Positive static & dynamic stability

[Guest]

Is there a way to reflect static & dynamic stability in a FS2002 aircraft? That is, of course, the ability of a plane to right itself when letting go of the controls.

[Guest bones]

When first experimenting with .air files I certainly (and unintentionally) made aircraft statically unstable in pitch but I have never seen a model that displayed any dynamic pitch instability - it would be interesting to see one. There have been one or two aircraft around that were certainly approaching neutral dynamic pitch stability.Roll stability is well evident in FS and it can be a problem in trying to reduce this rather than to implement it. Some aircraft react very positively when aileron is neutralised and rather abruptly come back to level flight. It can spoil an otherwise nice flight model.Yaw stability is much improved from FS98. Either the performance experts are getting much better or the sim itself copes with mis-set parameters better. I no longer find aircraft that when you kick on a bit of rudder take 20nm to straighten up again! :-)

[Guest Fabio Miguez]

Hello Phillip.Are you familiar with FSEdit? It is a program that installs together with FS2K2, and can be accessed by going to Start/All Programs/Microsoft Games/FS2002/Aircraft Editor.Once the program is running, click the first button on the Toolbar (the one with a blue plane and an arrow pointing to a folder), and chose the plane you want to modify from the pop-up list and press OK. After the plane is loaded, and you have said OK to any warnings that may appear, click on the + sign to the left of your plane's name on the Plane List on the left. Now your plane has opened in three different folders: Sound, Texture, and Flight Dynamics.Click on Flight Dynamics, and on the right, the working area, click on the Tuning tab on the top. Close to the bottom you will find Pitch, Roll and Yaw Stability parameters. Chose the one you want to play with and remember: Increasing the value from 1.00 up increases stability, and vice-versa. After you are done, don't forget to click on the Save button (the one with a floppy disk, next to the button to open planes) and go play in FS to see if you like your changes. You are probably going to repeat this process many times until you get it right.Let me know if you were succesful.

[Guest]

Thank you both for your thoughts! Let me carry it a step further. Is it possible to recreate the feel of a real airplane to my force-feedback stick so that when I release my grip on it when in a turn, it will return to center and the plane will right itself to level flight?

[Guest bones]

Yes, there is no problem in recreating this. There are several parameters you can change that are now found in the aircraft.cfg file (they used to be in the .air file). For the best understanding of this area go to the Abacus site and look for their Flight Dynamics Editor. On their FDE page there is a most informative article by Tom Goodrick called "Flight Dynamics for Microsoft Flight Simulator". http://www.flightsimdownloads.com/premier/fde/You could also download the FDE (it's free) but there is little that needs changing in the .air file these days - most of the parameters can be altered in the aircraft.cfg file (either directly using Notepad or by the "proper" method with FSEdit).One thing I must add is that stability can be altered by many values. Dihedral plays a role but there are other values too (yaw stability factor, roll stability factor etc). If you alter these values be careful in observing changes. Almost all values can have a secondary effect which you may not immediately notice. For exampe stability affects handling and you may have to trade off one for the other. As I said earlier be careful not to make the aircraft over stable.Most important of all (and I don't care how many times I say it) bacakup the original .air file and aircraft.cfg file before you make changes..