reloading of the plane while the sim is running. It does not appear to be included in the FSX SDK, but I wonder if it's available - - free that is - - and would work. That would make tweaking a lot more productive. It's really great to hear from a RW Beaver pilot! I'd be most interested to know of the adjustments you made.Larry

Hi Larry,Yeah, I tend to tinker as well (not always a good idea, as I've found out ). Glad to hear you've got things better with your Saitek. Hopefully that does the trick.I'm not familiar with the Kenmore/Arrowhead area you are referring to so I can't really comment on that, and you didn't mention whether you could land shorter or if it was longer in the sim. I know I can get the plane into some pretty short little puddles on wheel/skis, and lakes that aren't too much longer when switched over to floats in the sim. IRL, I used to have to go into some pretty tight lakes at times and I often wondered how the hell I was going to get out of there again, but the Beaver really can perform when needed. However, one thing to keep in mind is that one landing isn't necessarily showing what the aircraft can do. Under normal conditons, you aren't flying the aircraft to its limits (and if you screw something up when flying the Beaver at its limit, it can bite you - hard!). Also, unless they've changed the airspeed indicator, Beavers IAS are in MPH, not kts, so if you were seeing 80, that would be about 70 kts max probably. Eighty MPH was a typical approach speed for me unless things were really dicey in terms of getting in. So there can be many factors that played a part in your real world landing (wind/crosswind, temp, humidity, pilot technique, weight, etc.) and what you can/did do in the sim. Even on subsequent landings a few minutes apart, I often got very different results in landing distances and so forth. And too, we are dealing with a simulator, so while it's actually a very good representation of the Beaver, it's still not a RW Beaver operating with all the RW components. I know I'm stating the obvious and stuff you already know, but sometimes it's hard to tell what factors are and are not in the sim vs. the real world.Anyway, I'll have a look and see what I did with my setup (if anything), but in terms of takeoff and landing lengths, at full gross weight the FSX Beaver does somewhat outperform the real world machine, so if anything, you want to derate the performance a bit. I go into one particular lake near Sioux Lookout (Ontario, Canada) in FSX (this uses the Aerosoft Beaver, but it's numbers and characteristics are virtually identical to the default machine) during the winter (too short for float ops) to resupply a trapper, so I'll take a screenshot next time I go in there (maybe tonight) to give you an idea as to what this machine will do at max performance. It is tight though.Back tonight :smile:Glenn

OK, all I did was to make the plane a bit more "sluggish". I found (at least with my controls) the machine was a tad too "zippy" for a float version (it would be good for the wheeled version). The only area I changed was in the flight tuning section. I'm pasting it below so you can see what I did:[flight_tuning]cruise_lift_scalar = 1.0parasite_drag_scalar = 1.0induced_drag_scalar = 1.0elevator_effectiveness = 0.8 //was 1.0aileron_effectiveness = 0.8 //was 1.0rudder_effectiveness = 1.0pitch_stability = 2.5 //was 1.0roll_stability = 2.0 //was 1.0yaw_stability = 2.0 //was 1.0elevator_trim_effectiveness = 1.0aileron_trim_effectiveness = 1.0rudder_trim_effectiveness = 1.0You can tell the things I changed because the original values are commented out on the right.Hope that helps.

OK, all I did was to make the plane a bit more "sluggish". I found (at least with my controls) the machine was a tad too "zippy" for a float version (it would be good for the wheeled version). The only area I changed was in the flight tuning section. I'm pasting it below so you can see what I did:[flight_tuning]cruise_lift_scalar = 1.0parasite_drag_scalar = 1.0induced_drag_scalar = 1.0elevator_effectiveness = 0.8 //was 1.0aileron_effectiveness = 0.8 //was 1.0rudder_effectiveness = 1.0pitch_stability = 2.5 //was 1.0roll_stability = 2.0 //was 1.0yaw_stability = 2.0 //was 1.0elevator_trim_effectiveness = 1.0aileron_trim_effectiveness = 1.0rudder_trim_effectiveness = 1.0You can tell the things I changed because the original values are commented out on the right.Hope that helps.

Thanks Glenn, yes, that helps! I'll take your word for it regarding the stability settings! I'll see what happens using these settings along with my control surface settings which also have decreased the twitchiness. Interestingly enough, I finally settled on an elevator_effectiveness of .75 I suppose the controller is the unknown variable here. As another example I found that the trim switches on the Saitek yoke seemed to not allow fine enough adjustment, so I lowered the aileron and elevator trim effectiveness values a modest amount. After my previous note about decents I thought I should be a bit more careful, rather than just relying on my vague impressions. I've just compared a steady state vertical descent rate, flaps set to #2 position, engine on idle, with speed held at 80 mph. both with and without my parasitic drag change. In both cases, the value was essentially the same; -1200 feet per minute (if I got the units right). So much for that idea; reverted to the original settings.There is another issue I've wondered about, that also may be controller related. With my Saitek yoke, when the flaps are lowered there is a significant pitch-up with each increment unless the speed is quite low, and it's hard to quickly compensate for this with the somewhat sticky action of the yoke. The result is that my reaction seems to be late and then excessive. I suppose there are a number of tweaks that one could use, but I found that reducing the flaps pitch_scalar somewhat largely fixed this - for my setup. That's the only other change I've kept other than in the flight tuning section.Thanks so much for posting your values; numbers are aways nice to have.Larry

