Not sure which reviews are being referred to as disparaging the aerodynamics behaviour? I’ve watched two reviews (one was Avangel) and neither were critical, rather the opposite for the aircraft as a whole.
Not IRL pilot but I really like this purchase. I did hesitate because it’s a leap of faith Carenado will continue to patch it when it’s needed rather than chase the next sales. Hope it continues to function moving forward as Asobo tweaks stuff.
Carenado? You mean Just Flight?
Nickd2576 was comparing the JF Piper to the Carenado and suggesting aerodynamics etc were inaccurate…
Here’s video of the issue. The first half of the video is the JF Warrior, and for comparison it’s followed by the Carenado Archer. I’m exaggerating my pitch inputs to demonstrate the effect, but attempting to smoothly raise and lower the nose. You can see how jerky the JF Warrior is compared to the Carenado. And when I’m rounding out and flaring, the plane is almost bobbling. I can get it down like this, but the entire I’m flying it I’m thinking, “omg there’s something wrong with the elevator”, and I’m worried I might not even have the the authority needed to round out and flare. It’s like the plane resists my inputs, and then when it does move, it’s in large lurches. Whereas in the Carenado I can just smoothly hold the nose off until it settles.
All of my tests I loaded straight into the Warrior first time. I even tried toggling the Autopilot on and off with the Z key to no effect.
Suspecting it might be a control binding issue, I reset my Honeycomb Bravo to an empty profile, and my Sidewinder joystick to a new profile that only bound the elevator and ailerson. I then flew it by clicking on the throttle with the mouse. The result was the same jerkiness in the pitch axis.
If the plane isn’t properly trimmed, it can seem like the elevator doesn’t have enough authority at slow speed. Not just seem, it won’t have the expected authority. I’m not sure if this is what you are experiencing, but, it is true, even in the real plane.
Typically in the real plane, I have fair amount of down elevator trim dialed in for pattern work.
Trim setting doesn’t appear to affect it much. I just trim to about where the plane holds its attitude and the pitch inputs should be pretty smooth after that. Even in real life if I’m not trimmed to hold an attitude, I can still smoothly rotate the plane although the yoke has resistance of course.
About trim though, at power off with full aft trim, the JF Warrior pitches up nearly vertically, stalls, and enters a spiral dive. With enough altitude, it recovers and does it again. Even if I ease into this gradually. That’s not correct behavior. It should settle into a nice nose down glide. The Carenado also does this, but it doesn’t pitch up to such an extreme. At full aft or forward trim, I will crash unless I fix it. In real life I should be able to overpower an incorrect trim setting with the elevator. These are pretty docile trainers after all.
Are you also seeing this? Perhaps my trim just isn’t behaving correctly for some reason. I bound the trim to an axis on a Honeycomb lever. The wheel and setting indicator in the cockpit move correctly as far I can tell. I know most folks prefer to bind to the trim up and trim down buttons. But even when I remove all trim bindings entirely, the same behavior is present, which makes me think its inherent to the flight model.
Anyone able to get the COM1 knob to turn in VR? For me it works in 2D but in VR it highlights blue but not yellow and won’t turn. Warrior.
Below is copied and pasted from the official DevSupport forum, almost a year ago, in response to a discussion about different trim types:
GrimPhoenix9349 answered • Mar 27 2022 at 2:50 AM
I actually disagree with the initial point - the trim is not like a GA aircraft and is actually more like what you are requesting, but it has a crippling failure in that implimentation as well:
The trim on a GA aircraft is simply a tab which relieves the pressure at the stick, as you say. No matter how much trim is used, the elevator effect is bound by the deflection limits of the elevator itself and the trim purely creates a point within that at which there is minimal pressure on the stick. If you pull the stick fully aft in a situation where you can do that and maintain level flight, then adjusting the trim will alter the feel at the stick, but the aircraft will continue to maintain level flight. If you do this in the sim, then you will find that you gain extra pitch authority and are able to raise the nose further with the trim when the stick is already fully aft. I have just flown an entire circuit in the JF Warrior with the stick held fully aft and the trim alone used to adjust pitch, this should not be possible.
Taking the above, it appears that the trim is actually closer in effect to what you are asking for - THS. However, the problem then lies in the fact that the flight model does not allow you to define anything with regards to trim other than the angular limits. Therefore, the game is making its own mind up about the size of the trim tab and I would surmise that it has an area of ‘a standard trim tab’. If you were able to define that area freely (i.e. the area of the ‘trim tab’ being the tailplane area), you would probably find that your airliners would behave correctly in this regard already.
