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HighBypass

A2A Connie - sweet ride, eventually :)

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Pulled the trigger on the Connie yesterday. Beautiful. Installed fine, loaded in the sim fine. FPS still pretty good. Mistakenly assigned my rudder axis to nosehweel steering in the configurator: No rudders moving! OOPS, reverted back, all OK.

Had Larry(the FE) do his stuff. Cool! Then I let the engines idle too long whilst generally faffing about... so he shut them all down again! LOL.

Eventually got her moving and took off from Manchester EGCC, full bore. OOPS shouldn't cane the engines like that (thanks, Larry!)

Flew out and around, getting her trimmed out about 2500 feet. All the time wondering why the prop rpm was still at full chat redline despite me throttling back to reasonable manifold settings...

Was going to land at Manchester but then saw Liverpool EGGP off to my right. OK I'm low enough and far enough out - go for it.

Got her lined up and slowed down - just guessing at the speeds - no less than 85 knots dirty and it was working.

Landed fine... on one main first :)

She flew pretty sweetly. I'd read that the Connie was a bit sensitive in pitch, but apart from a little porpoising on the approach I don't think she was any worse than other aircraft in my virtual fleet. Note - she wasn't loaded at all for this flight.

Back to the prop rpm. I guess Larry was expecting me to manage the rpm from up front... especially after I discovered the little master prop switch with increase & decrease labelled on it!! LOL :blush: Manuals are provided for a good reason I guess.

Thank you A2A from a jet guy who may now be crossing to the dark side of cantankerous fire breathing radials...:cool:

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Mark Robinson

Part-time Ferroequinologist

Author of FLIGHT: A near-future short story (ebook available on amazon)

I made the baby cry - A2A Simulations L-049 Constellation

Sky Simulations MD-11 V2.2 Pilot. The best "lite" MD-11 money can buy (well, it's not freeware!)

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Glad you like it. Yes that little switch makes a big difference :)

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Paul Grubich 2017 - Professional texture artist painting virtual aircraft I love.
Be sure to check out my aged cockpits for the A2A B-377, B-17 and Connie at Flightsim.com and Avsim library

i-5vbvgq6-S.png

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Wait 'til a bad landing or too much turbulance, whence you will be summarily fired when reading your captain's log.  I've been fired so many times I now regularly make trips to the vurtual unemployment office.

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Forever indebted to the late Michael Greenblatt of FSGS.

 

 

 

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...must remember... don't make the baby cry! LOL.


Mark Robinson

Part-time Ferroequinologist

Author of FLIGHT: A near-future short story (ebook available on amazon)

I made the baby cry - A2A Simulations L-049 Constellation

Sky Simulations MD-11 V2.2 Pilot. The best "lite" MD-11 money can buy (well, it's not freeware!)

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6 hours ago, HighBypass said:

Thank you A2A from a jet guy who may now be crossing to the dark side of cantankerous fire breathing radials...:cool:

I have the Connie, PMDG DC-6 and Milviz Otter and like you have spend most of my sim time on tube jets but here lately I have become hooked on recip props and am losing interest in the sterile  world of jets. So much to learn managing those engines and so satisfying to get it right. Even with the autopilot on you still are basically flying the aircraft and best not walk away long. A lot of hand flying. Lower altitudes where you can enjoy that great ORBYX Global LC scenery. No FMC to load and fuss over. Just plain fun as well as providing a sense of accomplishment.

I guess I'll have to go back to burning kerosene when Leonardo releases that updated Maddog.

 

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Vic green

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4 hours ago, PATCO LCH said:

....No FMC to load and fuss over.....

and Betty bringing us drinks and meals too on longer flights!


Mark Robinson

Part-time Ferroequinologist

Author of FLIGHT: A near-future short story (ebook available on amazon)

I made the baby cry - A2A Simulations L-049 Constellation

Sky Simulations MD-11 V2.2 Pilot. The best "lite" MD-11 money can buy (well, it's not freeware!)

