Veering From Side To Side Upon Landing??

[Republic DC9 234]

I have most of the nice payware out there like Just Flight’s Arrow and the Carenado collection and one thing they all have in common is a distinct tendency to oscillate uncontrollably upon landing rollout.

I do not experience this with other planes...namely all of the default planes, the Grumman Goose, the BD-5J, etc.  Even the lovely new Dragon Rapide easily holds the center line on rollout.

Is there a aircraft.cfg setting that impacts this that I can tweak that would allow me to have a landing rollout without 30 degree oscillation back and forth (I do have takeoff assists on and have tried it off no difference)?
 

Thanks,

 

Steve

[Fielder 3,673]

Yes, move the station loads forward (add 2 to the second number in each station load line of flight_model.cfg, NOT aircraft.cfg).

2 is just a suggestion, its what I try first. All this does is move the cog forward. This wlll always make the plane want to stay in a straight line when moving. If the weight was moved backwards, the plane will have less resistance to a change in direction, it would be less stable.

This will not work miracles, but it helped me when I had this problem. Mainly with the L-19 Birdog Cessna from Blackbox I think. And a couple of the warbirds that were not flying according to real life reports (the sim versions were less stable than in real life). Just because they were called pilot killer or whatever back in that day did not mean they were completely squirrely handling. They were just less stable than other military warbirds, that's all.

I like the FlyingIron Spit, it is not ridiculously hard to keep straight. It is well designed.

-----

Most planes only have a couple station loads (i.e. passengers and baggage), but here's the Yak 18T which has seven. The first number is the weight of the load in pounds, the second number is the distance forward of the center of gravity.

Station_load.0 =85, -3, -1.1, 0.9, Pilot, 0
station_load.1 =85, -3, 1.1, 0.9, Copilot, 0
station_load.2 =0, -6.2, -1, 0.9, Passenger Left Front, 0
station_load.3 =0, -6.2, 1, 0.9, Passenger Right Front, 0
station_load.4 =0, -12, 0, 1, Baggages, 0
station_load.5 =0, -9.6, -0.6, 1, Passenger Left Back, 0
station_load.6 =0, -9.6, 0.6, 1, passenger Right Back, 0

Only the top 2 have any weight at default startup the pilot and copilot. Instead of -3 use -1 (which is 2 larger). This slides those two seats forward 2 feet (I think the units are feet).

Station_load.0 =85, -1, -1.1, 0.9, Pilot, 0
station_load.1 =85, -1, 1.1, 0.9, Copilot, 0

(By the way I don't do this with the Yak18T because it is already reasonably stable, a good flight model. But this is how I would start if I wanted to make it more stable on landing).

 

 

 

 

[HiFlyer 9,359]

34 minutes ago, Republic DC9 said:

I have most of the nice payware out there like Just Flight’s Arrow and the Carenado collection and one thing they all have in common is a distinct tendency to oscillate uncontrollably upon landing rollout.

I do not experience this with other planes...namely all of the default planes, the Grumman Goose, the BD-5J, etc.  Even the lovely new Dragon Rapide easily holds the center line on rollout.

Is there a aircraft.cfg setting that impacts this that I can tweak that would allow me to have a landing rollout without 30 degree oscillation back and forth (I do have takeoff assists on and have tried it off no difference)?
 

Thanks,

 

Steve

Are you allowing autoland to take you all the way to the ground and along the runway?

I only see the behavior you are mentioning when I am being kinda lazy and eating a sammich or something while letting the plane do everything. 😃

[Republic DC9 234]

5 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

Are you allowing autoland to take you all the way to the ground and along the runway?

I only see the behavior you are mentioning when I am being kinda lazy and eating a sammich or something while letting the plane do everything. 😃

Nope, no autoland at all...manual all the way down and on rollout.
 

I’ve flown sims for 23 years and have never seen this behavior in any other sim (XP11 etc.) and indeed not in all planes in MSFS...just some.

[Fielder 3,673]

OP is correct that the the default planes in MSFS are less prone to fishtail on landing than most 3rd party planes. Apparently stability was a key design goal at Asobo or whomever tuned up those .cfg files. (But they are paranoid about pirating theft so they encode the configuration files on all but their standard edition planes).

[HiFlyer 9,359]

2 minutes ago, Fielder said:

OP is correct that the the default planes in MSFS are less prone to fishtail on landing than most 3rd party planes. Apparently stability was a key design goal at Asobo or whomever tuned up those .cfg files. (But they are paranoid about pirating theft so they encode the configuration files on all but their standard edition planes).

Though I have heard that the Steam versions are not encrypted, which if true, makes the whole effort kind of silly.

[Fielder 3,673]

I have Steam MSFS. The premium and deluxe default planes and the planes I purchased from the marketplace all have encrypted flight_model.cfg files. The 20 regular edition default planes have simple text files for flight_model.cfg files, as do all of my planes bought outside the Marketplace.

But you are right! I can see  now that the aircraft.cfg files are all non encrypted, every one of them! On my Steam edition MSFS installation. Wow, I never knew that!

 

[Fielder 3,673]

I just type aircraft.cfg in a search engine and all the file paths pop up, so is easy to find them all. The names of the path tells you for which plane it is.

Edited September 19, 2021 by Fielder

[jimcarrel 688]

It seems that it's implied in this thread that adjusting the COG on weights page doesn't necessarily work. Is that true, one has to actually fudge the aircraft.cfg files to move the CoG instead of depending on the COG slider? I had MSFS 2020 about 2 months before I noticed that slider, it seems to work for me. Am I wrong about the slider? 

[Republic DC9 234]

Just to go back to this topic if it helps someone else....I’ve found that I can keep my Carenados and Just Flight Arrows straight on landing now...the problem before?

My final approach speed was just too fast!

Facepalm...I’m dropping more flaps and slowing way down now. 🙂