Why is it so much harder to land airliners well for me...

[Mace 1,960]

1 hour ago, Noel said:

This is part the problem for me.  I'm using two programs that capture and score my landings and FIRM gets you dinged points!  

Landing score programs are like FPS chasing.

[Noel 4,563]

OMG!  Game changing!  I'm an word not allowed for not even trying to dial in better behavior.  Get this:  

Extreme Dead Zone:  80%! , up from 10% or some low value.       

Reactivity:  0%, down from 80%!!  Good Lord!

I figured if I was going to be able to tell what these do go ahead and set them to the extreme.  Handling was dramatically improved, though only one landing...but it was a quartering tailwind of 17kts!  This time call outs in the FBW 320N were slowly down to 5ft!  Never heard that before!!   Anyway I think we're on the right track now and will fine tune some more.

23 minutes ago, Mace said:

Landing score programs are like FPS chasing.

As something to engage in eh?  It's more of a personal skills chase though versus hardware/software configuration.

[Mace 1,960]

51 minutes ago, Noel said:

As something to engage in eh?  It's more of a personal skills chase though versus hardware/software configuration.

Nay Nay!  Something NOT to engage in.  It's like someone constantly chasing some fps figure, when in actuality, what they are REALLY chasing is smoothness.   The fps number itself doesn't matter.

Same with these landing stat programs.  Chasing a certain fpm number is just like chasing an fps number.

[G550flyer 1,041]

4 hours ago, Noel said:

Rick, awesome and useful overview thank you.  Without getting as detailed and technical that is what it felt like I was doing for years in the other sims if not by accident because it is what works!  But my landings often now are characterized by over-flare--pulling the nose up too far too quickly, and then having to depend too much on ground effect (which I take to mean comes from higher air pressure between plane and runway as the plane gets closer to TD).  IOW, nothing like what the plane does when it auto lands! 

>>>Procedurally, you are normally approaching at REF plus 5...

I've been aiming for REF plus 2 or at the threshold typically.  I should go up to 5 yes for average conditions, yes?

>>>the requirement for more back pressure...

I assume that means back on the yoke?  Or lifting the nose up causing backward pressure on the plane.  This could be really useful for me if you can possibly expound on this: I'm very unclear on how much travel I should expect to have of my TM Boeing Pendulum yoke, which rotates from midpoint to fully back at the pivot axis maybe around 25 degrees--but since it's a long pendulum actual hand travel is about 4" at the middle of the handles where you place your palms.  So of the 4" of travel backwards possible, how far might it need to be pulled back to create that 2-3 degrees of pitch up initially?   

>>>You don't even critique slightly to firm landings.

This is part the problem for me.  I'm using two programs that capture and score my landings and FIRM gets you dinged points!  

>>>...you maybe able to adjust aircraft flight models and adjust your controls until you capture the true behavior. It's possible, I have done it myself.

How about a peek at your sensitivities in MSFS? if you're using MSFS that is  ;O)

I think you've already helped me a great deal thanks for that! 

 

As far as REF plus, you are carrying your extra and then losing that extra to cross the threshold at REF. Some other planes will have you carry that extra through the flare. Sounds like you have no issues in this area.

As far as back pressure goes, this is the amount of pressure you are pulling back on the yoke/stick to maintain pitch and trajectory. Imagine you have trimmed your aircraft up on approach, REF +5 and flying fat, dumb and happy. In this situation, your hand is relaxed and resting on the yoke and the plane has that natural tendency to track the glide path on it's own. You are only making inputs here and there to keep it there. As you bleed that 5 extra knots, you will notice that the nose wants to lower on it's own now and is no longer tracking the glide path like it did when you trimmed it. At this point, you have the yoke held aft a little with about a degree pitch higher than before in order to keep that glide path you were originally tracking. You could retrim so it does it naturally again or choose to keep that loaded yoke. You will also notice the nose wants to drop again as you enter ground effect requiring just a little more back pressure on the yoke. I am a loaded yoke guy myself. I like to be able to put more input into the yoke during the flare and not have the potential to overshoot. This allows me to finesse the flare and position the nose precisely based on the callout rate and the sinking I see looking down the runway. It allows me to have consistent touch downs over a range of conditions. Even in the flare, you will be holding in that back pressure to keep the nose at the target flare pitch until touch down. Now, unfortunately, ground effect is not modeled as such in the sim. You have to have developers who are aware of this and design around it. I myself will go into the ground effect section of a aircraft's flight model and adjust it until it matches my experience and the landing geometry in the flight manual/FCTM. Technically, you can add in some nose down trim yourself on approach in sim to get a similar result to see what a loaded yoke feels like. You don't have enough in there that your arm gets tired. It's just enough where you have slight back pressure on the yoke.

