When have I ever said I use trim to “Fly the airplane?”
I use it to “Trim the airplane.”
As for gauges…aren’t they all used to provide data that helps a pilot maintain control over their aircraft? Why is a trim gauge any less relevant than an altitude gauge, VSI gauge, or attitude indicator? I certainly wouldn’t fly on a moonless night over the ocean and rely on my inner ear to tell me when the aircraft is changing altitude and bank angle.
And why are there stick shakers and stall warning lights? Shouldn’t pilots just rely on their senses to tell them when they’re at Vs? (/satire)
Gauges (all gauges and indicators) are important in this sim because there is no physical feedback. IRL you have that sensory input data. So you can feel when control surfaces are trimmed properly. In this aircraft (the simulated Comanche 250) I don’t get that feedback, so I rely on a gauge. And I want the readout to make sense. Why is that so hard to understand?
No, but you are seem to be implying flying the plane with trim as if it were primary flying controls.
Regarding 50% down trim, that seems like an exaggeration. In cruise, if I look up at the trim handle it will typically be 1 notch down, and on final between 1 and 2 up, aiming for around 80mph. But this will vary depending on weight.
But I don’t set the trim gauge to those then fly the plane. I establish whatever power, prop, and mixture I want, then with no force feedback on my yoke, hold the yoke to establish level flight, and as speed builds I’ll slowly trim down until I feel I can release pressure on the yoke. It’s a bit of a game of releasing pressure, still feeling the nose rise, so reapply pressure, and trim down till equilibrium is established. It’s the best I can do without force feedback part of the feedback loop.
and that’s a very basic misunderstanding. The autopilot in the Comanche is not connected to the trim. It moves the yoke and asks you to trim the plane if the forces are too high. And that’s where your issue with the trim gauge comes from. It’s simply not needed. Nobody needs it, it’s an indication in the external view that’s completely pointless. The only time you need the indication is when you set takeoff trim, never again later.
I fuly understand them, I understand as well why you have this issue and I try to explain it to you to make things easier for you. Everything becomes much simpler if an aircraft is flown correctly, MUCH simpler. But MSFS makes it unnecessarily hard. With the Comanche you have the chance to do it right.
A good practise for leveling off is to leave the power in climb settings to quickly accelerate to the speed you expect to reach (you know your plane after all) and trim quick and dirty while getting there, then reduce power and then you’ll have it much easier to fine adjust the trim.
It will however complain if where you have trim set to, and power, are making it struggle to maintain level flight. You will then see either an up or down trim indicator light up, and you have to trim in that direction to get the light to extinguish.
Say you were trimmed for a 1000fpm climb, then just jabbed the alt hold button without even attempting to level off first. It would pitch downwards, then the down trim light would come on. You could trim down manually to extinguish the light, or throttle back.
What I typically do is reduce power, and prop first, hold for level, then trim. It takes a while to build speed, hence lots of trimming. I’ll try your method.
What I noticed was my trim switch on my yoke, and the time wheel on my Logitech panel move the lever at different rates. The trim switch is much courser, perhaps four or 5 notches on the trim wheel equate to one flip of the trim switch on the yoke. And it has acceleration also. This is handy when trying to trim rapidly, I can do the course stuff with the yoke switch, then fine tune it with the wheel.
Perhaps you’ve hit the nail on the head.
When I compare the Comanche with other GA aircraft I expect that the autopilot works the same.
In my Bonanza, for example, with AP ALT Hold on, the trim keeps the aircraft level. I can see it moving in the HUD.
Yes, some autopilots control the pitch via the trim, some only use the yoke. The Bendix King Kap140 uses the trim for example. It could be that this causes the difference but I think it’s as well the position of the trim tab for takeoff. It’s not in the “center” but about half forward.
Yeah, the AP moves the entire elevator. Something you may notice for the trim tab is that it will flip up, or down depending on how you push the yoke. I’m pretty sure that is animated, attempting to maintain the trim attitude regardless of the position of the elevator itself. I think A2A did a video on that actually.
I’m not implying that at all. As I’ve stated, I use trim to trim the airplane.
I’m stating that the trim position data in MSFS shows -50% in level cruise.
The virtual lever in the cockpit shows very close to neutral.
I’ve said this several times.
My only issue is why the data in MSFS looks wonky.
Perhaps you are looking at the wrong data. There are a ton of LVAR’s to look through. I’ll have a look in a bit, and see.
So looking at LVAR:ELEVATORTRIM, with the trim indicator dead on Neutral, and the lever pointing right at the brace in the middle of the windscreen, trim is set to -34.4.
If you look at the image below, you will see that Neutral is not at 50% of the scale anyway.
And where I typically find myself cruising at, around one notch down with a single pilot, 50lbs baggage, and 60lbs of fuel, usually around one notch down, or -66%:
Try not to get too hung up on the percentages. 0% trim is not Neutral in this case, with Neutral slightly down if you want to look at it on a percentage scale.
This will differ from plane to plane, the AoA of the wing, and a whole boat load of other attributes of airfoil design I barely understand.
If you want another example, have a look at the Kodiak. You always need to trim down for take off in that plane.
I see one thing here. The number I see in MSFS (and SPAD is) 10X the number I see on the lever.
So -3.0° on the lever shows as -30% on the HUD. I guess that makes sense if AccuSim is using degrees and MSFS is showing a percentage of the 10° max angle. I know the SPAD data for Trim_Position_Indicator shows radians. It matches the number in the HUD perfectly.
Riddle me this, though…why is the trim tab elevated when the nose is trimmed down? Is is changing the airfoil characteristics of the stabilator? I would have thought when the tab is elevated it would put downward pressure on the stabilator, thereby forcing the tail down and the nose up. But it’s the exact opposite. You can see here that the pitch lever shows 10°down, but in the external view the trim tab is up, and the Trim indicator shows -100%
I’m downloading the new version that came out yesterday. Looks like the cameras.cfg has been updated to include VR specific views!! Among a long list of fixes and enhancements. After only one week!
I was flying around some airstrips I hadn’t visited before on the NZ South Island.
One of the landings, a really cool one at the end of a steep sided valley, is really narrow lined with trees, and bushes. I wonder if my right wing clipped those trees, and with crash damage turned off my flight didn’t abruptly end, but perhaps it accelerated damage.
I now have a compulsion to deliberately fly through trees to see if this is true.
Interesting. The action of the anti-servo tab is automatically controlled by gears linked to the stabilator.
Antiservo tabs are similar to balance tabs, but they move in the opposite direction. For example, when your elevator or stabilator moves up, the antiservo tab moves in the same direction.
So why would you want your tab to move in the same direction as your elevator/stabilator? In small aircraft, it increases the control feel, and helps prevent you from over-controlling your aircraft’s pitch. One of the most popular examples of the antiservo tab is on the Piper Cherokee. Without it, the plane would be much easier to pitch up and down, but it would also be easy to over-control, and possibly overstress the airframe.
The trim control in the Cherokee acts as a longitudinal trim, adding or subtracting stabilator downforce.