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jcorstjens

P40 Warhawk for FSW

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The P40 Warhawk for FSW is absolutely gorgeous inside and out. However flying this beast is a different story. Much more finetuning of the FDE is needed to make this plane truly flyable.

First of all one needs more than 3000 rpm to get this plane moving, taxying therefore is more or less impossible. Additionally in the air the plane is very unstable and again response to the controler inputs is over aggressive and even erratic. It is very easy to get this plane in an uncontrolable unusual attitude, resulting in a non-recoverable spin and crash. Compared to this plane the P40 of A2A is a dream to fly,

 

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It's definitely hands on; very sensitive and reacts IMO realistically with fingertip flying once it's trimmed up.  I have a T16000 joystick which is extremely precise, and it works well with that.   The only thing missing for me control-wise is a simulated trim wheel set with both rotary dials, like the real thing.

I haven't done any aero with it yet, but it feels like DCS warbird quality level of responsiveness.    Visually it's really impressive - my only negative is lack of functioning ADF dials.   Clock-to-map-to-ground works, but I'd rather navigate by NDB, lol.

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3 hours ago, jcorstjens said:

"..in the air the plane is very unstable and again response to the controler inputs is over aggressive and even erratic. It is very easy to get this plane in an uncontrolable unusual attitude, resulting in a non-recoverable spin and crash..."

 

After some more flying, you have a good point on stability - pitch tends to be neutral at cruise with a little negative stability as the aircraft slows - so the nose pitches slightly up before a stall, and it doesn't drop with a stall break - like the cg is aft.

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Glad you guys are liking the P-40!  I was on the dev team (I did the cockpit textures) and please, any feedback would be great.  The team is really eager to please!  She can be a bit of a hand-full, but these warbirds were not easy to handle.  You had the biggest engine crammed into the smallest and lightest frame =)  Once you do mater her, she is very rewarding for sure!  

Show us some screen shots!  Every forum thread needs some eye candy!  I was also thinking about doing a custom livery.  Any idea's or suggestions?

 

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Kevin Miller

 

3D Artist and developer

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State of the art cockpit textures, as good as it gets, perfect geometry, and the PBR is icing on the cake!   Great work by Gibbage and the team.   Lot's of detail in a very professional product.   Maybe I'll add some shots of details if I have time. 

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On 07/12/2017 at 11:12 PM, jcorstjens said:

First of all one needs more than 3000 rpm to get this plane moving, taxying therefore is more or less impossible.

Err, what speed are you hoping to taxy at? Check the video below, you'll see that the RPM lever is fully forward and RPM doesn't get much above 2000 but manfold pressure is really the point here - that doesn't go much above 20 hg and with max continuous being 44 you're well in the rear half of the throttle range to obtain a good taxying speed. Indeed, most of the time the throttle is pulled back to a fast idle with just the occasional blip to give some airflow over the rudder for directional control.

The take-off and landing are literally a quick 'jump in the aircraft after a week away flying tubeliners and see how it goes'.

 

 

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I honestly think it is in need of some fine tuning regarding ground handling, prop effects on ground...

We know that MSFS has that limitation of prop torque on roll and yaw only being active up to Vs0, but in between there are ways to fine tune it better...

The aircraft is almost impossible to takeoff in a natural way, which counters the pilot reports, for instance :

 

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On 8.12.2017 at 6:31 AM, Gibbage said:

 I was also thinking about doing a custom livery.  Any idea's or suggestions?

On Steam, I can read that a P-40 paints from "The Red Tails" is high on the wish list.

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I downloaded the P-40 Friday night and just spent an couple of hours flying it here's my thoughts:
External modeling is really nice! Cockpit is also modeled very well, there are a number of switches that are not active yet but as the plane and sim evolve I'm sure they will be adding more functions. Cold and dark start up check list is ok it takes you through what you need to get the A/C up and going. I located the documentation included with plane which is here: under steam - common > FSW > DLC > 630916 > Bluesky FS > Curtiss P40 Warhawk. nice pdf manual I like to have these on the desktop for quick access.

Taxing not very realistic she is a bear to taxi. I have a number of hours in the A2A P51 and it much more manageable but that's probably not a very fair comparison but it seems much to sensitive to rudder input and it seems to take a lot of throttle got get it moving.  The brakes seem fine just have to watch you don't do a nose plant.

Following the check list and setting 1 unit nose up for trim on takeoff caused the plane to lift off to early and go into a nose high attitude and stall. So I set the trim to 0 but it still took a bunch of rudder and brakes to get it down the runway and airborne, once off it climbed well. I had my sensitivity on my controls set to 2 with .5 null. It responses to the ailerons and elevator much better at those settings. Took it through some barrel rolls and loops which it did well one thing I noticed was it was WAY to sensitive to the Elevator trim! I tried the trim on my both X55 throttle rotary and X55 stick switch with it set to slow. One or 2 hits on the nose up trim which moves the cockpit control about a 1/4 unit and the A/C goes into a 6000 FPM climb! Level the plane out and hit 3 clicks down trim and it goes into 4K fpm decent and if don't watch it pretty shortly its heading almost straight down,  it very hard to trim the A/C for level flight. It also doesn't seem to response like it should to power changes when level I cut the power from 35 in to 20 in manifold pressure and the speed starts to bleed off but it doesn't start to descend like you would expect. It liked to stay in level flight until it stalls which it shouldn't do, which also make it kind of a bear to land I really have to watch what I'm doing.

