That would be the analog Caravan though I quasi never fly the stock version.
Oh yes, I also fly the analog Porter version, but I doubt that will make a difference.
Fair enough! I’ve not flown the BS version yet.
It certainly doesn’t like to slow down, I agree with that - a wheelie landing potentially would go on forever. And it taxis fast even in LO IDLE - there seems to be no ground beta range modelled (does it even have it IRL?). You have to ride the brakes if you want to keep the speed to a reasonable 12knts
Caravan Supervan 900 mod is the bomb. Ask gunpilot, it’s on his discord.
What’s that?
This is a little extreme, but it demonstrates the Porter is fully capable of slowing down quickly in the air and on the runway.
Boridi is a fun strip, uphill and to the right. I was a bit late, you should hit the two cones right at the start of the strip. A little bit of a cross tail wind on this as well, extra challenge points!
Apologies for the stop frame and different resolutions, my video recorder is acting up and I just went with it, debug it later.
Code Brown for the Pax, haha! But yes, nice, that puts the S in STOL.
You buy the ticket, you take the ride
Thanks for the video! I have to try that. Again, it doesn’t seem a lot different from what I do, I just have never seen it slow down like that. The only thing I would say is that this runway allows you to come in very shallow.
No worries.
I suggest you go up to 3000ft and just play around with it, transitioning from normal flight to slow flight.
Work different flight profiles like forward slips & side slips (as you can see in the video) and get the feel for them and how you can work them to control the speed and direction as you need. Really watch the speed changes, while keeping outside visual awareness ie: don’t get used to gluing your eyes on the instruments, use them as a quick check for what your eyes are telling you outside, not the other way round.
As @KaelaNikNak also says above Milviz Pilatus PC-6 Porter - #565 by KaelaNikNak
Also get used to riding the stall point in slow flight. Let it fall off, recover, rinse repeat, till you can hold it on the edge. I stole all that from STOL trainers, so it’s not coming from me!
You need to do all this for any STOL aircraft, and the Porter is a great solid platform.
+1 for slow flight & stall drills. Essential to get the feel of it without the ground looming up at you.
In that flight to 0S9 I found myself having to climb above a cloud layer (I was VFR). I was able to use a flaps out beta descent to manoeuvre through a hole in the clouds for the approach. -2500fpm at 75KIAS.
Gotta love the Porter.
Great! Also reminds me @QBziZ make sure to RTFM re: beta descent procedure.
Then I found this here https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/iW6HfvbGCDY And as you can clearly see, this guy has the condition lever in low idle.
I would strongly advise learning to fly it under the standard operating procedures first.
Skydiver driving is a specialist area as much as STOL is, and they have very particular reasons for getting up fast and down fast that really don’t fit anything else. I’ve done a lot of Porter jumps too, one of my favorite jump ships.
You should treat Porter skydiving piloting (which is in the Milviz one and a lot of fun) different from STOL.
Thanks for the advise, but I know and try all of this already. It’s that I cannot get it to ride near stall on the flare, especially not like in the Caravan or Kodiak, where you can drop in at low speed, flare, it won’t go back up but rather wants to stall rather quickly. If I do that with the porter I just take off again. But I agree that practice makes perfect, it’s just that this plane requires such precision - in high-idle - that I would never feel comfortable in short strips.
It’s just practice, and precision comes with practice.
Focused practice, with goals for each session.
This is a beta approach in high idle, he never touches it.
Skydiving operations are different, and they likely have a good reason for using low idle during flight phases that in all other operations is recommended to be high idle. Skydive pilots typically run with minimal fuel only for a couple of loads for one thing, so they can get up/down as fast as possible without dragging extra weight apart from the meatsacks.
Here they’re also in low idle the whole time. There is no cruise phase in skydiving, it’s all climb, climb, climb, so they don’t need max speed just best climb speed. Then it’s jump run @ ideal 60-70 kts (don’t stall) then into beta at low speed but max descent to beat the jumpers down, rinse, repeat, refuel every few loads.
I have a suspicion the reason they use low idle is possibly due to one or more of:
. less fuel
. less RPM = Less noise, which is a big consideration for people living around drop zones with overflying etc.
. No need for bleed air in a skydiving plane
Not PC-6, but principle is the same:
And don’t use other planes in the sim as examples. None of them are actually truly life-like when it comes to turboprop prop modeling or engine modeling. They get close, and they’re fun, but, different. Even in real life there are differences between the planes that you have to learn, especially when flying at the extremes like these situations. Pick one and figure it out. Obviously these guys are doing it with the plane as is, so can you. Just like learning guitar, flying is the same; practice, practice, and pay attention to the little things, the precision as @Sonicviz said.
That’s one of the things that I notice in the sim, it’s sooooo easy to skip steps, you don’t even notice. You would never do this in real flying. You notice it when you do. And I pay attention when I fly in the sim to not skip steps. I do not want to build those habits.
The hardest part of the sim are the unknown unknowns. If you’ve never received actual flight training, or haven’t flown a certain type, there will be a lot of little things a person may not know they’re doing incorrectly. This can lead to bad expectations or poor habits that an instructor will have to work out of you later (if you do make the transition to irl flying).
I have to take any sim flying I do in an airplane with which I’m unfamiliar irl with a huge grain of salt.
I never said they were life-like, that is not my point. The point is the vastly different behavior with regards to losing speed. Regardless of whether they are precisely modeled.
Surely I can compare, it makes sense if 3 turbo props - in the game - behave more or less the same : BS King Air, BS Caravan and Twin Otter, in that they tend to lose speed in a certain way that is recognizable, i.e. a behavior which I recognize, and the fourth one has a high-idle condition that makes it possible to fly level for as long as I want, even with the throttle itself at idle.