Real life Cessna 152 handling questions. Stock vs JP Logistics Mod

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Hey all. I’m a non IRL pilot, who fies the 152 exclusively. I fly only in VR with Honeycomb yoke and throttle and the Thrustmaster pendular rudder pedals. Although I fly mainly for fun, and for world exploration, I do fly only at the most realistic settings with all aids off and want to get the most authentic real world experience possible in terms of the flight model.

I’ve heard lots of good things about the JP Logistics C152 mod and decided to to give it a go this week. In some ways I love it, the sounds are much louder, especially the wind which can be further enhanced by opening the windows. The lighting seems better too and I love the handy extra features like the bug set and the more feature rich transponder.

But the flight model is so different from the stock Asobo model I’ve got used to that I don’t know which one is accurate. What I want to do here is to describe both models and ask IRL pilots which one is more authentic. I’ll go through my findings and it would be great to know which is more true to life.

ON THE GROUND TAXI/TAKE OFF

The Asobo plane gets going with much less throttle than the mod plane. Starting the Asobo plane I just need to open the fuel valve, primer the pump and push the mixture full rich to start. With the JP Logistics mod the plane won’t start unless I also give it a bit ot throttle.

When taxxing up hills, the JP Mod requires a lot more throttle. One of my favourite small airfields is Burning Blue Design’s Bodmin airfield in Cornwall, which requires taxxing up a large hill to the get to the airfield. Both versions of the 152 require a lot of throttle to start moving up the hill, but the JP mod requires much more, almost full throttle to start moving initially (its pretty steep) after which I can lower it right back again to continue moving. The Asobo requires less throttle to start.

When taking off, the Asobo plane will veer to the left, as I’m told it should because of the the prop rotation and the way the airflow and torque are. the JP Logistics is much less twitchy and responsive on the take off, it doesn’t pull to the left nearly as much, and sometimes even veers a little to the right.

CLIMBING

The Asobo 152 will climb automatically at full power. By that I mean without pulling back on the yoke or adjusting for trim, if I do nothing the plane will continue to climb to about 3000 feet, at which point leaning the mixture is required to climb higher.

The JP Logistics mod by contrast won’t climb unless I pitch the nose up and/or add trim. At full power I can I just fly straight and level without touching the yoke or trim, whereas with the Asobo plane I have to actively reduce power to keep it at straight and level, it always wants to climb,

HANDLING

The Asobo plane feels a lot lighter and more twitchy than the JP Mod. It auto climbs and requires more adustment to keep it straight and level, it seems to react more to turbulence, and its movements are a little less controlled.

The JP mod plane feels like it has a lot more interia. It’s kind of heavier and less twitchy if that makes sense. It doesn’t jitter about and turning it just turns as if it’s a heavier plane with more mass and less subject to outside influences.

SUMMARY

Both planes seem very easy to fly, the 152 is a training pane after all. But when it comes to their taxi, take-off and climbing modelling they are both so different that I assume one of them has to be more authenic and a therefore a closer approximation to the real thing than the other.

I’m just looking to get feedback from people with real world experience who have used this mods ideally to tell me what they think about the two models and which one they prefer.

I can easily fly both models with equal enjoyment, but I just want to make sure I’m flying the one closest to life.

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This is realistic, I didn’t fly the C152 specifically so I can’t help you with the rest. But the engine likely won’t start when its cold without a little bit of throttle. Also the amount of fuel you are priming is important and should be based on temperature, whether the engine is warm or cold (has been running before or not). Neither do you want it to run at idle throttle for too long to prevent spark plug fouling, don’t know for the C152 but 1000/1200 RPM is common on similar aircraft when parked.

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Yep. Its so important and a lot of people seem to forget that. The POH for the old 70s C182 I trained on stated 800RPM or more to avoid fouling, IIRC. But it was fuel injected so that might have helped. Still, almost every time I did the run up, it ran like trash for a while until the plugs cleared up. Felt like everyone before me was idling at 600RPM and just left full mixture during ground ops.

