Hello Folks, a complete noob here, so please be kind. I hope I’m in the correct sub-topic as well. I have been reading the forums and found similar issues, but they are not helping in my case.
System: PC S/W MS2020 w/latest updates
Peripherals: Logitech Flight Yoke, Throttle, Rudder
Aircraft: Cessna 152
Level: VFR Training Flight (Dead Reckoning)
After breezing through previous lessons (all with an “A” Score), I’ve been stuck at the same level for a week. My problem with why I’m failing is not the navigation, which seems pretty straightforward; it’s the climb to 8000ft. I’ve tried every bit of advice I could glean from the forums to solve this problem:
I climb too fast and stall, lose points for either late arrival or power management
or -
climb at a slower rate, reach 8000ft, and receive max points for power management but lose points for not maintaining the requested altitude.
-I am leaning the engine as needed, which helped to a small degree, but not enough to pass. I tried placing the mixture in “Auto Assist” mode but scored even lower.
My primary question is where to place the throttle and mixture controls since this mission starts with the aircraft already at 6400 ft. The software appears to set the throttle and mixture at some default once the mission begins, and the default doesn’t match my ‘hard settings.’ I’m unsure where to place my controls to “match” the software defaults, so I have to scramble to adjust throttle and mixture controls, which starts the flight with a penalty. I have the carb heat off, and all other settings are at default.
Any suggestions? What is a good balance of vertical airspeed, airspeed, and fuel mixture that can reach 8000ft in the time allotted without stalling?
I am somewhat disappointed with the training sessions; there is little to no feedback on how to improve or what mistakes are being made.
Thank You in advance for any responses with helpful info.
maintain exactly 67 knots (no more and no less) by adjusting pitch with yoke
every few thousand feet lean until you get a sudden loss of power then back off a tiny bit
NOTE - if instead of trying to get to altitude as rapidly as you can (which is what you need in this scenario) you were instead clearing obstacles you would go for best angle of climb Vx instead, which is 55 knots in a 152
Thanks, but still no luck. I performed at least two dozen flights following your advice. I was diligent in holding at 67 knots, and adjusted fuel mixture perfectly; while it improved performance slightly, I still cannot reach 8000ft “fast enough” to satisfy the games “scoring metrics”. I tried cheating by accelerating prior to the climb, and after reaching 8000ft, but in each case the game penalized me for improper power management.
I am caught in a loop: It either penalizes me based on time, altitude, or power management; all three of these metrics oppose the other, and improving one causes a loss of points on the other. Example 1: If I climb at a slower rate, my time and power management scores improve, but I lose points for not reaching the requested altitude fast enough (before passings some (unknown) waypoint).
Example 2: If I push the aircraft to reach 8000ft faster, I either stall or lose so much airspeed that I arrive late to the mission endpoint, and it penalizes me on time and altitude.
I learned from previous training missions that the sim ‘weighs’ certain factors more than others, but the final scoring doesnt disclose the factors, so its a game of trial and error to determine which factors are most important and focus on those. Very frustrating, I want to “learn” how the aircraft performs in real life, not pass a set of criteria that some software programmer determined as “critical”. There must be forum members that have passed this training scenario (VFR-Dead Reckoning), can they chime in and give me some tips to “please” the grading software?
Another dozen attempts this morning, still failing to score above 6500.
Climbing at 67 Knots provides a smooth stable climb, I stay perfectly on course, altitude and navigation scores improve slightly, but the 'scoring" mechanism penalizes me heavily on Power Management which drops to 300 points out of 1000.
Ironically, If I push the aircraft to the point of stalling, it provides a score of 1000/1000 for power management, but the other two score are lowered; rinse-repeat. This is a stupidly simple scenario, fly almost straight from Point A to Point B with no takeoff or landing.
i just tried it. I just firewalled the throttle. held a course of 41 degrees and climbed at 65 knots up to 8000. Once at 8000 throttled back to 2300 rpm and held course and altitude. Aced it first try. Perfect score for power and course my low score was for altitude.
