Excessive ground effect on landing

[Bob Scott 7,720]

Hi Martin; Prior to modding the ground effect--especially with sig headwinds, anything close to 4 deg nose up in the flare had me in a balloon, and that with threshold crossing at Vref vs Vref+5. The reduced GE gives me a flare and touchdown very similar to what you describe. The videos are fairly representative of what I've observed watching them land, particularly the Continental -800 at Nagoya.

[G550flyer 1,013]

IIRC Boeing do state 2 degrees for the flare, it's in the manual. After Hotfix 4, I see 2 degrees deck angle on the approach, and a two degree flare resulting in 4 degrees pitch or there abouts..The NG has an artificially high VREF to help avoid a tail strike, thus lower deck angle.With the short field package it has a lower VREF and higher deck angle.Referring to Youtube videos isn't very helpful, as you can't see the instrumentation and have no idea if the aircraft is fast or slow.

The manual actually says approach 2.4 for the 800, 3.6 800SFP, 1.6 for the 900, and 2.6 900ER for a 3 degree glide. touch down attitudes at 130,000 at vref are 4.7(800), 6(800SFP), 3.8(900) and 5.3(900ER)You start striking the tail at 9.2(800), 8.8(800SFP), 8.3(900) and 8.0(900ER)

[martin-w 3,235]

Hi Martin; Prior to modding the ground effect--especially with sig headwinds, anything close to 4 deg nose up in the flare had me in a balloon, and that with threshold crossing at Vref vs Vref+5. The reduced GE gives me a flare and touchdown very similar to what you describe. The videos are fairly representative of what I've observed watching them land, particularly the Continental -800 at Nagoya.

There's some nice HUD videos on Youtube Bob. Might give you a better idea. Deck angle in the flare is 4 degrees. I see SP1 has been released, so we'll see with that.

[Bob Scott 7,720]

A quick note post-SP1 on this issue...seems to be working better. I'm wondering if the HF4 air file failed to be overwritten during the install. At any rate, post-uninstall, reinstall, and SP1 it's not doing the glider thing.

[MikeGroven 0]

A quick note post-SP1 on this issue...seems to be working better. I'm wondering if the HF4 air file failed to be overwritten during the install. At any rate, post-uninstall, reinstall, and SP1 it's not doing the glider thing.

Bob, I'm still very much experiencing the excessive float during landing flare post-SP1. I've pretty much given up hope that PMDG will ever properly address this issue unless they bring in new talent to the development team at some point in the future. Not trying to be overly negative, but this just seems to be the way thing are unfortunately. Perhaps a community-based flight dynamics team could be given the chance to fix the .air file if PMDG has no objections? At any rate, I have no real interest in further investing very much time at all in the NGX if it cannot be flown properly in the landing phase. The visuals and systems modeling are really nice though.

[SMITI07 53]

I don't believe there's anything wrong with the flight model post SP1.Yes in the release version there was too much lift and It was unrealistically floaty, but HF4 made a slight improvement (mainly to approach angle) and SP1 made it feel very much how I would expect the aircraft to fly.Several reallife NG pilots have commented on how slippery it is and how it does want to keep flying. Maybe the reason your still having issues is because of your landing technique. It is not a 747 or MD-11 and is flowen quite differently in those last 50 ft.

[martin-w 3,235]

I flew the 600 last night, which was excellent.will test the 800 today, post SP1.If it's better than before SP1, something tells me it will be close to the video I posted above.Lots more HUD videos on Youtube to watch.

[martin-w 3,235]

Bob, I'm still very much experiencing the excessive float during landing flare post-SP1. I've pretty much given up hope that PMDG will ever properly address this issue unless they bring in new talent to the development team at some point in the future. Not trying to be overly negative, but this just seems to be the way thing are unfortunately. Perhaps a community-based flight dynamics team could be given the chance to fix the .air file if PMDG has no objections? At any rate, I have no real interest in further investing very much time at all in the NGX if it cannot be flown properly in the landing phase. The visuals and systems modeling are really nice though.

