• On the ground the Grand Caravan is speeding up to 35-40 knots. I’ve already played with various settings for prop and mixture but wasn’t succesful. Always have to use the breaks while taxiing.
• The front wheel steering seems to be strange. Around 10 kts it is ok, above 10 kts it’s getting difficult to have a reasonable effect without applying brakes.
• Since the latest patch it seems, deploying flaps on approach lifts the nose much more.

What am I doing wrong, enlighten me.

I'm not a pilot but from what I've read, the use of breaking to assist turning is reflective of the real thing. Hopefully someone with real world experience can give their input.

I find that there is often too much ground resistance, needing a lot of power just to get going. What works for me is to set fuel condition to half, full rpm, then adjust the power lever to control roll speed. Often setting it to idle while coasting along, but even then, intermittent breaking is needed to maintain control.

As for the flaps pitching up the nose, I haven't noticed any considerable difference between patches.

51 minutes ago, overt said:

I'm not a pilot but from what I've read, the use of breaking to assist turning is reflective of the real thing. Hopefully someone with real world experience can give their input.

I find that there is often too much ground resistance, needing a lot of power just to get going. What works for me is to set fuel condition to half, full rpm, then adjust the power lever to control roll speed. Often setting it to idle while coasting along, but even then, intermittent breaking is needed to maintain control.

As for the flaps pitching up the nose, I haven't noticed any considerable difference between patches.

Thanks for your feedback.

You're right, braking to assist turning is necessary.

Ground friction with the Grand Caravan is no factor, at 400 rpm it starts to roll smoothly, but then setting the levers to idle and as the settings for prop and mixture don't have any effect at all (on the ground) she speeds up quickly up to 40 kts. That's crazy.

I will try your recommendations anyway.

1. I just tried it:

Throttle idle, prop max, fuel high idle, parking brake off

The aircraft does not move until I throttle up.

2. It is normal to use toe brakes for sharp turns when taxi-ing, It is not normal to need to use toe brakes to stay on the centre line of a taxi way or on the runway.  The caravan in my sim seems to turn as expected. I can pretty much swerve side to side at any point in the takeoff roll with rudder pedals

3. the flaps seem to function normally for a STOL aircraft to me but I rarely fly the caravan so am not an expert

 

Possibly you have a control sensitivity issue ? Check your hotas/yoke/pedal sensitivities

 

Edited October 3, 20205 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

6 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

1. I just tried it:

- Pitch full fine (blue lever forward)

= throttle to idle (black lever back)

- mixture full rich (red lever forward)

- parking brake off.

The aircraft does not move until I throttle up.

2. It is normal to use toe brakes for sharp turns when taxi-ing, It is not normal to need to use toe brakes to stay on the centre line of a taxi way or on the runway.  The caravan in my sim seems to turn as expected. I can pretty much swerve side to side at any point in the takeoff roll

3. flaps seem to function normally for a STOL aircraft to me but I rarely fly the caravan so am not an expert

Possibly you have a control sensitivity issue ?

 

I will check that too. But the control sensitivity settings I made work very well with the G36, the C152 & C172, CJ4, A320, TBM.

I've seen the same bad steering (above 10 kts) with the SR22.

Thanks for your feedback!   

FYI,

a guy on the FS forums wrote:

Quote

IRL we used a lot of beta mode during taxi. A lightly loaded Caravan will run away when not in beta. I do not know if beta is implemented in the MSFS Caravan flight model.
To prevent the Caravan from running away during taxi, try using reverse thrust occasionally (instead of beta mode) when things get too fast, or use your brakes to slow down below 10 knots and then let it accelerate before slowing down again . Continue to taxi like this and do not brake continuously, i.e. do not ride the brakes.
The latter also applies to lightly loaded jets of all sizes.

And he was right.

After adding some reasonable amount of fuel and payload instead of using the MSFS defaults, it isn’t running away anymore like before, though it still accelerates, but that is OK. Applying brakes before 10+ kts gives a managable taxiing.
Not sure about the Beta mode, the lever left of the thrust levers isn’t modeled.

2 hours ago, EDDB2020 said:

FYI,

a guy on the FS forums wrote:

And he was right.

After adding some reasonable amount of fuel and payload instead of using the MSFS defaults, it isn’t running away anymore like before, though it still accelerates, but that is OK. Applying brakes before 10+ kts gives a managable taxiing.
Not sure about the Beta mode, the lever left of the thrust levers isn’t modeled.

When he talks about beta mode, he's referring to the section of the throttle between flight idle and reverse thrust. When I mentioned idle earlier, I was talking about dropping the throttle to 0% in the beta range.

Sounds like you've just been applying too much power.

43 minutes ago, overt said:

When he talks about beta mode, he's referring to the section of the throttle between flight idle and reverse thrust. When I mentioned idle earlier, I was talking about dropping the throttle to 0% in the beta range.

Sounds like you've just been applying too much power.

After some initial power to start the roll, my throttle is always at 0%. What he calls 'running away during taxi' is something that doesn't happen with the other prop planes. Anyway, thanks everybody for your efforts!

I don’t think this mod explicitly addresses any of the issues raised here, but I’ve noticed I’m not running as fast on taxi as before (maybe I’m use to feathering the throttle more appropriately). Anyway, I highly recommend this...

https://github.com/Exp232/C208-MSFS2020-Fix

2 hours ago, Virtual-Chris said:

I don’t think this mod explicitly addresses any of the issues raised here, but I’ve noticed I’m not running as fast on taxi as before (maybe I’m use to feathering the throttle more appropriately). Anyway, I highly recommend this...

https://github.com/Exp232/C208-MSFS2020-Fix

Thanks for the link, you made my day! I was looking for a mod, but couldn't find it. Finally some realistic taxiing.