Brief description of the issue:
The power management of the King Air 350i seems to be totally misconfigured. It behaves very strange on final approach and after landing. First it is very hard for me to somehow slow down in this plane. Thrust is set to idle and even with a descend rate of 1.000ft/min it keeps a speed of about 220kn IAS. That is so fast I cannot extract my gear due to overspeed until I force flaps extraction to drop speed drastically.
On touch down I set thrust lever to idle but it keeps pushing like 40-50% N1 or something (sounds and feels like that). Just after I activate reverse thrust a second and put it back to idle it will really go down to idle (you hear that clearly).
Taxiing to parking position is no fun either as I keep the thrust lever on idle but it will still accelerate by itself all the time even with idle thrust. Braking seems not to work as it would stop the plane completely but gently breaking has no effect as the thrust seems to be way too strong for it. Only workaround for me is to keep shifting between reverse thrust (on taxiway!!!) and idle thrust to somehow taxi with 20kn (way too fast still).
Anyone else experiences this? I will submit a zendesk ticket then.
I’m flying KA350 almost exclusively (at least in the game) and I don’t think I’ve experienced most of these, at least not to that extent and not consistently. I’ve read feedback by other people who are saying that it’s very hard to slow down the airplane during arrivals (mostly because propeller drag is not modelled in the game) but I can’t say I had this issue.
My usual method of descending from cruising altitude is to set a VS rate of about 1200fpm, then set throttle to around 20-30%, propellers to around 30%-50% (aiming for 1500-1550rpm) and lately I keep condition level to low idle (used to have high idle all the way but I’ve changed that habit). Gradually I may decrease VS to around 800-1000fpm when I’m under 8000-10000 feet.
The above configuration ensures my speed decreases from 200-210KIAS at FL250 to around 180KIAS at FL050 minutes before the final approach and this is when I’ll lower flaps one notch which will further reduce speed and will allow me to reduce gears. As soon as this is done and I’m also established on the GS/GP then I’ll lower flaps again and this’ll send me straight into Vapp speed range (115-120 KIAS) from which Vref is achievable if you simply decrease throttle or even set it to idle).
When I was flying with cond level high idle, I would sometimes switch to low idle to bleed speed but not often. Also I used to always go to full reverse on touchdown but not anymore (it only needs to be used for short runways).
It’s true that sometimes during landing or even taxiing, both N1 and prop RPM go crazy without you changing anything and you can tell by the high whine. Usually this happens after I’ve touched down. My workaround is to switch prop levers from 100% to around 50% and then back to 100%. Most of the times this does the trick and both N1 and RPM decrease. Not sure why this is happening.
This is happening to me too. Curiously it ONLY happens during taxiing after landing but not during taxiing before takeoff, even when weights are comparable (e.g. you’ve made a really short trip). I’ve read that in real life, KA350 will start rolling out even at idle throttle but this is not the case in MSFS. Before takeoff you always need significant amounts of throttle to get the thing moving (especially when you’re nearing MTOW) but after landing this behaviour changes completely and it takes lots of messing with throttle/prop levers to keep N1/RPM low and lots of braking. I never have to use reverse thrust though.
To summarize the above, KA350 is much more problematic than the other MSFS turboprops and the propeller drag issue (or lack thereof) is a game breaker for many. Personally I doubt that Asobo will ever focus on fixing or improving any of the above, so I’ll wait for a 3rd party to release some proper study level version of the plane as they’ve done to other sims.
King Air has problems - I agree it is way to hard to slow down. Useless even more so in the mountains. In retrospect, Asobo took a huge project on with the aircraft available for us on release date, and they did not (most likely) anticipate the large segment of their community are IRL pilots, many professional with decades experience (like myself) - who are critical of any cartoonization of airplanes. I am very satisfied with C172 out of the box, and I will tool around with the 208 - but the King Air is back on the shelf for good, just like the default airliners.
Thanks for your long reply and explanations. It’s somehow good to know that you face exactly the same issues like I do in some conditions so it is not just me and propably my setup
Your advice with the RPM lever is interesting will try that one out - maybe it works for me just as well when lowering RPM to idle and therefore set the plane to “glide” mode.
Well I am not a RL pilot just an enthusiastic SIMer with 16 years of “experience” so yes it annoys me too especially for those of us who knew FSX very well and some aspects of the core of such a sim - FLYING - was solved way better in FSX and it behaved more predictable than the new MSFS 2020.
Still I hope Asobo will take care of those issues and address them more consistently so that we get a real next gen sim out of that. The graphics are stunning and no comparison to FSX but again the focus must be on flying.
Recent update noticably improved the situation for me. Now taxiing is no longer an issue it behaves like it should. Only problem that remains is when on final and touch down the throttle does not go into idle until I activate reverse thrust for a second and remove it to idle. You clearly hear the RPM of the two turbo props significantly drop when doing that.
What type of throttle do you use?
Have you tried a deadband?
Another solution may be to try FSUIPC7, it calibrates and handles controls much better than the default interface.
There isn’t any issues I can find related to the throttle on that,
I did read that they do need to be calibrated properly.
I would recommend you try FSUIPC7 (try installing without purchasing - I believe the basic functions in this still work as freeware )
