Flight dynamics a bit wonky with the 172 on landing?

Getting back into the sim after a couple of months or so.

Trying to practice some landings (IRL didn’t pass a Solo stage check on part due to less than ideal landings probably attributable to nerves, as the last couple weeks, I wasn’t doing too bad.)

Having an Alpha, Bravo and rudder control combo, I have no problem on the pattern and approach (with the corresponding power settings and flaps). Coming in at 65 knots, 30 degrees of flaps, and reducing power upon nearly reaching the threshold, I wait a sec or two and start pitching up (ie the flair) at ~10 above the runway. Regardless, it feels the the model always balloons instead of holding attitude and pitch (before starting to pitch back down due to the lack of control surface responsive at low airspeed).

Is anyone else having a similar issue?

Yeap you’re not alone. MSFS cessna is not what I recall from my limited flying in real life cessna nor it is comparable to the other two sim platforms Xplane and P3D. Ie. I have Laminar and airfoil labs cessna in Xplane and A2A cessna in P3D and fly those quite a bit. Xplane and accusim are used in FAA certfiied simulators and those three feel comparable to each other but not comparable to MSFS one. MSFS feels baloonish on landing and trimming seems off. I think I dialed in my hardware curves to the right level in MSFS but who knows, it could be controls or it could be the model. We won’t know for sure until A2A brings their 172 over. I’d say mechanically MSFS lands just fine ie keep her nice and level and she’ll settle in eventually but it takes more runway to do so.

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Trim is broken since SU5 :

I wouldn’t count on them fixing trim issues or any issues on default planes. Defaults are what they are and they are pretty looking bricks at this point. I would just grab one of the community mods and be done with it. DAs are modded and fixed CJ is modded is fixed and longitude is modded and fixed so it gives you a decent taste while you wait for serious payware devs to come over with their offerings. The real issue they need to fix before it becomes a deal breaker for me is popouts. Having GPS popout without bezel is just silly.

trim is also broken on payware planes and mods

For me, C172 is good and realistic during landing. I do not flare her - I transition to slow flight keeping her in the air until I hear her stall sound horning and at that moment I start a kind of flare. With the help of trim and some RPMs (to help rudder efficiency) and adjusting view improving visibility (rising the seat a bit) it works fine for me.

DA62 mod trims pretty nicely for me none of that dramatic pitch up pitch down on single button click like 152 or 172. Working title CJ4 is decent too. although with jet engines it doesn’t require all that much trimming. Haven’t flown just flight planes in a while need to double check those.

Ideally you should be able to land 172 without the stall horns whaling just keep her level while reducing power and she settles down nice and easy with full flaps. I can land MSFS 172 that way but it takes way more runway sort of reminds me longitude junior before it was fixed. Not as bad but noticeable compared to 172s in other sims.

You should transition your descent to straight and level flight before you flair. And the flair should be only a small pitch up to about the same attitude used for takeoffs. Let the airspeed bleed off as the plane settles to the runway as lift dissipates. Your airspeed is too high if you are ballooning. You are raising the pitch of the aircraft while your airspeed is high enough to lift you back up into the sky. And you definitely do NOT want to stall.

The danger of ballooning is that three things can happen, two of them bad. Maybe the airspeed quickly drops below stall speed because of the high angle of the pitch up. The stall happens too close to the ground for recovery. Or maybe to prevent a stall the nose is pitched down. No stall but not enough altitude to properly flair causing a nose wheel landing. The best thing to do is to go around for another landing attempt.

Good landings are a balance between lift and drag while keeping the airspeed higher than stall speed and lower than ballooning or making a crater in the runway.

Landing an aircraft is the most difficult skill in flying to master. It takes a lot of practice. IRL there are many professional pilots with 1,000s of hours who cannot make good landings.

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(Throwing stuff at the wall here to see what sticks)

Would anyone know what parameters ASBO put into for the approach speed? I’m wondering if the model believes that 65 kts is a bit too fast and instead of leveling (at an increasing AOA) then descending (subject to ground effect), it thinks it has has enough lift and balloons only to lead to a possible porpoise

Screenshots with ASOBO’s Cessna-172 on straight and horizontal flight. 2 Pilots, Fuel about 50%, RPMs are low.



Acorrding to the 172N manual (MSFS uses the 172S), the “Normal Landing Airspeed (flaps DOWN) “ is 55-65 KIAS. I have no idea what source Asobo uses for flight parameters.

The S manual at max weight says 60-70kts with full flaps full
and 61kts for short field landings.

@monkiesandtools since ground effect is way too high on a few aircraft in MSFS, this might be the reason why you are experiencing ballooning.
Nevertheless I don’t know why you are experiencing a pitch down due to a lack of elevator authority.
You must be really slooow!

Just tested and the 172 touches down below 40kts with a very high pitch attitude.
I’m not seeing any lack of elevator/pitch authority.

Recently I’ve been using the Angle-of-Attack indicator during landings. It not perfect, only helpful. I do know that if I try landing with A-o-A of 1°, it will be a crummy landing.

1° AoA? Looks a lot like a sure way too fast nosewheel landing to me…
I’d concentrate on speed, vertical speed, and centerline instead of AoA.
AoA might be helpful during the approach, but prior and during the flare the pitch attitude is way more important.

We discussed that some time ago, seems the relation between indicated and calibrated airspeed is a bit off. See the plots here and the discussions a few posts down in that thread:

The result is that if you fly at 60 KIAS in the C172S in the sim you are actually flying five knots faster than if you fly 60 KIAS in real life just because of how the sim modeling of the airspeed indication is that much off.

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A-o-A of 1°? How?

The S manual at max weight says 60-70kts with full flaps full
and 61kts for short field landings.

From one of my approaches back in June (Before I got the bravo throttle quadrant)

At ~ 65 kts

At ~60 kts

(not sure if these parameters have been adjusted since)

Not sure what you are trying to prove with these screenshots.

Looks good - RPMs, pitch (not AoA - pitch), speed. Just… if you are going visual, you look too low and early for full flaps (just for me), if you are IFR you dropped your speed too early - you have to keep 90 knots up to FAF, if I do not mistake here.