The field elevation is 4827ft. It’s very pretty there, but perhaps it would have been better for them to have chosen somewhere closer to sea level.
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There are more odd choices regarding where the lessons are taken. Introduction to attitude flying without a nice and straight horizon. Circuits and first solo high up somewhere. Not a lot of thought went into the MSFS flight lessons. Also the instructions are completely rubbish, I can’t imagine someone without any experience becoming any wiser from those tutorials.
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I never did the tutorials until someone asked for help with a few of them… then I realized that the tutorials are setting people up to fail. I wish they would have consulted an actual CFI, maybe then the lessons would have been at least acceptable. You would think that for a sim that tries to make itself noob-friendly, the tutorials would be up to snuff. I hope they improve them soon because if I was a beginner and had no real-life aviation experience, I’d probably be turned off by the learning experience.
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FS2002 or so had lessons done with or by a CFI but even back than I thought they had been written by some kind of bad comedian but not a flight instructor. The advice was rubbish, the jokes were flat and the conclusions were stupid.
Really appreciate this thread! I was going nuts thinking maybe my hotas wasn’t calibrated right.
You can still score decently ignoring with 75kt calls but it’s impossible to completely ace the tutorials without leaning.
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The lessons are full of junk tricks like this - they are pretty useless and I gave up on them after reaching “first solo flight” There are so many pitfalls and traps for no reason and with very poor guidance.
The lessons need a complete rewrite. There are far better youtube videos now.
The in-game nav cheats and instructor tips are really important for us noobs.
If one of the goals of this sim is to broaden appeal / get new folks hooked this is a big piece of the puzzle.
The team clearly invested a lot to create the tutorials. Other priorities since release have clearly gotten in the way but for future noob waves I hope they do a v2.0 soon.
I was pretty frustrated (stop nagging me to do something the plane can’t do!). Again, glad I found this forum.
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Long time since this post was first out there, but I’m having the same problem instead of search on “152 climb rate” and found this post.
The only assistance that I still have turned on is fuel mixture I’ll have to figure out how to play around with the carb Heat I think I saw on this post it needs to be turned off. I did see I was only getting around 2300 RPM at full throttle. I kept hearing the stall warning and then I stalled and spun in and crashed.
Updated: I played around by hitting h on the keyboard to turn carb heat on and off;never could get above 2300 RPM, but managed to get to 8,000 ft without stalling.
Hi @gtb0331
I’ll throw a few things in here. Some you may have already figured out or done.
First, don’t use carb heat in a climb (or if you have to, you’ve really put yourself in a bad place and all is lost anyway! 
). I’ll let you look around some more on that subject, but in general, carb heat is most useful on warmer/humid days, when reducing throttle for descent or landings. As always, some exceptions can be found…
What most worried me was that you’re only getting 2300 RPM!! Is that what you have when you start the takeoff roll, and are you taking off at high altitude airports? At sea level, you should be able to turn ~2500 RPM, and it really shouldn’t change much as you climb out. I tried it using manual leaning, and lean assist and didn’t get too much variation in results. From the screenshots, you can see that I kept ~2500 RPM all the way to 8000’ MSL. Once I’ve leveled out at 8000’, I pulled the throttle back to keep it out of the red.
So, next. Are you trying to maintain a constant rate of climb as you go up? That will definitely cause a stall in the poor little 152 going to anything over ~2000’ MSL. You should climb at a constant IAS and just let the climb rate (VS) drop off as you go higher. Some will say to climb at best rate-of-climb or best angle-of-climb, but (and this goes back over 50 years!) for an extended climb in the 152, I normally used ~60-65 Knts IAS to help with cooling the engine during the climb. But it’s just a sim, so can use anything above stall speed (and keep it at that speed!) that gets you where you want to go! Keep in mind that increasing bank angle will also increase stall speed, so watch your bank angle at climb/descent speeds!
