AWStirling

Once you're granted IFR approval, be careful not to contact TC too early. I did the other day flying to KDFW and was instructed to descend to and maintain 9500' when I was 200 nm out. I was at FL320 and wasn't going to descend for about another 100 nm. Talk about a waste of fuel. cheers, Al

Thx Joe I checked out a couple of the aircraft.cfg files and neither of those entries were in there. I added the default_pitch_mode=0 to the C172 cfg file and that fixed the problem. cheers, Al

Hi Guys Actually what I was doing was trying to troubleshoot why I didn't have elevator control with just HDG selected and the AP engaged. So I was just sitting there and thought what would happen if I engaged the AP - which prompted my question. So let me rephrase my question. I thought with just AP engaged on HDG mode, I was responsible for the altitude aspect while the AP took care of the direction the heading was set to. But when configured that way I had no elevator control suggesting the AP had control of it. Any idea why this should happen? cheers, Al

Hi Folks My AP is exhibiting some strange behaviour. I'm sitting on the ground and engage just the AP (without selecting the HDG, ALT, APR buttons etc) and the Pitch Trim Wheel starts adjusting by itself. Once I select and deselect the ALT button, it stops doing this and subsequent AP on and off doesn't cause this to happen. This is likely the reason I couldn't control the elevator with only HDG hold selected with the AP engaged earlier. Is this normal? I don't recall it behaving like this before. Cheers, Al

Many thx KingG.. I'll give it a go. I've crashed my RC helicopter a time or twenty and repaired it well enough to get it to fly again, so I should be up to doing this. If nothing else an inspection to see how it works happy new year Al

Hi KingGhidorah Lately I've become extremely frustrated by the pitch response of the various FSX A/C but have worked around most of those problems by modifying the aircraft.cfg file. What still irritates me,however, is the problem you aptly describe as sticktion. I've a Saitek Pro Flight Yoke and I've considered dissasembling it to see what could be done to reduce or eliminate this sticktion problem. Perhaps you saved your "long winded answer" to the sticktion problem" in notepad or Word and can quickly post for my benefit. I'd be most interested to read it. cheers, Al

Hi Bart Again thx for the info. I noticed changes in the settings with all the axis, but for me it's only the pitch response I seem to have trouble with. Roll and yaw seem ok but I will definitely give these settings a try. I suspect there's a delicate balance between the elevator effectiveness, pitch stability and elevator trim effectiveness to get the "perfect" response. Unfortunately there's a huge number of possible combinations available to try out. Add in the FSUICP4 slope parameter and one has even more. Another annoyance (and one that actually may be the root of my problem) is my Saitek Pro Flight Yoke is not that smooth. It's nice and smooth in one continous action but in a turn for instance when I have have to make very minor pressure adjustments the yoke is not that smooth. There's resistance and then it lets go and now there's too much back pressure and trying to adjust the other way the same thing occurs - a miniscule plate tectonics type of action. However, the changes I've made definitely improve the response. cheers, Al

Thx Bart My settings for the stock baron were much more extreme. I installed a copy of FSUIPC4 and have adjusted the slope on the elevator curve thru that program and have modified the baron's aircraft.cfg stability and effectiveness values quite a bit. However, making the slope flatter did help stabilize the pitch response near the centre point, it makes it much more sensitive towards the end of the range. This definitely is a disadvantage in a turn (especially a steep one) which requires quite bit of back pressure to keep the nose from dropping. Regardless, things are much better now than they were which makes my ILS approach practise much earier. happy holidays Al

Hi Guys Thx for your replies. I've started tinkering with the aircraft.cfg file in the Airplanes folder with some reasonable success. For the Baron 58 I've managed to get the "bobbing" damped out quite a bit by adjusting the elevator effectiveness (from 1.0 to 0.2) and the pitch stability (from 1.0 to 3.0) in the [flight-tuning] section. Although changing these values by this much does damp out the "bobbing" response I was referring to, it now seems small yoke movements occasionally cause quite wild VSI fluctuations. I'll give Saitek's profile editor a try and also have a look at FSUIPC. I'll also have a look at the Cessna for 2004 and check out it's cfg file. cheers, Al

Hi I've recently returned to FSX after a short break and installed it on a computer that provides ample frame rate. I think the sim is great with one exception. It seems the pitch in many A/C is too unstable. Very small movements of the elevator with the yoke seems to make the nose bob up and down. I have real world flying experience, mostly in gliders but also a little in the C172 so have a reasonable idea of what to expect. I've never flown a real 737 but I bet that a tiny pitch movement on the yoke does not cause this nose bobbing situation in real life. There's a lot of momentum to overcome and an aircraft that large would not behave this way. The roll behavior seems much more realistic and one can sense the momentum of the wings as one rolls the aircraft to initiate a turn. In the control settings within FSX, I've made adjustments to the elevator axis sensitivity and null zones but cannot get what I consider to be a stable pitch response. Does anyone have any suggestions how to make the pitch response more realistic? I'm currently using the Saitek Pro Yoke System but I've had similar responses from other controllers as well. Thanks, Al