Your dinged points is just a sim ism. The most important thing in landing jet aircraft is having consistent predictable touch downs. Those touch downs shouldn't change if you are on a long runway or short runway. If you ever have to think, I need to put her down on this one, you already have bad habits. Textbook touch downs are ones that you can do consistently. With tad bit of time and experience in type, they will become softer. I remember sitting in Naples one day waiting on passengers and watching these MD80s land. Everyone was floating at about a feet above the runway and the elevators were fluttering. They were pumping the yokes. I've been told that MD80s can get a little pitch sensitive with large inputs in ground effect and could float if you flared too much. They were all floating down the runway, but were touching smoothly. Most flight manuals will tell you to aim at the thousand feet point down the runway and you will touch down 1000 to 1300 feet nominal on landing. Of course with a long bodied jet, you may aim slightly further. For example, in the DC1030, you went with two pinks and two whites vs two reds and two whites. That's because those mains are way behind you. Back in my USAF days, we would go to these competitions called rodeo and you will have landing competitions among other things. They will put a mark across the runway and they will judge how close you are to it on touch down. It's easy to hit because the jet will touch close to where you aim if you did the textbook landing. During practice, you will note how far from the mark you were and make a small adjustment. Once done, you will start putting tire marks right through it. At the end of the day, the touch downs are not as important as long as you don't bang or pound them in. I've seen peeps work on greasers holding the jet off and it runs out of airspeed and drop in with a pound. That confusing look on their faces lol. There are so many other things to be worried about instead of the touch downs. If you take care of those, your touch downs will get softer naturally. You'll find that curve. 

Honestly, I use FSUIPC and I have never touched the sensitivities in MSFS. There have been times where the slope/curve in FSUIPC is not enough to tame a sensitive aircraft. I may go into my FSUIPC config file and look at the control range and change it. For example, the elevator for an aircraft might be from 16000 to -16000. I may extend it to 20000 to -20000. This makes it less sensitive with FSUIPC. You can also go into the flight model of the aircraft and adjust the elevator effectiveness tune numbers. You have to know what you are doing and make back ups. One thing I will mention about FSUIPC is that those slopes can be tricky if you are not careful. If you think of a curve, you may have it less sensitive right in the middle of the peak of the curve. If you start to move to the outer ranges of that curve, the control becomes responsive quickly! You have to find that sweet spot so that you are not getting into those zones. When you have those twitchy sensitive aircraft, that's when it's worth going into the config file of FSUIPC and make it 20000 to -20000 or even 25000 to -25000. Worked great on that Aerosoft CRJ. 

As someone mentioned in an earlier post, all depends on your hardware controls.   

       

[Greazer 1,348]

3 hours ago, Noel said:

OMG!  Game changing!  I'm an word not allowed for not even trying to dial in better behavior.  Get this:  

Extreme Dead Zone:  80%! , up from 10% or some low value.       

Reactivity:  0%, down from 80%!!  Good Lord!

Okay then, I'm going to try these settings later. I hope for an improvement. I am using the Thrustmaster Airbus yoke.

[threexgreen 3,156]

 

9 hours ago, Noel said:

OMG!  Game changing!  I'm an word not allowed for not even trying to dial in better behavior.  Get this:  

Extreme Dead Zone:  80%! , up from 10% or some low value.       

Reactivity:  0%, down from 80%!!  Good Lord!