Double check your pitot heat is on or it will give you false airspeed readings sometimes. Make sure your flaps are full up after takeoff (that won’t change your RPMs, but it will affect your ability to climb).
So first check why you’re only turning 2300 RPM, because that’s a real issue! If you’re relatively near SL, and still only getting 2300, then we need to work on that issue first and foremost. The other stuff will apply once you’re in the actual climb.
Regards
First shot, just after T/O turning ~2500 RPM. Starting extended climb to 8000’ MSL. Note the VS is not realistic for more than a few seconds. It jumped on me a bit taking the screenshot!
152 just reaching 8000’MSL. Please note: the VS again jumped up to an unstainable rate for that couple seconds I reached over to grab the screenshot. I really need to set at macro to get shots!! It will not maintain that rate at 8000. If I’d left it at that rate, the speed would have bled off quickly!
Third shot, pushed nose over to level the plane, let the speed build a bit, then pulled the throttle back a bit to keep the engine in the green.
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Thanks for the feedback! I’m doing the tutorial so the flight starts at 6500 ft, field elevation is 4700. Yeah I don’t know why 2300 RPM was the max, it dropped even more when I hit the H on the keyboard but honestly I don’t know if that was turning carb Heat on or off. I was just milking it trying to climb as slowly as possible and staying above stall speed.
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I’ll take a look at the tutorial and see if there’s an issue. Just so we’re on the same page, specifically, which mission is it you’re having an issue with.
The fact that you’re starting at 6500’ can definitely cause an issue with your max RPM unless it’s leaned a bit (and if you’re using automixture, it should take care of that, but I’ll test it on that flight.
If the RPM drops when you hit “H”, then you’re turning it on. It’s normal to lose some RPM’s when you apply heat. It shouldn’t be huge, but you will take a hit.
I’ll see what I can find with the mission and see if there’s an issue there!
Regards
Heh I remember this one when I was bored going through the lessons. “got it” the first try but think I ended up spending most of an evening trying to get a perfect score that I didn’t really even care about-at first…
You have to wring the 152’s scrawny little neck to get it.
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If you’re taking the instructor’s comment to reduce to 2300 RPM, that only applies after you reach 8000’. Make sure you keep the throttle full in until then as you’re climbing out. If that’s not the issue, I’ll keep looking.
You should have the throttle full in, mixture a little bit out, and climbing at about this speed/rate as you go.
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LOL
Yea the 152 isn’t exactly a hard core cross-country machine! You have to whip all 108 horsepower to get it above it’s preferred training altitude.
Regards
No I have it on full throttle. I do have mixture assistance turned on instead of trying to tune it myself that’s probably the problem
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The mission is like stage 3 in the VFR instructions.
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Ok, thanks! I’ll test some more to see what’s up!! If you’ve got mixture assist on, that shouldn’t be a problem, but I’ll test it that way.
Regards
Ok, I’m testing on the second mission (go over the midpoint of Sedona airport then on to the Munds golf course, which includes a climb from 6500 to 8000’, so I think we’re on the same one). I got it to limit RPM to ~2300 at one point, so here’s something to try. I turned automixture to “off” for this test.
When I started the mission, I had my throttle pushed all the way up. But when the flight started, I noticed that looking at the throttle in the plane, it wasn’t really all the way forward. If I pulled the throttle back a little ways and then forward again, it went to the true full forward position, and I got all the RPM I would expect. If I start with my throttle axis all the way off, the sim still shows the throttle as “mostly on” but not full on. But as soon as I move the throttle axis forward, the one in the plane jumps back a bit and then goes full forward. So double check that if you reduce the throttle a bit and then back to full on, and see if that helps!
As a side note, my mixture control was also part way out until I cycled my mixture axis and then it went all the way in. But leaving it all the way in didn’t really affect my RPM much if at all. We can talk about leaning at another point as it doesn’t seem to be the real issue here.
Regards
The throttle appears to be full in, but it’s really not when I start the mission:
