New to Sim and x-plane this month but have tried to read everything possible, Youtube vids etc. Landing is difficult. Looks pretty easy on youtube. Here’s my setup: XP 11 on a new Mac, Honeycomb yoke, Logitech throttle.  I’m sticking with the basic Cessna 176 and building up.  I can fly around, navigate basically, understand the airplane, controls etc.  So two problems keep me from landing:

1) on final approach, when Iput flaps down especially, it takes a lot of yoke pressure to get the nose down. I mean I can hardly push it hard enough with one hand. Sometimes the yoke comes off the desk! What should trim be in the final 1000 feet while descending? Any other ideas? 

2) I can create a flight plan and approach, fly via GPS, but the plane does not descend on autopilot  I have APP activated on the 530, APP on the autopilot but just fly past the airport. Tackling gps approaches first.  

Any help appreciated  as I’m drinking from a fire hose.   

 

Ok, I will bite 🙂

1.) Nitpicking, but you are probably talking about the Cessna 172, right? As far as I know, there is no Cessna 176 in X-Plane.

2.) When you deploy flaps for landing, you want to be slow - look at the white and the green arc on your airspeed indicator. The white arc is the speed regime that you can operate in with flaps extended. In general you want to be as slow as safely possible before extending flaps, this reduces the "pitch up" moment you get. So for the 172 I would slow down to 80kts, then extend flaps first notch, then at 70kts apply full landing flaps, then fly the approach at 60kts (roughly).

3.) Use trimming to relieve stick pressure (bind buttons on your joystick to "pitch trim up" and "pitch trim down").

4.) I am not familiar with GPS approaches in the 172, not sure if the autopilot is even capable of flying a vertical profile...

Cheers, Jan

 

Yes sorry, it’s a 172. I’ve always done the items in your bullet #2. Just seems I can’t  trim enough to relieve the yoke pressure when descending from 1000 feet down to the runway.  So all my focus is distracted on the yoke pressure. 

Default 172 isnt the best there are a couple of add ons that address that. I think there may even be a freeware update for it.

2 hours ago, Dan18 said:

Yes sorry, it’s a 172. I’ve always done the items in your bullet #2. Just seems I can’t  trim enough to relieve the yoke pressure when descending from 1000 feet down to the runway.  So all my focus is distracted on the yoke pressure. 

Make sure that you are really trimming - it should only take a second or two to relieve the pressure. Sometimes, when using a hat switch, for example, it is easy to "not hit" the correct direction (by pushing a bit sideways) and then the trim isn´t really running.

I like the flight model of the default C172 very much, but as the OP noted, I also have the impression that the pitch up (and the resulting trim change needed) due to flap deflection is really very, very big. I never experienced such a violent pitch up due to flaps in any other simulated C172 (or similar). Indeed, probably I haven't experienced it in any sim-aircraft ever!. 

Also, it seems to have too high L/D with flaps extended.

Apart from that, the flight model of the default C172 in the rest of envelope seems excellent.

 

Edited March 20, 20215 yr by Murmur

12 hours ago, Murmur said:

I also have the impression that the pitch up (and the resulting trim change needed) due to flap deflection is really very, very big.

I can´t comment on that because I have no experience in the real C172... there are some other mods out for the C172, plus it is fairly easy to tweak the model in planemaker, it is possible to finetune the pitching moment, lift and drag for every step of flaps individually.

Cheers, Jan

Thanks for the comments/ideas.  It’s good to know  that I can change the plane modeling.

Regarding my original second question, about autopilot handing vertical on the approach, has anyone had the vertical properly descend on approach with the 172 and gps? I was trying to fly into an airport with no VOR on autopilot using gps such that it would take me horizontally and vertically right before the runway. My flight plan works including approach but despite approach being turned on at the autopilot, I always have to control flight level manually. 

I know this a very old topic, but I'm not sure anyone answered the OP's question on the approach.

My understanding, @Dan18 is that the APR function uses the VOR beacon and as such needs to be switched from GPS to NAV before engaging Approach and capturing the Glideslope.  The GPS doesn't actually use the radio beacons.