I am very happy with the plane, there is a tendency to slowly drift to the right, but i am sure that has nothing to do with your model. It has something to do with the logitech extreme 3D that I am using. Thanks for the flight model, it’s a great improvement to the original one concerning flight dynamics. The airplanes have never been so lifelike and the DA 40 gives you the immersive quality of forgetting you are in a sim sometimes. Indeed that effect will be far greater in VR which I will try at some point.
I assume the drifting to one side is related to the aerodynamic effects of the single propeller. I’m definitely experiencing p-factor at high angles of attack, like on initial climb after takeoff, because I need to hold in right rudder to maintain coordinated flight: P-factor - Wikipedia
I’m enjoying the realism
One other thing I find so interesting about this aircraft is that since it’s diesel and uses jet fuel, it can be refueled IRL more easily than most GA aircraft in countries where 100LL AVGAS isn’t widely available.
Yes a few of us have had this issue, see posts above. It’s intermittent for me. I did a flight last night and had no problems, but flights a couple days ago were an issue. I wonder if it’s related to using the ALT button . Last night I never used altitude hold via the ALT button. I just dialed in a set altitude and reached it via FLC mode. On the flights with the issue, I had used ALT a few times to hold my current altitude.
I’ve just had to reinstall windows and MSFS and added the v0.7 DA40 Mod and for some reason I can’t get the Mix FADEC system to activate - I’ve just dropped back to the v0.6.2 release and that one is working.
Am I being completely stupid and it was removed from v0.7 ?
I was able to recreate the autopilot problem yesterday, but only by running out of fuel at 16000 feet.
Leaving the autopilot on makes it try harder and harder to climb. When i put fuel back and tried leveling off at 4000, it continued climbing.
Funny thing is that selecting VS mode and leaving it at 0fpm kept me level. Funny because Altitude select uses VS mode and should have the same behaviour.
I dont see how this will happen in a normal flight.
Actually the last two days I did flights in the DA40 and with normal fuel load the AP wasnt able to maintain a flight level but rather climb. If I for example maintain FL85 and activate ALT the AP will arm FL89 which would be the altitude without selecting the std baro. As you said, selecting VS in 0fpm will maintain the flight level but wont activate the ALT mode when reaching. Also if I let it climb to FL89 and then press VS and select FL85 it wont decent with the selected VS.
This is probably the same AP / trim bug that has been discussed in other posts.
If for what ever reason the AP runs trim full up or possibly “beyond” that to try and maintain a certain attitude it simple “breaks” and can only be reset on the ground by reloading the aircraft.
You can get the same effect if you fly into icing conditions severe enough to overpower the aerodynamic capabilities of the aircraft.
Disconnecting AP and re-trim for hands-free manual flight works no problem, but as soon as you engage AP regardless of FLC, VS or simply ALT mode you end up with Nose Up trim max within seconds.
I tried to shut down the aircraft completely in flight…back to a cold and dark cockpit and then powered back up…same thing.
Finally this is the same on the C-152, 172, DA62 and I believe I also tried one of the Beech Pistons.
That’s helpful information, thank you! I was goofing off a lot on the flights when I had the issue, and flying properly on the flights that were issue free, so that seems to match the way you’re describing how the issue occurs.
I just did a few more flights and I confirmed the issue as you described. The easiest way for me to reproduce it was to activate the AP straight and level and fly a few thousand feet over some mountains with the simulation rate sped up to 4x or 8x. The turbulence from the mountains requires the AP to adjust, and having time sped up seems to stress the AP significantly to where it trims as far as possible. The AP then went into a constant ascent. I wasn’t able to get the AP working again. It was always ascending. I even tried reloading the aircraft using dev mode.
Do you know if this issue is reported as a bug in the forums anywhere we can vote on it? I did a search but couldn’t find one. I’ll add one if there isn’t one already someone knows about, and submit a Zendesk ticket.
I suspect when the trim reach it’s final position under AP whatever the reason is icing or big turbulences at the end the auto pilote becomes blocked under max climbing position… and this can’t be recovered but by restarting the sim.
I also experienced the same issue 2 days ago under very bad weather conditions that have stressed the AP and I finally have to disengaged it.
I am seeing this behaviour as well, just flying in HDG mode, and hitting ALT during the climb. Aircraft keeps climbing and am unable to fix during flight. I’m wondering if this is an aircraft AP or g1000 issue.
Yep, I’m also seeing the climbing bug. I used FLC to climb to 6000 ft with an airspeed setting of 77 kias. When I reached 6000 ft, the flight director moved down to level the nose, but the autopilot didn’t follow suit. I was hitting a little bit of turbulence at the time, but nothing major. I cycled ALT hold on and off a few times, but the climb rate continued unchanged. The flight director moved every time I turned ALT on and off. Finally, I used the control stick to push the nose down and align with the flight director. When I let go of the control stick, the airplane leveled at 6500 ft.
I checked the trim wheel multiple times during this, but the airplane was never close to full nose up trim.
. Last night I never used altitude hold via the ALT button. I just dialed in a set altitude and reached it via FLC mode. On the flights with the issue, I had used ALT a few times to hold my current altitude.
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