Sorry Mikle, I would totally disagree with you there.Bob is very experienced in regard to such things and seems happy now post SP1.I would say the same, performs flawlessly as far as I'm concerned.I would suggest you look at the many HUD videos on Youtube, including the one I posted. If you power back at 30 feet, and flare so that the flight patch vector is below the horizon line you should be successful.If you still have issues, power back sooner.Don't guess, and blindly raise the nose to a given pitch. All landings are different. Pay attention to the vertical speed.

[MikeGroven 0]

Sorry Mikle, I would totally disagree with you there.Bob is very experienced in regard to such things and seems happy now post SP1.I would say the same, performs flawlessly as far as I'm concerned.I would suggest you look at the many HUD videos on Youtube, including the one I posted. If you power back at 30 feet, and flare so that the flight patch vector is below the horizon line you should be successful.If you still have issues, power back sooner.Don't guess, and blindly raise the nose to a given pitch. All landings are different. Pay attention to the vertical speed.

Hi Martin,Thank you - I'm beginning to suspect my install of SP1 hasn't replaced the .air and .cfg files properly with the latest versions. I'm going to do a full uninstall/reinstall and will try again. I agree with you about Colonel Scott's background though and I have enormous respect for him.

[falcon999 24]

Gents,Please ensure you follow Roberts suggestions on the installation of SP1. Also ensure you have deleted all of your old panel states."This being the case, we generally recommend that you completely uninstall the NGX and reinstall anew. It will make your life a bit simpler and give you a good clean base platform to work with!"

[martin-w 3,235]

Yes, that was exactly what I did. unInstalled the NGX completely, reinstalled, then SP1, then downloaded all liveries again and installed.Mike... just tested the 800. At 30 flap, VREF+5 I saw exactly the pitch on approach as per the manuals, 2.4 degrees. the flare was correct at about 4 degrees. No floating to speak of.Hope you get it sorted. it's a fine product.

[Bob Scott 7,720]

Gents,Please ensure you follow Roberts suggestions on the installation of SP1. Also ensure you have deleted all of your old panel states."This being the case, we generally recommend that you completely uninstall the NGX and reinstall anew. It will make your life a bit simpler and give you a good clean base platform to work with!"

A couple thoughts on that as well...there are a couple somewhat conflicting versions of this guidance from the PMDG guys, ranging from "you don't need to but it's a good idea," to "you really really do need to start from scratch"...I first saved a copy of the NGX aircraft folders from the FSXSimobjectsAirplanes directory so that I could cut and paste anything I might need to get back (like the camera definitions for EZ-DOK from the aircraft.cfg, my key definitions, config files for AES etc). Then I uninstalled the NGX from the Vista Control Panel -> Programs and Features page. After that I still had an NGX folder in the FSXPMDG folder, and the aircraft folders were still there in the Airplanes directory...I deleted all of those manually. Then I re-installed the original NGX (no reactivation was required), then SP1, and loaded up FSX with the NGX one time just to make sure the inits and stuff got built out. I got out of FSX, then installed the 600/700 package, and ran FSX again with the -600, which does require activation the first time you run it, using the key code you get off the receipt. Then I used the livery manager to load a complete new set of liveries freshly downloaded off the PMDG site (they were changed for SP1). After that, I cut-and-pasted the camera defs for EZ-Dok back into the aircraft.cfg files, copied the intelliscene.cfg files (AES configs) back into the aircraft directories, and manually edited the shortcuts.ini file in the FSXPMDGPMDG 737 NGX directory for the key definitions I had made the first time around.All told, it took an hour or two to rebuild Rome...time well-spent.Not sure what was changed in the FDE from the hotfix version, but the decel and float in the flare look much more like what I was expecting, and I've probably flown 30-40 landings now at various weights and wind conditions and I'm satisfied this gets pretty close now.

[G550flyer 1,013]

After a clean install the aircraft is on par with the training manual during landing.

[RYR738 9]

The NGX post SP1 is a dream to fly !!Fred.

[MikeGroven 0]

Well, I'm scratching my head here guys - I did a full uninstall/reinstall, then SP1, started from a fresh .flt file and I'm seeing absolutely no change at all in the exaggerated floating tendency whatsoever. I just did a full uninstall now and I think I'll get more enjoyment from the extra hard drive space than anything else, ha. Glad you all have been successful with your own personal endeavors though!. I think I stick to flying the A2A planes on the desktop sim.