I have been trying to trim the plane, but am having a hard time getting the plane to level off. Any tips on how to trim the plane correctly?

How close are you getting it? You can expect some very minor altitude oscillations even when well-trimmed.

I am around 300 - 400 ft up or down when I have it trimmed.

The joystick trim buttons tend to be too coarse for fine trim adjustments. You may have better luck using the keyboard trim, control-up/down arrows. Just tap them for a fine adjustment. Once you've got it as close as you can get it, adjust your ascent/descent with minor throttle adjustments.

 

I had a couple of extra buttons on my joystick that I assigned to a second trim function. The first set of trim buttons give the normal coarse adjustment, the second set give fine adjustment without repeat. This requires editing the Standard.xml controls file.

 

Hook

Speaking of Joystick controls. I have the Saitek Throttle Quandrant and is there anyway to put flaps on and axis rather then a button?

I have been trying to trim the plane, but am having a hard time getting the plane to level off. Any tips on how to trim the plane correctly?

 

Did you try to change the value of trimming in the standard.xml? I changed it to 200.000000 instead of 100.000000 and have got 1° steps in trimming and it works very good! Before the steps were between 3-5° and so I had the problem, that it was either too high or too low....

 

 

<Index>2</Index>

<Down>

<EventName>FlightControls.PitchTrimDownIncrement</EventName>

<Repeat>200.000000</Repeat>

</Down>

</Entry>

<Entry>

<Index>3</Index>

<Down>

<EventName>FlightControls.PitchTrimUpIncrement</EventName>

<Repeat>200.000000</Repeat>

</Down>

</Entry>

<Entry>

I think we are over complicating this.

 

To level off

1 using the control wheel/stick hold the nose at whatever position is required to maintain level flight.

2 allow the airplane to accelerate to cruise speed

3 set desired cruise power setting

4 trim out so that the nose holds steady when the controls are released. As you trim, you will find that you will have to move the stick to neutral to keep the nose steady at which point you are done trimming. keep the nose and the plane level as you trim.

 

if you can't use the default control settings to do this (I do) then go ahead and try the above tweaks.

where should my cruise speed be? I am at 100% throttle.

Use the checklists throughout the flight (Q key)!! Your fast cruise settings are published in those.

 

Generally speaking cruise is somewhere between 55% and 75% power depending on how fast or fuel efficient you wish to be.

when I am in Maule and use the checklist it is not telling me during cruise to reduce throttle. It just has me lower prop RPM unless that is essentially the samething.

when I am in Maule and use the checklist it is not telling me during cruise to reduce throttle. It just has me lower prop RPM unless that is essentially the samething.

 

I cruise the Maule at full throttle, with the prop control backed off to about 2400rpm. It is a fast cruise, as I'm not worried about fuel costs or engine wear in Flight.

 

Never looked at the checklist, myself, but if you go by what it tells you, it should be good.

 

i have been playing around with it and im still having a hard time find think that pocket where it will go up 100 or down 100 but stay in between.

You will have to periodically correct your altitude. If the VSI isn't drifting much past 100fpm in it's oscillations, you are doing ok.

Hands off doesn't mean that it's time to take a nap! :) If you're getting it to stay put within +/- 100ft with minor trim corrections to fine tune, you're doing well.

 

I think the Maule checklist says X In Hg Manifold Press or Max Throttle. I forgot what the number is for the cruise setting, but to be realistic you should not exceed the X In Hg. Use max throttle when you have climbed high enough where you can no longer maintain the cruise manifold pressure.

 

Or you can do what most will do and just max it out because you can't damage the engine in Flight. :)

And if you have the time, choose a weather scenario with calm winds, go up to say 7,500' or higher and test Phugoid Oscillations :-)

 

See it here, for an example: [media=]

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This is allways an excellent source of info too: http://www.av8n.com/...tm/aoastab.html