So I discovered a nasty bug! It most noticeable with crosswind landing when mais already touch down by nose gear still in the air!

 As some of you may aware there are several techniques for crosswind landing. I personally prefer "crab & kick". Basically you "crab" or fly approach with airplane nose pointing into wind side (windcocking). Some people may say airplane flying sideways, that is because pilot offsets approach handing to compensate for a drift. When times comes to land right after main wheel touch down pilot must "decrab" - using rudder to line up airplane nose with centerline while keeping aileron into to the wind to avoid wind to come up. That is were aerosoft CRJ is not shining! CRJ simply doesn't have rudder authority after main wheel touched down. The only way  to align with centerline  is forcefully drop nose gear and NWS steering to correct for a drift. Otherwise CRJ will continue roll off runway to taxiways and terminals LOL

Also worth noticing that WT CJ-4 or FBW A320 do not have this problem!

Could it be the engines blanking the airflow to the rudder when the nose is up? Seems to me they'd be in exactly the right place to do that with the nosewheel off the deck. I know you said the CJ4 isn't as prone to this and that has tail-mounted engines, but they're smaller than those on the CRJ and in any case their position wouldn't present as much of an obstacle to airflow on the rudder.

I guess someone who drives them for real would be in a position to know if this is the case, but certainly I know the T-tail PA-28s elevator is affected by a nose high attitude which requires a bit of an adjustment to how you fly it on rotation and flare, so I can't imagine this wouldn't be a factor on on the CRJ. What I do know about the CRJ in terms of tail plane design is that it originally had the horizontal stabilisers placed low down on the tail on its prototype and they shifted those up higher to get them away from the engines blocking the airflow to them, but it's not like they could do that with the rudder.

I'd be inclined to try a flatter approach or hold off and see if it makes a difference.

Not the CRJ, but on the broadly similar EMB-145 in terms of layout - I can recall that if you lose an engine on the thing, it disables the rudder limiter completely and lets you boot it to full deflection to make sure you have enough rudder authority on the thing to keep it going the way you want to at low speeds.

I was fairly surprised to learn that given both rubber bands are mounted fairly central, it would need tons of rudder to overcome asymmetric thrust, but that is indeed the case, so maybe it is a function of where those engines are located at a high AoA that the rudder needs all the help it can get.

I only found that out about the EMB-145 when I was starting one once and it was in a tailwind which was threatening to cause a hot start with the wind blowing up its tailpipe, so we towed it around into the wind to crank it up, but we had to let the other engine we'd been trying to start recover a bit first. Because of that, there was an ECAM message saying the rudder protection had failed because the systems thought that we'd lost an engine and it was disabling the FBW deflection input limiter to ensure full rudder authority at low speed. Once we got the other rubber band going, the message cleared itself off the ECAM.

That incidentally, is why we need particle effects in MSFS; you should have seen the amount of smoke coming out of that Embraer when it was trying to crank with a tailwind; it looked like the thing was on fire lol. I bet the passengers were cr@pping themselves before I stopped proceedings and had it towed around into the wind. 🤣

Edited March 22, 20215 yr by Chock

The real CRJ does not have any rudder authority issues on landing, nor does it require heaps of rudder input in an engine failure.

Perhaps when weight is on wheels they tie the rudder axis to the nosewheel steering, since they have already stated that there is no nosewheel steering axis in MSFS for it. Maybe have a look what is going on before and after touchdown in external view with the rudder.

In my experience, the plane does not handle like it should on takeoff and landing in any case, and it seems quite a bit worse than other planes I've tried (just in case the finger pointing to the sim starts again).

The other thing you could try is the assists for the runway handling. Personally I don't normally like such 'cheats' but I came to the conclusion that until they get a lid on the slightly ropey runway handling, I'd use it for certain aeroplanes although at present I don't have it selected.

MSFS is certainly not the only sim with less than stellar ground behaviour, it's cack in FSX, P3D and XPlane as well, although bizarrely, it was pretty good in MS Flight. Having said that, it is early days for both this CRJ in terms of patching and for MSFS too since it has that aerodynamics update on the way soon, and I suspect Aerosoft know more about that than most developers, so maybe they have something up their sleeve in this regard.

42 minutes ago, Chock said:

Could it be the engines blanking the airflow to the rudder when the nose is up? Seems to me they'd be in exactly the right place to do that with the nosewheel off the deck. I know you said the CJ4 isn't as prone to this and that has tail-mounted engines, but they're smaller than those on the CRJ and in any case their position wouldn't present as much of an obstacle to airflow on the rudder.

 

I don't know the closest thing to my mind if MD-80 manual I have. It describes desirable pitch attitude upon touch down and nothing about rudder deficiency due to airflow

6 minutes ago, Prpn said:

The real CRJ does not have any rudder authority issues on landing, nor does it require heaps of rudder input in an engine failure.

Perhaps when weight is on wheels they tie the rudder axis to the nosewheel steering, since they have already stated that there is no nosewheel steering axis in MSFS for it. Maybe have a look what is going on before and after touchdown in external view with the rudder.

In my experience, the plane does not handle like it should on takeoff and landing in any case, and it seems quite a bit worse than other planes I've tried (just in case the finger pointing to the sim starts again).

Yes rudder deflect and steers  nose gear visually when is N/W STRING armed and I can confirmed it visually. However, my point is if nose wheel still in the air and mains touched down rudder have no authority

16 minutes ago, sd_flyer said:

Yes rudder deflect and steers  nose gear visually when is N/W STRING armed and I can confirmed it visually. However, my point is if nose wheel still in the air and mains touched down rudder have no authority

I meant more like as soon as the mains touch down, perhaps they switch the rudder axis over to NWS and just forget about the actual rudder. That would explain having no rudder authority. Was just a thought.

I'm also having quite some problems landing the CRJ in windy conditions. It has a really hard time to drop the nose once the main gear is on the ground. I have to push the yoke forward to get the nose on the ground. I don't think this is how the real aircraft behaves on landing, isn't it?

13 minutes ago, Prpn said:

I meant more like as soon as the mains touch down, perhaps they switch the rudder axis over to NWS and just forget about the actual rudder. That would explain having no rudder authority. Was just a thought.

Yes I may try that. Checklist called to arm N/W STR arm after engine start. So I assume it stays on. Visually both rudder and nose wheel turn when N/W STR armed, but I can steer even if it not armed

40 minutes ago, Chock said:

The other thing you could try is the assists for the runway handling. Personally I don't normally like such 'cheats' but I came to the conclusion that until they get a lid on the slightly ropey runway handling, I'd use it for certain aeroplanes although at present I don't have it selected.

MSFS is certainly not the only sim with less than stellar ground behaviour, it's cack in FSX, P3D and XPlane as well, although bizarrely, it was pretty good in MS Flight. Having said that, it is early days for both this CRJ in terms of patching and for MSFS too since it has that aerodynamics update on the way soon, and I suspect Aerosoft know more about that than most developers, so maybe they have something up their sleeve in this regard.

I have never used rudder assist in other sims, but I find it necessary in MSFS, since especially on takeoff, trying to keep the nose on the center line seems impossible and even with rudder assist,  isn't that easy on some aircraft. 

Had the same issue myself today, makes for interesting landings 🤦‍♂️. Just add it to the list of things not quite right with the AS CRJ.