I did some experiments with the .cfg file and yes I did back it the original up.  I looked at the A2A p51 .CFG to see what they set the elevator and rudder trim sensitivity to.  Elevator was .2 and rudder was .62 so I tried those values in the P40 which help it a bunch but it still wasn't great.  Another thing I noticed was if I climbed at 1000 fpm then neutral the stick it would continue to increase its climb rate until it was almost vertical then stall and fall off to the left into a spin.

I also noticed when I call up the GPS its blue and the display is off center so I'm wondering if I got a bad download which I check later.  Just thought I throw this out and see if anyone else is seeing these same issues before I start digging into my system.

Other than some tweaking in the flight model it is a really nice plane!
 

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Good points rtexpress, I agree completely with your assessment of trim character and pitch control.  An obvious and relatively easy trim and pitch stability fix is to go into the .cfg file and shift the longitudinal cg number forward - that will do two things:  reduce the pitch trim rate per unit of input, making pitch trim much easier to manage, and also give you a normal pitch change when the aircraft if accelerating or decelerating away from it's trimmed airspeed.   Aircraft pitch behavior will become much more 'normal', including stalls.   You will lose the tendency of the nose to go in the opposite direction you expect as you slow down....

Keep in mind that if you change cg parameters, it will upset other areas of the FM - which appear to be very finely tuned by the developer, so what I am suggesting is more or less a test of a specific parameter that is off, and this is one way to adjust it - go to the .cfg and find this entry block:

 [weight_and_balance]
max_gross_weight =9350.0
empty_weight =6590.00                                     // P-40F(feet) longitudinal, lateral, vertical distance from specified datum         
reference_datum_position     = 0.000, 0.000, 0.000          // (feet) distance from FlightSim Reference position: (1/4 chord, centerline, waterline)
empty_weight_CG_position      = 0.700, -0.000, -0.000       // P-40F(feet) longitudinal, lateral, vertical distance from specified datum

The original empty weight CG longitudinal number was -0.000 - I changed it to 0.700 (did a little flight test trial and error to get this rough number), saved the file, loaded up the P40 and did a flight test.   This essentially moves the CG forward, further away from the calculated center of lift, and improves pitch character to something you will recognize.   It's much more realistic IMO, but it's for guys who've flown this P40 to say if it's more or less in the ballpark.

I really think the dev did a fantastic job all around, including the FM overall, this is more or less a test and a suggestion to fix an obvious pitch stability and trim issue. 

(edit: the only other change I made was to reduce brake sensitivity to 1.00 from the developer's 1.34 - due to increased nose over tendency with the more forward cg - 1.00 was just a rough guess but it works well in the sim)   

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On Steam there is a topic:  "Curtiss P-40F Warhawk Feedback"

Quote

Hey Guys,
We are interested in your feedback on the P-40F. 
We're currently working on aicraft improvements and functionality for the first patch which will include a lighter front panel (as it's dark on some people's monitors) as well as some of the inop switches.
We've been watching your videos and reading your comments posted around and will take those points into consideration also.

I'd strongly advise you to read the operting manual in the Docs folder steamapps\common\FSW\DLC\630916\BlueSky FS\Curtiss P40 Warhawk
Which will help you with settings for taxi, take off and landing as we're seeing a few people having some issues.
If you hit the throttle to the firewall you'll have massive torque and will end up toppling the aircraft over, she's no GA aircraft and needs gentle handling!!

As I've said please give us feedback so we can improve the product for you.

Many thanks,
Chris.

Quote

At full throttle you'll detonate the engine, never fly full throttle for longer than about 3 minutes.
I don't have the charts on me at the moment but from the top of my head...
Climb out at around 48inches, 2800rpm (check the manual for this one)
Effective cruise would be about 35inch 2600rpm
Aerobatics set to 45inch 2700rpm and you can fly a good routine for a while with those settings.

In terms of stick sensitivity, what joystick are you using? 
I have the Warthog and she sits very comfortably with hands off stick on the ground whilst taxiing and in level flight for me. I do have the MFG Crosswinds though but have tested on a few other lower end pedals with no issues.
I found the Saitek yoke at DTG studio was way more sensitive and I had to dial some of the deadzone back and curve it (don't tell Aimee that's why she may have crashed on take off on the stream ;) hehe).

 

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Barfly thanks for the suggestions I'll give them a try tonight, right now I have the elevator trim sensitivity at .3 and the difficulty level set to medium in FSW while I get a feel for the plane.  I also have the elevator and aileron axis sensitivity set at 7.  I didn't think about the CG being to far aft which would make it want to really climb on a small amount of up trim, I was flying it last night and I have the trim set at 1.7-2 down which made it fly level with less input on the stick.  On take off I have to have it at 1.5 nose down trim to keep it from jumping off the runway at 90 mph before the tail is coming level off the runway.  I see how it goes tonight...

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No problem rtexpress, if you use the forward cg parameter I mentioned in the above post, you can probably return the original .cfg trim setting and get a good effect.

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7 hours ago, Barfly said:

No problem rtexpress, if you use the forward cg parameter I mentioned in the above post, you can probably return the original .cfg trim setting and get a good effect.

I tried your suggested setting and the plane flew great now it acts like I would expect thanks!  I will move the trim setting in the .cfg tomorrow and see how that works.  It was set at .3 and I could tell it could use more as it wasn't very responsive...

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