I am new to the forums so hope I have the correct one

have been using FSX (not steam version) on my desktop for many years but have lost the ability to take off!
I proceeded down the runway, flaps at 5 degrees, lift off at 140 knots, lift gear and climb at a steady rate

my joystick sometimes allows me to control the rate of pitch but when I engage the autopilot for the preset altimeter with  a reasonable feet per minute setting the nose of the plane goes virtually upright before spiralling out of control and crashes to the ground 

sometimes just after take off the joystick does not allow me to control the pitch and the nose of the plane goes virtually upright before spiralling out of control and crashes to the ground 

have looked at many airliner take off tutorials but can’t see what I am doing wrong

is there an auto take off feature I can use to get and stay in the air

appreciate any help

Your post here is OK for now!  Be sure to use the FSX/FSX-SE forum for your FSX questions.  I would hope you are not engaging the A/P while you are on the runway!  That should be done only after wheels up and climbing.

First of all what plane u fly ?

Blind shot here - have u checked elevator trim settings before engaging autopilot ?

( in fact that setting should be done and checked before lift off )

 

Edited January 22, 20206 yr by Beardyman

thank you Charlieron and beardyman for your replies regarding my liner takeoff issues

an addon A340 is the aircraft I am using and don’t deploy autopilot until airborne

i have only had a short session with my fsx today and had some success with getting airborne and staying in the air following elevator adjustment,  so elevator / horizontal stabilising seems to be where my problem is

thanks for your input appreciated 

 

WELCOME! Have you tried re-calibrating the joystick as well?

HighBypass thanks for post joystick calibration ok my problem was not understanding vertical stabilisers and elevator trim

i am having more success with take offs and staying up there

thanks all for helpful posts

ron

Just more for information than anything else, don't worry, you don't have to know any of this stuff, but you might find it interesting...

On the real aeroplane, when it is loaded, the crew are given a load sheet by the flight dispatcher, and one by the fueler. These confirm that the aircraft has been loaded correctly with passengers, bags, cargo and fuel, and from this they set the correct trim for the aircraft's weight based on the information on this sheet. But even the same loadout can vary depending on where the bags and cargo is loaded (either in the front, or the rear cargo holds, and whether it is at the front or the back of those holds). You might occasionally hear these load sheets being referred to as 'zig zags'. That's because the old ones (which are not used much these days) used to have a bunch of boxes which would be ticked by a graph line which went through them all and ended up producing a zig-zagged line on the sheet of paper.

These days most of this stuff is electronic with dispatchers using Ipads and a computer terminal at the head of the stand where the aeroplane is parked, to determine where stuff goes on the plane. That system, in case you were curious, is called the BRS (Baggage Reconciliation System), and if that's not working properly, they might also use a manual sheet of paper and literally pull stickers off the suitcase baggage tags and stick them on the sheet of paper to ensure all the bags are properly checked in. Those sheets of paper are called Bingo Cards (for obvious reasons). That's not very likely on an A340 though, because most of the bags which go on them are pre-loaded into containers called ULDs (Unit Load Devices), which everyone refers to as 'cans', and these cans are loaded into various cargo stations in the hold of the A340 and then locked down in position with a bunch of latches to stop them moving around. You have probably seen these cans at an airport, they look like the picture I've linked to below. They are usually a bit angled at the bottom edges so they can fit snugly into the lower fuselage of the plane There are several different types of these for various aeroplanes and in fact, when an aeroplane is designed, its dimensions are based largely on being able to fit these standard-sized cans into it. The A340 typically uses LD9 cans, but sometimes it uses cans which are half that size and fits two across the hold, as in this picture:

can in a hold

The black roller bits you can see on the floor in that picture are the powered rollers to move the cans into position to control how the aeroplane ends up being balanced, which are operated by a switch near the hatch for the cargo hold and the bits which are red that you can just about see, are the stop locks which are flipped up when the cans are in place in order to keep them in position.

If you've ever wondered what the numbers and letters on these cans are, in that picture, you can see a can with AKE 74436 R7 on it. Each can has a unique identifier on it, this is so that when each can is weighed and the load sheet is produced, the loaders will know which can to put where in the plane, and on an A340, which is a big airliner that can sometimes be stopping somewhere en route, it's not unusual for some cans to be offloaded at that stop so that passengers getting off there can get their bags (keep in mind that if you are doing that in your sim, the trim will change after that can has been unloaded at your halfway airport!). So, luggage is divided into different types, known as locals, transfers, rush bags etc, and these are put in specific cans. Obviously, you load the ones going all the way to the final destination first, and the ones going to a stop half way last, so that you can get those 'halfway' cans off with out having to unload all of the other cans! One each can, there are three letters at the start of its identifier (such as AKE, AKH). This refers to the type of can and where it can fit, for example, the 'K' in that three-letter code refers to its footprint size and the H refers to the rest of its particular shape. So loaders know an AKE for example will fit in an Airbus A330 and take up half the width of its hold, and they know an AKH will fit in an Airbus A320 and go all the way across the width of its hold.