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Interesting thing about pitch in the Connie is that it seems pretty stable when you're hand-flying, but gets amazingly twitchy once you turn on the autopilot.  After that it's a constant struggle to retrim and/or adjust the autopilot pitch control.  At times I've opted to leave the autopilot's elevator axis turned off and just treat it like a course hold with a wing leveler - or just bag the whole thing and hand-fly all the way.  The other challenge is to get used to the instant-response VSI - if you're accustomed to the more typical damped ones, it looks alarming, and there's a big temptation to go chasing the needle even if you know better.  I can't say I find the Connie a really pleasant airplane to fly - which surprises me, because I was sure I would.  But as a rule I prefer the "planted" feeling you get from the Douglas transports.

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Absolutely agree with Alan - i had higher expectations and i thought i would spend all my time using Connie, but not.

Apart of pitch , A/P i also don't like incompleteness of F/E actions, lack of full implementation of AccuSim, lack of F/O input, lack of interactive checklists, default lightning, strange and restrictive judgement when u are in career mode and so on...

I like A2A and have other planes from them, but Connie is not my fav...  

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Artur 

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The pitch problem is indeed the biggest issue with this Connie.

 

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I find very little problems with pitch - what controller are you using? If it bothers you so much you could always use the freeware Connie FM. 


Paul Grubich 2017 - Professional texture artist painting virtual aircraft I love.
Be sure to check out my aged cockpits for the A2A B-377, B-17 and Connie at Flightsim.com and Avsim library

i-5vbvgq6-S.png

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That Connie has the same issue. Almost impossible to trim.

Manfred's DC3 for example is easily to trim and fly. So its not my controller setup. A lot of other planes fly nicely.

A guy on youtube (Wells?)was busy with it and saw a lot of wrong settings. He never did the pitching moment correction, and for me its to long ago to know how to solve this.

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4 hours ago, warbirds said:

what controller are you using?

I'm using a Yoko yoke and MFG Crosswind pedals, so I don't think the controller is the issue.

Nor do I think there's necessarily anything wrong with the flight model.  The Connie was reported to be skittish in the pitch axis.  And it had hydraulically boosted controls, which the Douglas transports didn't, so it'd likely require a much lighter touch.  We may just be talking about our preferences, the way we would about real aircraft.  Or about cars, for that matter.  I switched from a base model Acura TL to the uprated TL-S model in part because when you accelerated to pass in the base model, it always felt like you were trying to balance on top of a beach ball.  I hated the instability.  Other people probably liked the work it took to keep the base model in its groove.  

It's really impossible to say whether the Connie behaves authentically or not because there aren't any flying examples of the 049 model.  Connies in online videos seem to "sit" very solidly - but they're later models, which makes them effectively different aircraft.  The Breitling Super Connie is a case in point.  The A2A Connie feels, subjectively, exaggerated in its pitch response.  But we have no way of knowing whether that's a mistake or whether it's accurate.

I will say that the thing I value most in the work of the best flight-model authors - Alexander Metzger, Rob Young and Bernt Stolle come to mind - is the ability to make the aircraft feel like it's a heavy object with mass and inertia.  It's probably more art than science to achieve that.  The Connie doesn't have that quality - but again, maybe the real one didn't either.

I have other things on my Connie wishlist - for example, I'd like it if in some future revision, they'd give us the option of using the later Sperry A-12 autopilot from the Stratocruiser.  That'd add useful features like an effective altitude hold without breaking immersion the way the current alternative (FSX default autopilot) does.

Bottom line - it's probably just that I'm finding out through experience that I'm a Douglas guy.

@Johan - I'd be interested to see those YouTube videos if you can track down a link.



 

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Alan,

Here you go - here's one. Wells Sullivan is the youtube guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4J5gjJl-Xc

I'm going to live with what A2A have given us off the bat, at least until I've taken Connie to heaven & back a couple of times a week for a few months !! :blink: :blush:

 


Mark Robinson

Part-time Ferroequinologist

Author of FLIGHT: A near-future short story (ebook available on amazon)

I made the baby cry - A2A Simulations L-049 Constellation

Sky Simulations MD-11 V2.2 Pilot. The best "lite" MD-11 money can buy (well, it's not freeware!)

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Thanks!  More than I can process tonight - I'll try to spend time with it tomorrow.  I've watched his series on the Flight Replicas Canadair Northstar - he's very thorough.

I don't want it to sound like I'm Connie-bashing - I'm not.  I've logged plenty of time in it and it's a wonderful package.  Just looking for a ride that suits me, same as with any test drive!

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