This then creates a bug which is the opposite of what you have asked - trim does NOT work correctly on GA aircraft. This is not unique to MSFS, it is a legacy problem brought over from FSX. There literally is almost no point in having trim in a GA aircraft in the sim at this point in time, as explained earlier, the limits should be the up and down limits of the elevator.
Suggestions which would make the trim useable across the board as intended in real life:
1) A ‘switch’ in the .cfg for Standard/THS
2) Standard trim is coded so that it can only work within the defined elevator limits.
3) THS trim allows for the area of the trim ‘tab’ to be defined, no upper limit.
There have been no further replies, but basically trim in the game does not work as it does in the real aircraft and that is a core flight model problem dating back to previous sims.
Lots to unpack here because that’s a fairly deterministic evaluation of the role of pitch trim. Bear with me here, this may be tl;dr…
Start with the notion that the horizontal stabilizer/tailplane (in conventional configurations) is designed to provide a tail-down/nose-up moment to counteract the nose’s propensity to constantly rotate downward due to the center of lift (CL) being behind the center of gravity (CG). In order to do that, it basically flies upside down compared to the wing, providing downward lift.
The amount of downward lift the tailplane is producing, like the main wing, depends on the dynamic pressure and its angle of attack. We have tools like elevators and stabilators to manipulate the tailplane’s camber and resultant angle of attack, but because the elevator is otherwise free-moving in the wind, all that extra dynamic pressure from the combination of airflow and angle of attack wants to push it back toward equilibrium. Without trim, it’s all on the pilot (and/or any hydraulics or servos, if installed) to hold the elevator in the pitch position for equilibrium. Let go of the elevator and it moves toward dynamic equilibrium and you will often climb or descend.
Trim alters the camber of the tailplane by semi-permanently manipulating an additional control surface (or sometimes the entire angle of incidence of the tailplane) to maintain a desired aerodynamic equilibrium, allowing the pilot to reduce or eliminate the amount of work they are inputting on the elevator to maintain said equilibrium. That trim control surface might be a bendable tab that is set on the ground, a servo tab that is used to enhance controllability of the elevator surface (like in a light Cessna), an anti-servo tab that counters the input force applied to the stabilator (like in the light Pipers), an artificial feel in the control system (like in a Cirrus), or setting the angle of an all-moving tailplane (like in a 737).
Putting that into terms that describe its useful action, you use a trim setting that eliminates the need for control pressure at whichever indicated airspeed you want to fly. In climb/descent, we usually set pitch and trim for a particular airspeed that provides the best combination of performance, visibility, cooling, protection against stall, etc.
In level flight or during a rate-controlled climb/descent (typical of high-performance aircraft), we trim to hold an altitude or specific rate of climb, respectively, however, while the result/goal may be different, the dynamics between each regime are the same - the elevator wants to re-establish the dynamic pressure for which it’s trimmed. Generally it will do this by “seeking” the trimmed airspeed through a series of diminshing phugoid oscillations until it stabilizes.
Keep in mind there are numerous other factors involved in these dynamics: wash from power settings and downwash from flaps can significantly alter the AoA on the tailplane. Center of gravity affects the moment and overall controllability of the tailplane (and rudder!). Weight affects the overall required lift and resultant AoA of the wing, etc. However, it’s not necessary to address those for the sake of this discussion, but rather look at them as a contribution to the whole.
With all of this said, I’ve found the trim on the JF aircraft, as with almost every other aircraft in the sim, is behaving properly.
To check this out for yourself, fire up the sim and go out to the practice area in the Arrow, at an altitude of 4-5k AGL or higher. Establish trimmed, level flight at 110-120 knots and without touching anything else (except a little rudder or aileron to keep the wings level), reduce power by 3 or so inches of MP. Note that the nose drops at first and watch as it oscillates down, speed increases, then up, speed drops, and tries to eventually stabilize in a descent at or near the airspeed at which you started. Do this again, but this time anticipate and dampen these oscillations with the elevator. Without re-trimming, it should stabilize within a few knots of the original airspeed. Power back up to the original setting and the reverse will happen.
Second experiment: using the elevator, establish a stable climb at a specific airspeed, say 80 knots, and trim until your control pressure is relieved. At a safe altitude, reduce power until the nose falls - notice it will try to regain that 80 knots (again, you can dampen the oscillations with the elevator, but the goal is to be mostly hands-off). For a variation on this, use power only try to re-establish level flight at that 80 knots (again, dampen osciallations with the elevator, but don’t re-trim, and try to be mostly hands-off). More variation: try this a various airspeeds and configurations, like slow flight.