Hey Larry,The Beaver actually doesn't come down very fast. With flaps at Takeoff and idle power, you'd be lucky to hit -1200 fpm in the real machine. That's a big, fat, high lift wing out there and especially on days where there is much convection, it really takes some effort to get it down. When very light, I've even had it climb for a short bit in a strong thermal and idle power with the flaps up. This machine likes to fly! If you are heavy, then it will come down a bit more briskly of course, but it still won't sink like the bigger Cessnas (185's, 206's, 207's, etc). It can be a real pain some days making a short landing because sometimes it just doesn't want to come down.As promised, I did that flight over to that unnamed lake. Below is the sequence from first spotting the lake to landing, to fully stopped, to out on the ice to show you views of how much room is left ahead after rolling to a stop (no brakes - wheel/ski machines don't have brakes with the skis down), how much is behind, and my projected takeoff path once I head back to the start of the lake (which will be shown in the shot where I came in from) and turn to start my takeoff roll. This leg has a pretty good bend in it so it was a turning takeoff, which means as soon as I had the tail up, I started my turn to the right. This is not uncommon to do in the bush. One VERY important thing to keep in mind here is I have my cockpit view zoom ratio set to 0.4. So, if it looks like there is really lots of room, keep in mind there is less than half the distance that there appears to be in these pics. I should have set the zoom to 1 for this test but forgot. Anyway, I went in at about 3700 lbs but came out at about 3200 (dropped off the trapper and a bunch of gear). I could have come out with the trapper and a bit of gear, but not the whole load I had going in. You can see in the last image a tree just above the cowling and to the right a bit. I was heading out through the open area and still not above all the trees, so this lake was about as tight as you'd want to do. I did have about a 5 kt wind component which started off on my nose but then became a bit of a crosswind as I started my turn partway down the lake. I didn't have to do anything special with the power though. I used 36.5" on takeoff as per usual. The second the skis were off the snow I got the flaps to Climb and the power back to 30" / 2000 rpm and held a climb speed of 80 mph. Pretty much normal, but not a lot of room to spare. Hope that helps.The lake. I came in eventually through the gap in the upper part of the picFinal. Remember, the zoom ratio is set to 0.4, so while it looks like there's a lot of room, it is deceivingClose final, holding 80 mph until the flareDown and stopped - remember the zoom ratioThis is at a zoom ration of 1 and shows how much room I had left after I got stoppedBehind the aircraft is the approach path I used. This plane doesn't need a lot of room.My planned takeoff path as the gap in the trees where the stream is will buy me a bit more spaceBack to the 0.4 zoom ratio. Ready to go.Just airborne and starting my turn to the right to hit the gapJust starting to clear the trees as I hit the gap at the end of the lakeGlenn

May I ask what value you assigned to the flaps scaler? I find the quick pitch up very annoying and difficult to respond to also...Thanks...Steve

Thanks for the pics Glenn, most interesting. I've started to think about other 'tests' that could done that would isolate the controller from the test, so that apples could be compared with apples. Then when the RW Beaver pilot tells us "x", we could set things up to match that. :-) I tried the stability settings you gave, without changing my other tweaks, and found the result not that realistic, to a non-pilot at least. It's the combination of things of course. So I went back to one point zeros (default) and started up from there in 0.1 increments. I'm still at it. I looked into getting the EPS app that will re-load the aircraft.cfg file while the sim is running. It looks like I can get access to it through MSDN for just $500 USD! What a deal. Steve, with my setup, I'm playing with the pitch scalar (in the [Flaps] section) of 0.6 or 0.7. E.g. pitch_scalar= 0.7I'm trying to keep the changes as small as possible and yet achieve a desireable result --- thinking that most likely the issue is my skill, not the aircraft cfg file. :-) Larry

I tried the stability settings you gave, without changing my other tweaks, and found the result not that realistic, to a non-pilot at least.

NOT realistic to a NON-pilot ????? Especially if the tweaks are from a real Beaver pilot who knows FSX as well, this implies that the tweaks ARE realistic to a REAL pilot.Isn't that the reason why it is called flight SIM and not flight GAME ???Isn't realism what flightsim pilots are looking for?

NOT realistic to a NON-pilot ????? Especially if the tweaks are from a real Beaver pilot who knows FSX as well, this implies that the tweaks ARE realistic to a REAL pilot.Isn't that the reason why it is called flight SIM and not flight GAME ???Isn't realism what flightsim pilots are looking for?

Dear BstolleOh my. I'm so sorry, I was afraid that my first posts here would end up me causing offense. And I was trying to qualify my statements so they did not. My only personal reference is that of a one time frequent passenger often in the right seat and I know that does not count. My thought was that I had made other changes which were adative to those suggested, plus I am using a different controller. Maybe this was not the right place for me to seek help in increasing the realism; the main purpose I had in mind.Sorry again, I'm in over my head. Larry

No reason to be sorry.It's your sim and it should be fun for you!I was just wondering a bit....Best regards and have a nice virtual flying weekend :)Bernt

Dear BstolleOh my. I'm so sorry, I was afraid that my first posts here would end up me causing offense. And I was trying to qualify my statements so they did not. My only personal reference is that of a one time frequent passenger often in the right seat and I know that does not count. My thought was that I had made other changes which were adative to those suggested, plus I am using a different controller. Maybe this was not the right place for me to seek help in increasing the realism; the main purpose I had in mind.Sorry again, I'm in over my head. Larry

You obviously came to the right place to seek help in increasing the realism. You were lucky enough to have a real world Beaver pilot who knows FSX give you exactly the settings you needed to get the Beaver to perform as close as it is going to get to the real world aircraft. In thanks, you (who have never piloted a Beaver in the real world) tell him the results were not realistic!!!Regards, Mike Mann