The numbers which follow that are the individual identifiers of the can, so the loaders know which can is which because their load plan will list each can's 'name' and where it should go on the plane. Cargo is sometimes put in cans, but more often than not it is put on pallets, and these too have similar codes to 'cans'. For example, you might see a pallet with some cargo on it with the code PKC 123456. and since you now know a little bit about what those letters and numbers actually mean, you know that an AKH can and a PKC pallet both have the same K letter in them as the second letter in their identifier, which means they have the same sized footprint, so they'd both fit in exactly the same place in an aircraft's hold because there similar size means either one will fit a position which has the same stop locks.

Some add-on aeroplanes for FSX come with 'load manager' programs (you can usually find these via your PC's program start menu), and these allow you to set up various loads for your aeroplanes. although you can also play around with that on the menu settings in FSX itself once your sim has loaded up. The diagrams you find in these 'load manager' programs are very similar-looking to the load sheets used on the real aeroplanes and like those real load sheets, they will sometimes tell you the correct trim setting to put in. On airliners with an FMC (flight management computer), if you input all the correct weight data for fuel and payload on the CDU (computer/control display unit - i.e. the thing on the centre pedestal near the thrust levers which looks like a fancy pocket calculator), it does actually tell you the correct trim setting to use and sometimes this information is sent directly to the flight management computer from the dispatcher electronically if the aeroplane has all kinds of fancy datalinks and stuff. Note that on an Airbus, the CDU is called the MCDU (which stands for Multifunction Control Display Unit).

On most airliners, the trim setting can be found to the side of the throttles in the middle pedestal. It usually looks like a wheel, often painted in alternate black and white colours so you can see when it is moving backwards or forwards, and it invariably has a little pointer arrow which shows you the trim number (this is expressed as either a positive or negative number). If in your FSX options settings, you have ticked 'show tool tips' you will often find that if you hover your mouse pointer over the trim wheel, it will pop up a little message telling you the trim setting.

What the trim does, is crank the rear stabiliser (i.e.the 'back wings') up or down a little bit so that when the controls are neutral and you are not touching them, there is already a bit of pitch up or pitch down. Most airliners have a couple of buttons on the control stick or control yoke which will allow you to adjust the pitch trim, so if you have a joystick which has a couple of button that your thumb can get to, then it's not a bad idea to set these (in your FSX control options), so that they increase and decrease elevator trim, as this is pretty much what is on a real aeroplane. That way you don't have to worry too much about the trim setting for take off, you can simply set it to read 0 (i.e. reading neither positive nor negative on that little tool tip in the cockpit), and then adjust it as you take off so that it is not too wild.

You are doing things right incidentally. Typically, an airliner is flown off the runway manually by getting up to flight speed and then pitching it up to about ten degrees nose up, where it will then take off, then when you are at no less than about 400 feet above the ground (more if you like, some airliner types will prevent you from engaging some settings on the autopilot below that altitude), you can start engaging the autopilot. Bear in mind that most autopilots have two main navigational control settings, one is for pitch, called VNAV (vertical navigation) and one is for steering direction, called LNAV (lateral navigation). You don't want to be engaging LNAV too low down, as it will bank your aircraft over and put the wings down near the ground. In fact, most airport departure procedures are to have the airliner take off and fly straight ahead in a climb, building some speed, until they are well above the ground (at least 1,500 feet) before any turns are considered.

You might have heard about the problems with the Boeing 737 MAX which led to it being grounded whilst they seek a solution to the problem. This too was basically a pitch trim issue, where the increased thrust of the engines on the new plane and their position on the wing was causing the airliner to pitch upwards. Boeing added a bit of software called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) which basically used the angle of aeroplane's Angle of Attack Indicator (the tiny swiveling vane you can see on the side of the aeroplane near the cockpit) to determine if the plane was pitching up to much. If the system decided this was the case, it would automatically apply downward trim. But it had some issues and was forcing new 737 MAX airliners into a dive, which caused the two crashes which has  led to the type being grounded until a solution can be implemented.

So in other words, you are not the first pilot to have been caught out by trim issues causing a pitch up and then an uncontrollable dive.

Anyway, hope that info helps a bit and have fun with your A340. And don't worry too much about having to figure this stuff out. Learning about all this stuff is actually part of the fun of flying simulated airliners and is rewarding when you figure it all out.

 

Edited February 9, 20206 yr by Chock

Alan! You're back!