Last experiment: establish trimmed, level cruise at 120 knots. Now reduce speed to 100 knots. At first you will reduce a little power, but remember the nose will want to fall to regain the trimmed 120 knots. So hold level flight with the elevator (will have to increase back pressure as you slow), and as you get close to 100 knots, while remaining level, start trimming until you don’t need any more back pressure. At this point you may find you need more or less power, but remember the tail is still flying at whatever speed it’s trimmed.
What the trim is not going to replicate accurately in the sim is the varying pressure and range of stiffness of the controls at varying airspeeds or dynamic pressures (especially at the limit of travel). It’s simply going to allow you to center your joystick wherever the springs center it. This may be what the original author of your post is noticing. But going into it with the understanding of what I posted above should help us all realize it’s pretty much doing what it’s supposed to be doing.
Except for the fact that when you hold the stick fully aft with neutral trim, you have a massive amount of extra pitching available by using said trim which would not be possible in the real aircraft.
A problem of the game / hardware, but still an issue nevertheless.
What kind of effect would you expect an anti-servo tab to have when moved from neutral to fully nose-up as the stick is held fully aft? Especially considering the fact that it won’t affect the pressure we feel on our spring-loaded joysticks/yokes.
I guess another way to look at it is - is there a little more play in the simulated elevator offered that our yoke inputs won’t provide to simulate the dynamic pressure of operating the stabilator in flight when the anti-servo tab is doing its job?
This is the problem - are you asking game or real world? In the real world, it effectively relieves the pressure at the stick and of course, with the hardware situation we have, that is not going to happen.
All of the examples you give in your detailed appraisal are trimmed, level and stable initially, then a force imposed on them, and I agree that the behaviour in this zone is ‘as normal as can be given hardware limitations’ . What I am commenting on is more the extreme example, where you already have full application of the tailplane (a finite movement) with which in real life, application of trim (either by tab, servo or anti-servo) would make it easier to hold but would give no further pitching. In the game, you have extra pitching in this situation. It acts more like THS on an airliner, where the trim moves the entire horizontal surface rather than adjusting the balance / feel of the elevator and thus should give extra pitching when the elevator is already at full travel.
I think it’s impossible to reconcile the two without a fair bit of approximation and emulation. Otherwise, without correlated control pressure, the effect of the anti-servo tab is fairly useless in the sim.
To add to my last: specifically in regard to the full limits of travel, which I think I mentioned in my initial post.
Looked at yet another way - try giving it a reasonable max pitch-up effort at neutral trim in the real plane (at a reasonable approach speed) and the last little bit of travel is limited to the point it’s not possible except in maybe a short spurt.
In the sim, perhaps this effect is emulated by putting a soft stop on the stabilator travel/tail down force (even at max physical deflection of the controls) until it is released by actuating the anti-servo tab.
How else, without proper force-feedback, would you presume to emulate this?
We are stuck. We have ONE type of trim system that we can use, that is built into the core flight model. All I am trying to show you is that it has severe issues when used with GA aircraft because it does not accurately emulate any of the different types of trim except for a vaguely correct balancing act. Unfortunately, because it acts on a primary control axis, it has the potential to create some unwanted effects.
How can this be resolved? I think the only way is force feedback.
Check the Reactivity settings for your stick - because that sounds just like what happens if you turn it down, nothing happens for a while & then it all does. I have never experienced that behaviour in any of the Arrows, I’ve only come across that sort of behaviour when I’ve been messing with stick profiles to see exactly what happens.
I flew the last beta Turbo III for a couple of hours earlier, it still has that MSFS flying-through-syrup feel but after being bounced around in other light aircraft ( starting to feel like a big hand is holding the plane & it keeps spasming ) the smoothness was a blessed relief.
That’s a good idea, but I had already created new controller profiles so they’d have the default sensitivity settings in Flight Simulator and Windows. I can see the virtual yoke smoothly moving back and forth with my controller inputs, and also on the joystick input graph, but it’s the plane itself that jerks around in flight. It’s also the only plane that does it, so I doubt it’s this.
The issue is much more pronounced with Live Weather on, and from what I’ve been following it was the new wind gusts implementation in Flight Simulator that is messing with the flight model and what the patch is supposed to address. The issue is still present with the Clear Skies preset, however. While pitching up and down is smooth in the pattern, it still lurches on the flare with the Clear Skies profile.
I tried switching to Legacy and back to Modern on the flight model options, but that didn’t appear to affect it at all.