Those values are a bit extreme though. Keep in mind that when adjusting extremity dead zone, the yoke in the aircraft won't travel as far. When doing a flight control check for example, you'll notice the virtual yoke isn't fully deflected while your physical yoke is. This shouldn't matter much since you won't get near this area in any normal flight, but if the extremity dead zone is too high you will be limited in control range.

I've never flown the FBW. For the Fenix I use a VKB stick with a profile recommended by Fenix for this type of stick. For the PMDG 737, I have a full 737 replica yoke standing on the floor with realistic resistance which requires far more force to operate than desktop yokes and even two hands to fully deflect it, so these values may not work for other yokes.

X and Y axis: EDZ 32%, reactivity 63%, sensitivity 0%.

Edited January 15 by threegreen

[fsiscool 252]

On 1/14/2024 at 3:04 AM, Noel said:

...in MSFS versus FSX/P3D?

Maybe because landing real airliners is much harder too than landing them in FSX/P3D?

[Luis Hernandez 587]

2 hours ago, threegreen said:

For the Fenix I use a VKB stick with a profile recommended by Fenix for this type of stick.

Which profile? I have a Gladiator NXT, left hand.

[Christopher Low 5,393]

OK, let's see some videos of your landings, guys. I fancy doing that myself, now that I know that MSFS has a replay function!!

[threexgreen 3,156]

2 hours ago, Luis Hernandez said:

Which profile? I have a Gladiator NXT, left hand.

https://kb.fenixsim.com/stick-settings

I have the same one. Just realized it seems to be the default settings for a VKB, lol.

[Noel 4,563]

4 hours ago, fsiscool said:

Maybe because landing real airliners is much harder too than landing them in FSX/P3D?

Maybe...but something is SUPER different in the desktop sim over the RW:  I'm looking at a 34" display, a veritable tiny FOV, and in the RW you're looking at a giant field of view with fabulous stereo vision for distance/depth, plus you get to FEEL what's happening.  All of that is missing in the sim so in some ways I see it as likely much harder than in the RW, with the obvious caveat:  it all REALLY MATTERS in the RW, and not so much here 😉

We need to ask our RW friend G550flyer for his opinion on which is easier

Edited January 15 by Noel

[threexgreen 3,156]

1 hour ago, Noel said:

Maybe...but something is SUPER different in the desktop sim over the RW:  I'm looking at a 34" display, a veritable tiny FOV, and in the RW you're looking at a giant field of view with fabulous stereo vision for distance/depth, plus you get to FEEL what's happening.  All of that is missing in the sim so in some ways I see it as likely much harder than in the RW, with the obvious caveat:  it all REALLY MATTERS in the RW, and not so much here 😉

We need to ask our RW friend G550flyer for his opinion on which is easier

I'm not a real pilot but I've read on numerous occasions that - provided you're properly trained and not doing it for the first time - it's easier to land the thing IRL than in the sim precisely because of what you mentioned.

I fly in VR and it's also much easier to fly than on a screen since you have full perception of height, distance, speed, etc. since you're "in it" in a fully three-dimensional space.

Edited January 15 by threegreen

[Noel 4,563]

7 hours ago, threegreen said:

Those values are a bit extreme though. Keep in mind that when adjusting extremity dead zone, the yoke in the aircraft won't travel as far.

On this morning's landing in bad weather I did need a little more throw towards the very end so my extreme settings need adjusted, but it's better than it was for sure just getting used to quite different handling of the flare now.

 

[Donstim 109]

Be aware that Vapp in the A320 is not the Vref (which he refers to as REF) that G550flyer is referring to. Vapp already includes a minimum 5 knot additive to Vref.

FlyByWire recommended control settings can be found here: https://docs.flybywiresim.com/fbw-a32nx/settings/#controllers (though this is not meant to stop you from experimenting with your own controller to find the best settings for you)

[RJC68 823]

1 hour ago, Noel said:

On this morning's landing in bad weather I did need a little more throw towards the very end so my extreme settings need adjusted, but it's better than it was for sure just getting used to quite different handling of the flare now.

 

I am curious to know what you end up with Noel,

I have the TBM 850 dialled in pretty nicely with 65% on the extremity dead zones for both pitch & roll and a 2% deadzone.

Loading up the PMDG now to see what I can do there