I am not a real life pilot, but if I was, I would never, ever get in this airplane again.

I took the default Cessna 208 Grand Caravan for its first flight today in MSFS 2024, and the disappointment is ALMOST as bad as how I felt about how badly they butchered the DA-40 in 2024.

Take off roll was OK, but the airplane jumped into the air at 60+ like somebody had stuck a pincushion on its rear end. No worries, its a bush plane, maybe this is realistic (I don't remember the 2020 Caravan doing this, but we'll go with it.)

The plane seems to be gaining altitude really fast, lets reduce throttle and trim down a bit and clean up the flaps, this is just a pattern after all. Two button presses of the trim and I was nosediving like a WWII Kamikaze Zero. OK. The trim is a bit sensitive. I barely press the button on my stick and the trim really moves. Noted.

Ok. I'm on downwind, 50% power, airplane is "sort of" steady, but all trimmed out and level, it keeps banking on its own to the right, needing constant correction. Not a terribly great hand-flyer, are you?

Turn to final, line up, reduce speed, first notch of flaps, WOOOSH! Up goes the nose! Ok. Stick down hard when adding flaps, noted.

About to land, throttle to idle... plane is still really movin'... no worries, come down a bit hard, its a bush plane, it can handle it. Apply brakes... aircraft starts moving right to left, shimmying like its on a dance floor. What the heck? Why is the entire body porpoising right to left as I am applying brakes! This can't be normal on a Caravan. Like the brakes are very quickly shifting from 100 to 0 in perfect synchronization from the left to the right wheel, making the entire body shake left and right. Ugh!

OK. Plane is slowed down, lets turn off the runway to the right... hmm, turn radius is really shallow, lets apply a bit more right rudder to make this turn... left wing goes down into the tarmac and the plane almost flips!  Honest! I was not going fast enough for this! Apply more brakes to almost stop the plane and some right rudder to straighten, now the plane is tilting to the right. She's drunk, all right. No way to make it stay on that yellow line.

Ok. Lets stop this thing. Full stop. Let's just taxi this nightmare to its spot and go home in one piece if possible. Release brakes, throttle idle... plane starts taxing all on its own and picking up speed! Hmmm. Perhaps it should not do that on idle throttle.

Park the plane, get out, and wonder how in the heck whoever built and tested this plane at Asobo could have submitted it as "done" or "as real as it gets".

But, hey, I am not a real life pilot, so perhaps this is how real planes behave, and I'm just a doofus that needs to learn.

The glaring performance of this plane was particularly highlighted by the fact that I had just done a flight in the 2020 Caravan with the flight model modifications. It behaved "as expected", or at least, as a non-pilot, how I would have expected it to behave. Hey, I have watched enough Flying Wild Alaska to see what Caravan's act like in real life.  

Edited February 2, 20251 yr by salasnet

I've never flown a Caravan but friends I know who have say they fly like a big 152.

 I don't have problem you do! But I have seen student pilos lost directional control and flip light airplane on it's back! Fortunately IRL most pilots who get to fly Caravan have some experience under their belt before! LOL

From my perspective Asobo Caravan is OK. A bit sensitive on the pitch though to my taste. I have not ran numbers to see if power settings and performance is in par with real counterpart.  

I'm not sure what could cause erratic behavior you experience . Perhaps "assistance" somehow turned on or some  binding conflict . Caravan flies fine if I stick "pitch, power, trim" like I do with most aircraft. May be this manual will help. There are figures for torque, rpm, and ITT

https://caravannation.com/208BG1000POH.pdf 

2 hours ago, salasnet said:

Take off roll was OK, but the airplane jumped into the air at 60+ like somebody had stuck a pincushion on its rear end. No worries, its a bush plane, maybe this is realistic (I don't remember the 2020 Caravan doing this, but we'll go with it.)

Take off trim setting?  🫢

I know on autopilot, in heading mode or following the gps, it seems to be fighting against its ailerons and waddles around the sky….

This bird certainly does not fly like a big 152. Heck, if it only behaved 1/2 as well as the WB-Sim 152, I would be happy.

No assists turned on. I have rudder pedals, toe brakes, so I am able to do very precise inputs. All of the trim settings were checked before takeoff.  It just doesn't fly smoothly, nor does it behave like most of the other planes in the hanger do. I especially do not expect a plane to rock back and forth left to right visibly on the runway when applying brakes.

