Hey guys!

 

I know there are some very talented people out there!

So if anyone is able to help me with this problem, i'd be very happy!

 

How can the pitch/lift behavior of an aircraft be edited? The plane i'm working with tends

to lose lift while banking and pitch up quite extremly especially when flying lower speeds ending

up in a constant pitch up - pitch down movement.

Is this coded in the model itself or can it be edited via the .cfg/air files?

 

Any help very appreciated!

And many thanks in advance!

 

Tom

I guess you'd need to start with saying what the origin of the files is before anyone comments. It's a pretty complicated thing to deal with. Also, what tools are you using to edit the air file?

Planes do lose lift when banking.

The plane i'm working with tends to lose lift while banking

That's supposed to happen. In straight and level flight, lift is a vertical component with no horizontal component whatsoever. When you start to turn, lift would be straight up relative to the plane, but at an angle relative to the ground. Now you have a vertical component and a horizontal component, and your vertical lift component has obviously decreased.

Before you start tinkering with the flight dynamics, I think many would strongly recommend reading a little on flight dynamics and how things work...

 

A

 

 

Andrew Entwistle

I'm talking about Thomas Ruth's freeware Airbus available here at avsim.

 

I know that planes act like this in the real world.

 

For my taste, this particular plane is a bit extreme.

When starting to bank for a turn, it loses up to 300 ft of altitude in the turn and

the Autopilot has to regulate a couple of times while turning. Banking out of the turn

the same happens and it gain a few hundred feet while establishing straight flight.

 

Tom

As you mention the autopilot is sounds like you need to adjust the autopilot controls before you start worrying about the aerodynamics. Improving the autopilot pitch control responsiveness may help.

 

Autopilot is controlled by the [autopilot] section of the aircraft.cfg.

Loss of vertical lift is exaggerated in FSX, as it is in almost all sims. I know that the lift vector gets deflected to induce a turn when the a/c is banked. However, in almost all cases, a student pilot flying a C172 with FSX experience will over-compensate for the loss of vertical lift in a turn and cause the a/c to climb. I think it's all a mater of inertia and timing, in that the real a/c doesn't react to the loss of vertical lift as quick as the sim does.

 

An example might be in 45 degree banks, a maneuver required for the Private Pilot's license. Sure- by the time you are in the second half of a 360 turn you are puling back hard in the real thing, but in the first half you don't pull back that hard until vertical lift is lost, which may take the best part of the first 90 degrees of the turn. But not so in a sim, and that applies to all sims that I have flown, including the Frasca sim that I use at our flight club for instrument currency sometimes. Don't ask me why a software program can't model this better....

 

So, to the OP, it could just be this "quirk" in sims that you are seeing...

 

Thanks, Bruce.

Often you get what you pay for.  If you are indeed having problems with the model remember it is, after all, freeware.  From the very little I know about programming air files you are intending to go where angels (and even Bill Gates) fear to tread.

Thanks for your replies!

 

I donn't expect a perfect flight model like i got with PMDGs 747 or so...

Its just a little tweaking task i am fiddling with for myself.

 

Bruce:

Why don't i see the same problem with lets say PMDGs planes, or the Majestic Dash?

There must be a way to reduce that "quirk" you mentioned above.

 

Any tipps greatly appreciated!

 

Tom

@woodhick:

 

I dont even know if its a problem with the model or with the config/Air file.

 

Tom

Thanks for your replies!

 

Bruce:

Why don't i see the same problem with lets say PMDGs planes, or the Majestic Dash?

There must be a way to reduce that "quirk" you mentioned above.

 

Tom

Maybe some of the more expensive addons have additional code to get around this issue? I'm not sure,......

Most definitely, the bulk of high end addons do not touch the default Autopilot code, it is primarily done externally.

If an a/c just banks it will loose height. If you are manually flying it you will need to hold the nose up and consequently also loose some airspeed. What does the AP do for that a/c? What are its limitations? You need to really know what you are doing and whether the a/c model is truly at fault before you start messing about.