I haven’t run this scenario in quite a while, so I wanted to make sure something didn’t get borked in one of the updates. I’ll admit, it wasn’t my finest hour, but still well over 8000 points. I ran full throttle with engine leaned throughout the flight except where it told me to reduce power to 2300 RPM.
I cruise climbed at roughly base rate of climb and got up to 8000’ without any issues. I didn’t see a specific objective that required I get to 8000’ in any specific time, and it didn’t slam me for that.
Make sure you start the stopwatch when directed.
As far as power management, as soon as you hit 8000’, it directs you to reduce power to 2300 RPM. Make sure you do that and get a green box for that object, then that box goes away.
After a couple of tests, it appears to zing you more for not maintaining the correct altitude. I was watching olympics and got distracted for just a few seconds, and got below the directed altitude, and it took a fairly big hit on points there.
I was a little late getting to the final checkpoint, but it didn’t cost me too many points. I could have maybe gotten more points by climbing at a slightly higher airspeed (lower rate of climb) and get closer to the desired time over target. Not sure it would have made too much of a difference.
Hopefully something in here will ring a bell and help you get there.
Regards
I’m beginning to wonder if my setup is wrong entering the flight which is joined already in progress. How are your guys throttle and mixture set when the flight started?
I checked flaps, carb heat, etc… everything appears to be set properly, the only thing that could be wrong are the initial throttle and mixture settings.
I just watched an unnarrated YouTube video of the same mission, he aced it as well. I noticed that his airspeed was much faster, almost 100kts, at the start of the climb; this kind of validates that something is not correct with my initial configuration, so the rest of my mission fails trying to play catch up.
Could the auto flight assistance settings override my manual input? I’m currently set to “easy mode”, but have the mixture set to manual. I also have some custom sensitivity settings in use copied from another youtube video, I’m going to set everything back to defaults and start again
There’s an issue that’s hit some folks that when you first start a flight the throttle and/or mixture may not be responding correctly. For the throttle, you can do a quick pull all the way back and then forward again. Be a little more cautious with the mixture. Just move it slightly forward and then back to the middle position (since you’re already at altitude). I’d suggest pushing the mixture just a bit forward and then back to middle. In this case, the sim might shut the engine down if it detects that the mixture was “moved all the way back to shutoff” when in fact it really wasn’t if you pull it back even just a little to get it to come alive.
Don’t know why this happens to some folks, but it is an issue.
Hope that’s all the problem is.
Regards
P.S. Some folks said they can move the throttle/mixture controls on their HOTAS back and forth before they start the flight and they work correctly in the sim once they start the flight
I did a quick check, and I start at around 95kts when I’m starting this flight.
Ahaaaa I believe you found the solution…I did as you said, throttled quickly up and down as the flight started to sync the controls with the software, did the same with the mixture. I had a great flight: maintained altitude, heading; reached 8000ft in a reasonable amount of time, leveled and dropped RPM as requested (and validated by the mission checkbox).
Thought I had secured an “A” with at least 8200-8300 points…but look below
A bug fat zilch on power management: ironic, with most of my “B” and “C” flights I still score 1000/1000 on power management. Perhaps, as you suggested, I should NOT have moved the mixture slider full scale, I think it sensed an engine shutdown and "failed’ the power management.
My mix was slightly lean of full rich when i started. The only thing i touched was the throttle. I’d suggest turning off all assists if you haven’t already. They seem to cause more problems than it is worth.
Well Congrats…I guess!!! That “0” for power is bad. Sorry If I lead you into that. I’m sure the “0” is from cycling the mixture all the way out. As @KaelaNikNak said, might make sure your assists are off, and just manually lean the mixture. I’ve got my mixture set on my Warthog throttle, and pretty much know where it needs to be. In this scenario I start with the mixture half way out, and lean a little as I get to 8000’.
As I mentioned, I believe you can cycle the throttle/mixture before you even start the flight. Sometimes I think it just needs for the sim to get a kick in the back end and recognize that axis. I’m sure you would have gotten that extra 1000 points.