So, perhaps it is "possible" to work around the defects (I was able to get her off the ground, into a pattern, and back on the ground, after all). I simply cannot imagine a real Caravan needing this kind of massaging in real life in order to be functional. Nobody would fly it. It would not be the most produced single-engine turboprop in history, otherwise.

 

2 hours ago, salasnet said:

 

No assists turned on. I have rudder pedals, toe brakes, so I am able to do very precise inputs. All of the trim settings were checked before takeoff.  It just doesn't fly smoothly, nor does it behave like most of the other planes in the hanger do. I especially do not expect a plane to rock back and forth left to right visibly on the runway when applying brakes.

 

 

First, I think it can be sensitivity of your rudder pedals. IRL rudder pedals are not easy to push. If I can remember correctly you have to apply force about 20lbs to 100 lbs. I personally  tweaked mine Honeycomb Charlie  to my liking. Secondly, rudder provides some directional control only. If there cross-wind present, correct aileron controls would required (and even elevator). Finally, as I mentioned above, student pilots who flip their airplane was precisely misuse of differential braking, loss of directional control skidding and eventually belly up.(just like car in movies) Wet runway makes things even worse!

I haven't try WB sim 152 but I'm pretty sure they tweaked control sensitivity to  replicate RL resistance. Keep in mind with very sensitive controls it very easy to overcompensate. There phenomena called "pilot induces oscillation" when pilot over controls and then overcompensate. This  is precise case with oversensitive controls in the sim . If you haven't flown real airplane it's really hard to tweak unless someone did it who knows. That is why 3rd party airplanes like A2A always have an edge.

IRL we always try to save brakes and use them only when necessary. For example, on very short runway or during emergency braking. Aerodynamic braking and thrust reverse always come first. In Caravan you can employ both of those before tapping brakes. Also - very important ! When you touch down keep your "heels on the floor" or in other word don't hold your brakes!

I flew/fly the caravan a lot in MSFS2020, nice and simple to learn and it helped me learn the G1000 unit. 

Unfortunately in MSFS24 it was a massive let down from the get go, Asobos incompetence and neglect for VR shines through as they've completely broken the VR COCKPIT FOCUS bind which I use a lot, so when I zoom in to the instruments the camera viewpoint flies through them into the engine bay....

Also a minor issue but the fuel selectors are default in the ON/OPEN position unlike the 2020 version.

I'll stick to the 2020 version for now.

I agree with you - I find the current MS2024 Caravan is pretty rubbish to fly - a real handful. I consigned it to my virtual waste bin.

 

1 hour ago, TrafficPilot said:

I agree with you - I find the current MS2024 Caravan is pretty rubbish to fly - a real handful. I consigned it to my virtual waste bin.

 

Don’t know what you guys struggle with. It’s like I have a different version of Caravan than you ! Lol Caravan was my favorite aircraft in career for parachute jumpers mission . No trouble whatsoever!

I concur with the OP and others; its not a very pilot friendly aircraft. Osscilations around the long axis when AP is engaged, ultra sensitive ground handling and braking make it a handful to operate. Still, I was able to enjoy an hour flight last night in fog and light snow. The landing and taxi light effects in mvfr/ifr I think are amazing.   

I've flown the Caravan quite a bit in career missions and haven't had any major issues. I have the AP "wobbling" issue (there is a bug report that has been logged by Asobo on the official forums), and when I pull my throttle to idle it seems to go into the upper beta range because the nose unexpectedly drops (also a thread for this), but that's about it. I've had sensitivity issues with brakes in all planes, and I believe this is due to pedal calibration issues that have been addressed in SU1.

Are you pulling the condition lever back to low idle when taxiing? Also, are you trying to use any Caravan mods in the 2024 community folder? I haven't had any issues with trimming or stability when manually flying.

No mods. Completely vanilla.

The most frustrating thing, however, is that because everything is locked down, streamed and encrypted, I can't even get to the files to tweak the airplane to correct some of these things. I really hope that us being able to have access to default aircraft offline like in 2020 gets taken care of sooner rather than later.

What is there to correct when others have stated not to have any issues like yours?

If you turn on the mini partial HUD and watch the trim digital readout, the numbers change about 4 times faster on the Asobo Caravan compared to other planes (2024). It starts out at 5, I up it to 10 and it flies nicer. My trim is an encoder lever and it moves the virtual trim wheel in the plane about 4 times faster than other planes. Every plane in the game sets it's own sensitivity to elev trim in the config file.