First Full Night Flight

[Lotharen 287]

So, I decided to try out night flying. Man did I have some issues. First was finding how to illuminate the dash, took me forever to find it. That was only the second time I started dark which was interesting because it was an imported flight plan from Little NavMap and I was able to select a parking spot without it resetting the entire flight plan. It was SO dark once I took off. I ended up cutting off the lamps around the room so I could see. I felt totally blind, at least until the moon started rising. Oh and the moon! OMG it looked amazing, so red when it first popped up. The atmospherics in this sim are astounding! I used ATC in full this go round as well. Vectored me a bit different than I actually filed but it was still decent. When coming in for a landing I saw some very strange artifacts on the horizon. Very weird greenish light that seemed to move up and down the horizon, it was very strange.

One thing I still can't seem to get the hang of is the rudder. All assists are off and when I bank the plane I don't see the little ball move so I can keep it in the middle. It seems to always be stuck there. Might just turn assist back on, not sure what the issue is.

Anyway, it was a nice flight even if I felt blind lol. Here are two screen shots. One of the reddish/Orange moon and the second of the weird artifact on the horizon.

 

 

Edited September 3, 2020 by Lotharen

[Dutch727 543]

Do you know about ALT-L, the flashlight?

 

[Lotharen 287]

5 minutes ago, Dutch727 said:

Do you know about ALT-L, the flashlight?

 

Forgot about that lol. Would have come in handy for getting the lights up fast. Thanks for sharing that!

[odourboy 1,289]

Night flying is a whole new experience from your typical visual flying. Cabin lighting aside, you really need to get comfortable with just using your instruments. It's extremely satisfying to fly from A to B without looking out the window beyond the first and last few minutes of a flight.

[badger2000 168]

The only issue I had with night flying is that the landing/taxi lights are so dim you can't see where you're going to navigate round the airport.

I had some of that weird lighting when flying round Madeira recently but it disappeared as I got closer to it.  Apart from that, night flying in this sim is amazing.

[Steku 158]

Regarding the rudder. The real-world small Cessnas are gentle planes, they don't require much (if at all) rudder for coordinated turns. Rudder is needed mostly to counteract left turning tendency during take off and to side slip during crosswind landings. 

[roi1862 602]

6 hours ago, Lotharen said:

One thing I still can't seem to get the hang of is the rudder. All assists are off and when I bank the plane I don't see the little ball move so I can keep it in the middle. It seems to always be stuck there. Might just turn assist back on, not sure what the issue is.

Yep. One of the first thing I reported. Even at low speeds with flaps no rudder input needed. 

Yes I also got that weird looking green at the horizon. 

[LHookins 3,103]

8 hours ago, Lotharen said:

One thing I still can't seem to get the hang of is the rudder. All assists are off and when I bank the plane I don't see the little ball move so I can keep it in the middle. It seems to always be stuck there. Might just turn assist back on, not sure what the issue is.

The necessary variables to create adverse yaw are in the files, but they don't appear to be set in any way to create significant adverse yaw.

I know I had to use considerable rudder in a real world Cessna 150 when I banked or unbanked for a turn.  Modern aircraft may have "differential ailerons" which will compensate for the effect that produces adverse yaw, but I don't know if these are in any of our default planes.  They probably are in some.

I suspect they've just left adverse yaw out to make the aircraft easier for beginners to fly.

Hook

[Lotharen 287]

2 hours ago, LHookins said:

The necessary variables to create adverse yaw are in the files, but they don't appear to be set in any way to create significant adverse yaw.

I know I had to use considerable rudder in a real world Cessna 150 when I banked or unbanked for a turn.  Modern aircraft may have "differential ailerons" which will compensate for the effect that produces adverse yaw, but I don't know if these are in any of our default planes.  They probably are in some.

I suspect they've just left adverse yaw out to make the aircraft easier for beginners to fly.

Hook

There should be a setting you can change to turn rudder assist on while in flight. They have one for assisted rudder landing and takeoff but not one for during flight. They should add one so that a end user can turn this feature on if someone wants the realism. Stupid of Asobo to disable it entirely. I think even FSX has a more simple option, assisted rudder 'on' or 'off' and if you have it off you actually need to use the rudder with the default aircraft.

Edited September 3, 2020 by Lotharen

[LHookins 3,103]

8 minutes ago, Lotharen said:

Stupid of Asobo to disable it entirely. I think even FSX has a more simple option, assisted rudder 'on' or 'off' and if you have it off you actually need to use the rudder with the default aircraft.

It wasn't disabled, it just wasn't ever implemented.  FSX and P3D have a setting for Auto Rudder which would be ideal, both for flying and for taxiing and takeoff.  You could still use the rudder if you wanted, but it wasn't needed to keep the plane flying straight.  I'm not sure why they didn't do this.

Hook