But Glad it worked out for you! Lots of folks here to help you if you run into other issues!
Regards
Guys…Thanks…I’m regularly scoring just 100-200 points short of an “A” rating. Will turn off assists in the morning and try again. I agree that the assists seem to cause problems, the aircraft keeps making unexplained changes and I find myself fighing the controls.
If you guys don’t mind me asking, would any tweaks to the default sensitivity settings help? I do realize that sensitivity settings are pilot and vendor specific, and not ‘generic’, however, are there any generally accepted changes?
and to add…I don’t take the assistance of all who are posting for granted. I know it takes time to post responses when you could be doing other things, so a big ‘thank you’ to everyone for all the guidance and assistance provide thus far.
As you say, these are very hardware specific - and sometimes even need to change from one plane to the next.
If you find your responses a bit twitchy (normally more of a problem with combat sticks as opposed to yokes) soften the curve - start with -20% to -30% and dial in more if necessary
If you find the response a bit sluggish you can accelerate the curve instead - not generally necessary unless you have a really super long throw yoke
If you see some some sort of jitter or noise even if the yoke is centered, or you find the slightest movement of the yoke from center gets picked up far to easily, add a small central dead zone - typically 3 to 5 % will do as a good start
Reactivity adds a slight delay to the response to your controls which gives a sense of inertia and can feel more “realistic” and can reduce “twitchiness” - start with say 5% and adjust from there.
Be aware these changes will effect how the aircraft responds to your controls but does not change the visual representation of how the control yoke/stick and surfaces appear to move when you look at them.
From what I’ve seen most aircraft devs work from the default linear sensitivities but then not every controller is the same. This theoretically means that once set up all aircraft should behave correctly. Of course if you usually fly sedate tubeliners and then switch to a twitchy 152 it is going to play merry hell with your sensory inputs, nonetheless I feel it is worth getting used to the differences or you’ll possibly end up restricting yourself to just a few aircraft of the same genre.
One thing I’d consider is to set up a free flight (in your case the 152) and change the sensitivity settings in flight to see how they feel immediately after the change. I’d start with a flight from the WM in the air, say 3000’ over some flattish area.
Once you’re flying, just hit ESC to go into the options window (or if you’ve changed the default key, use your setup to go into it). Once there go into the control options and change your sensitivities. I’d do just one thing at a time (e.g. elevator control) and get it the way that feels comfortable to you. Then change the roll axis sensitivity until you’re happy with that. Etc, Etc.
The elevator trim on the sim’s 152 is a bit quirky, and seems to be a bit twitchy no matter what peripheral you’re using. Some of it is just “touch”. The trim almost has some “lag” in it, and then leaps forward. So tread lightly when inputting trim. A little bit, a little bit more, etc. You’ll get the feel for it.
Don’t be afraid to make what seems like large changes in some of the axis sensitivity settings. You may be surprised that sometimes a 20-30% change doesn’t seem to make as big a change as you’d expect.
So change them, save them, resume the flight and see how it feels. Rinse and Repeat!
Regards
Team, I finally busted through that scenario and scored an 8800; not bad, considering I scored in the upper 6000’s just 24 hours ago. It also helped with the following training flight, scoring a 9800 on the first attempt.
Everyone contributed to my success:
Factors that helped rack & stacked by most significant points gain–
Moving the throttle & mixture axis in pre-flight to sync hardware/software was the biggest factor. Only move the mixture between 50% - 100% and back
Start mission with mixture @ 50%, dropped to 35%@ 8000ft
Start climb with the proper initial airspeed (90-95 Kts) and while maintaining the proper vertical speed
Turning off the “Auto” function for the mixture
Dropping RPM to the directed setting EXACTLY when prompted
Maintaining the EXACT altitude and heading, not just within the “acceptable range” needed to activate the “green” mission objective box.
I’ve detailed the solution factors above and tagged this thread so other noobies can find the documentation if needed.
Again, many thanks to all who contributed, and take a bow because the multi-factored solution was a group collaborative effort.
