I am having real trouble getting the nosewheel of the PMDG 737-600 to behave itself. I use AutoRudder with the 737, but the nosewheel seems to have a mind of its own. It turns too far and slides sideways on the grass, there is a huge delay between my turn command and the wheel actually doing anything, and sometimes it seems to try turning in the opposite direction before switching to the correct one!

What on Earth is going on? The aircraft is totally uncontrollable on the ground at the moment, and I suspect that it is a settings thing that affects all of the planes.

I use a CH Flightstick Pro joystick, and this has been calibrated.

EDIT: On a side note, the aircraft seems to have a slight turn to the left when under manual control. This should not be happening with a jet.

Edited December 16, 20232 yr by Christopher Low

It's my understanding that all assists need to be turned off for the 737 family. As the Yaw Damper is turned on before taxi and turned off at the arrival gate, it's not clear why one would want to use Auto Rudder in any case.

Good luck.

 

EDIT: typo

Edited December 16, 20232 yr by jrw4

I will test it without AutoRudder and see what happens.

Christopher. I fly the PMDG 736 and I have no trouble with ground steering (Thrustmaster TPR Pedals) so I suspect you are right in thinking it is probably a settings issue. During my transition from P3D to MSFS I found this video to be great help with setting up my controls:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOZfymIJR5U

 

 

I have disabled AutoRudder, and assigned nosewheel steering to the joystick's X-Axis. I still seem to be able to control the plane with AutoRudder disabled (which was not the case in P3D), and the nosewheel appears to be behaving itself. I will need to do more testing to be certain, but it is a promising start

Thanks for the help, guys. I can now actually control the plane on the ground. Landings are definitely more of a challenge in Microsoft Flight Simulator than they were in P3D, even with no wind and clear skies. However, the thrust reverse activation is not quite there yet. It seems to take some time before it engages when compared to P3D, but maybe that is more realistic? I think that I need to wait for the engines to reach idle power before it can be used (when the REV indicator appears). Is that correct?

Edited December 16, 20232 yr by Christopher Low

....or does the nosewheel have to touch the ground before the thrust reversers can be activated?

Chris,

the other day I had a strange behaviour of what used to be a normal and rather convincing one with the PMDG ground steering.

It coincided with the final SU14 which was actually already in my rig because I was in the Beta, and an update I found in that same day available for the PMDG.

I even posted this here:

 

So...it turned out to be that in the PMDG Options Menu, the option for separate steering tiler had been disabled 😕 

Did you check that ?

It seems to be working acceptably at the moment (although rather sensitive and "light" compared to the ground handling of my NGX in P3D), but I will check that setting.

4 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

It seems to be working acceptably at the moment (although rather sensitive and "light" compared to the ground handling of my NGX in P3D), but I will check that setting.

Ah ok, and yes ground handling / physics in mfs are still far... I do much prefer it in p3d...

Edited December 17, 20232 yr by jcomm

Somewhere in these forums, there is a posting that explains that the devs made the decision to implement the default MSFS nosewheel steering in the various 737 models. Previously, there had been a custom steering module created specifically for those a/c, but successive SUs broke that custom function, so we went back to the default system. I can understand why PMDG decided not to maintain the custom function, because its maintenance was wasting precious development resources in repeatedly fixing something that was working properly.

Of course, this description requires that my own memory of the circumstances is working correctly . Over the years, I have found that this is less and less the case. It's not so much what I have forgotten, but rather what I think I remember that never happened. Have a happy holiday season, everyone, and best wishes for a most successful 2024.

18 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

However, the thrust reverse activation is not quite there yet. It seems to take some time before it engages when compared to P3D,

There is a setting in the FMC that affects this and it called something allong the lines of "High idle on flare" If this is on then it takes longer for the reversers to deploy if memory serves me correct.

I dislike the nose wheel steering in this plane. I dislike it because it's nearly the best there is but then on a knife edge becomes the worst there is. It feels totally connected to the ground up until about 10 knots and then it doesn't function in the slightest with nothing inbetween. The thing just ploughs straght on in what seems like an instant.

I don't care what anyone says, wheels with tyres on them just do not behave like this does.

It's one of the things I really dislike about flight sim. It's always had dreadful ground handling but some planes do it better than others. The best one I have found recently is the FSR500. The last time I flew it it rather struck me. It handles on the ground with agility and the nose wheel actually feels connected to the ground.

It's so unsatisfying to have a nice flight only to get on the ground and have the nose wheel behave as though it's a hockey puck on ice.

And just to pre-empt the "it's a flight and sim the ground handling doesn't matter" crowd. It does matter and it never matters more than with a plane that flies on autopilot almost from the moment you take off all the way to landing. Most of your manual interaction with the thing is whilst taxiing.

Edited December 17, 20232 yr by Jazz

I am having major problems with the nosewheel steering again. Like Jazz says, it seems to work fine (although it is far too sensitive) up to a certain speed, and then the nosewheel "locks", and it struggles to turn at all. It worked perfectly in P3D, so this is incredibly frustrating. I really thought that I had sorted it out some time ago, but I have only been flying directly from the runway for quite some time, so I did not need to turn the plane to any great extent.

I wish that there was a way to limit the turn of the nosewheel, so that it does not go too far, and start sliding

Chris L, 

Could the CWS(button) on the 737 MCP-panel (autopilot) be related ? 🤔

Have you checked IF your calibration spikes? During testing or after calibrating(the ground handling is a bit wierd in MSFS-2020 😵‍💫😵‍💫)

After quite a few years of use, old pots(potentiometers) get a bit dusty/cruddy and could cause spiking *even after calibration*?

I have some CH gear still myself The CH-Rudders(USB) (which has acted up after a more or less a decade of use), and it was very apperent with Saitek-throttles.. 😵‍💫

It's the reason users *scream for* implementing hall-effect sensors inside *modern/new releases* peripherals, as it's less succeeptible to theese effects/issues.."down the road"

Edited February 11, 20242 yr by Rune-ENHD