Prop Feathering

[robert young 2,897]

Has anyone successfully feathered any props on piston or turbine engines in FS2020? I am currently tweaking the Diamond DA62 and it refuses to feather. The props keep spinning with the slightest forward speed. I don't think they are feathered at all. The animations are of course separate and don't confirm one way or another whether feathering is possible. They certainly do not appear to change angle to the air stream.

Even if I increase the prop angle to over 80 at idle in normal (non feathered) mode the props still spin at ridiculously low speeds. With that setting they should be absolutely still.

Edited October 17, 2020 by robert young

[Will Fly For Cheese 1,710]

35 minutes ago, robert young said:

Has anyone successfully feathered any props on piston or turbine engines in FS2020?

The King Air props feather on the ground if you're quick after cutting fuel and bring the prop lever down to the detent and then drag it down again in to the feather zone.

Very exciting to hear you're taking a look at the Diamond. Wonderful aircraft, flies poor. . .at present 😀

Edited October 17, 2020 by Will Fly For Cheese

[robert young 2,897]

1 minute ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

The King Air props feather on the ground if you're quick.

Well, yes, but when the aircraft is not moving it is kind of cheating! The whole point of feathering as no doubt you know is to stop drag at speed so the remaining engine delivers enough power to overcome the drag of the other prop. I have spent many hours tweaking every available parameter and I cannot get any (standard edition) aircraft to properly feather. The props just windmill and they are clearly creating drag. Have you tried the Kingair feathering while flying?

[Will Fly For Cheese 1,710]

Indeed, I cut an engine in flight and feathered it. The AP flew the aircraft with a slight nose away from the dead engine. I couldn't tell if it had actually feathered because of the windmilling. I know a feathered prop in flight should come to a stop but I don't know if that's a limitation of the code or prop effects. Pity.

Edited October 17, 2020 by Will Fly For Cheese

[robert young 2,897]

Thanks for that. Has anyone else here ever managed to feather a prop while going at normal speed and see the feathered prop completely stop with no windmilling or rotation?

[Janov 2,383]

2 minutes ago, robert young said:

Thanks for that. Has anyone else here ever managed to feather a prop while going at normal speed and see the feathered prop completely stop with no windmilling or rotation?

Does this question pertain to MSFS only? 😁

[Will Fly For Cheese 1,710]

Well of course Janov. If you saw it real world it's best to learn, and then try and forget it. New underpants had to be purchased after the whole thing.

Edited October 17, 2020 by Will Fly For Cheese

[Andre92 33]

When you setup your Axes with FSUIPC, you can specifically set a range for feathering. When you do this, the prop will feather, but the plane wildly looses control and starts spinning as soon as the prop comes to a standstill. When you unfeather, you regain control immediately.

I only tried this with the Baron and did write a bug report about it. 

Cheers,
André

[vgbaron 3,601]

56 minutes ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

Well of course Janov. If you saw it real world it's best to learn, and then try and forget it. New underpants had to be purchased after the whole thing.

My multi instructor cut an engine on me in a 310 years ago. Not fun. Causes sweating and clenching of the butt.  BUT it is a learning experience!  🙂 

[sd_flyer 6,038]

4 minutes ago, vgbaron said:

My multi instructor cut an engine on me in a 310 years ago. Not fun. Causes sweating and clenching of the butt.  BUT it is a learning experience!  🙂 

Lo the whole multi engine training is about flying only on one !

[vgbaron 3,601]

Just now, sd_flyer said:

Lo the whole multi engine training is about flying only on one !

Yeah, but you get rated for two!  Go figure!   My first twin training was in a Piper Apache - that does NOT fly on one engine very well, if at all. At least the 310 had some oomph.

[Snuffleupagus 327]

I’ve noticed that when cruising, any feathering of the prop results in slower airspeed. This isn’t the case in real life as feathering a bit should bring higher cruise speed. 

[vgbaron 3,601]

Obviously the flight modelling needs a tad of work.  🙂 

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,798]

3 hours ago, vgbaron said:

My multi instructor cut an engine on me in a 310 years ago. Not fun. Causes sweating and clenching of the butt.  BUT it is a learning experience!  🙂 

Apparently even more so back in the day with the P38 as it had counter-rotating props but both turned outwards 😄 

According to Kelly Johnson they did that because it made the plane a more stable gun platform, albeit a dangerous one if you got an engine failure on take-off.

Edited October 18, 2020 by Glenn Fitzpatrick

[robert young 2,897]

Well something is broken between FSX and FS2020. The prop feathering in FSX works fine, either manual or auto-feathering, but apart from a couple of extra parameters Asobo has just imported the same engine cfg from the old aircraft cfg. I do wish they would pay a bit more attention to these things. I doubt it is anything other than a small coding or syntax error that has caused this.