On the plus side, I learned that if you lean out a bit during the runup, the plugs clear up faster.

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Thanks, that’s +1 in JP Logistic’s favour then!

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It’s been a few decades since I have flow a C152 IRL, but from what I remember, it was a light feeling plane. It really didn’t take much to get rolling (although I never dealt with any significant hills). On takeoff you really had to hold the rudder on the climb otherwise the p-factor would have you wandering away from your path.

I recall it climbing basically on its own if the pitch trim was in T/O. That said, it would climb great to about 4,000 or so, and then just pitifully wheeze it’s way up to 8,000 or more to clear the mountains. Taking off at KSDL ~1,500ft, climbing up to 8,500 would be a good solid 45 minutes of climb. AZ is high density altitude so that figures in to the equation. I remember that VSI needle sitting below the 100fpm tick for an eternity while getting that last 4-500 feet.

I’ll have to try the C152 in sim, but it was a very easy plane to fly, and responded quickly to inputs, but I wouldn’t call it twitchy. All that said, I haven’t flown one since my PPL so my memory may be faded by time (like the paint on those 152s I flew).

On my first solo, the crankshaft (bearing I think) in the C152 I was flying broke and the engine started vibrating so much I thought the plane would fall apart, but we got back on the ground, just landed the wrong direction on the runway - oops.

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Thanks for the feedback, I guess that’s JP logistics 1 - 1 Asobo stock 152.

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I found the JPL mod a bit more “like” an A2A plane. You need to me more mindful of engine settings on startup, performance isn’t like a rocket on takeoff, etc. I just found it a bit bouncy and twitchy but I need to give it some more time. Don’t get me wrong the stock C152 is pretty decent, but I do like some of the features of the JPL mod. Interested in RL pilots comments, I have a couple hours flying in a real Cesena but it was years ago.

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That’s what I focused on more than anything during my single flight with it so far. That was mostly to get things working with my Air Manager panels.

I’ll take them both out for a flight later tonight and compare what they handle like in a more normal flight.

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I prefer the look of the JP logistics plane, and the sounds are much better, it’s like they amplified the sound, the wind sounds fantastic. I kind of like the tinted windows too and I think I’ll enjoy the fact it has better VOR, DME details like miles to etc.

I hate the characters in the plane, I kick them out, the worst one is the male avatar who sometimes appears in my seat but whose hands remain on his lap when I’m using the yoke. He seems to have gone the last time I flew but I’m not sure what makes him appear and reappear.

Apart from that it’s the just differences in the flight model that I’m unsure about. I’ll go with whatever one people think is the most accurate overall, even though I’ll probably never even take a real life taster session let alone learn to fly. For some reason perceived authenticity is important to me!

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How do you turn off the pilot and co-pilot? I hate that too…

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Top right of the radio panel there is a yellow button, I think it says spr or something. Not sure about the guy in the pilots seat, sometimes he’s there sometimes not. I haven’t worked out what I do to summon or get rid of him.

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By the way, what do you mean by an A2A plane? Is that a good or bad thing?

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@Kjaye767 A2A Simulations. They created really good add-ons for FSX, many of the planes the owner personally flew himself. There Cesena planes were top notch, and had some interesting features. One was persistent wear and tear over the life of the plane. So you had to worry about engine hours, over rev-ing, if you let it sit to long in the hanger the battery would be dead, cold weather you need to change oil type, etc. You also had to do a walk around prior to flight; check control surfaces and fuel quality. it was a fun new aspect to the sim, and it was fun to see how many hours you get up to. Be interesting if JPL could do something similar once they have the plane upgraded.

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Oh wow, a compliment then! I thought you were implying that might be a remote control plane or something really basic.

Good to know it compares well to payware stuff then.

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Oh gotcha… Some MSFS2020 mods are really impressive, and it’s great Asabo allowed people to extend a default planes functionality. FBW A320, H135, JPL, etc. are simply amazing free (but you should donate) addon’s that are far better then most FSX payware.

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The 2 yellow buttons at either side of the audio panel show / hide the pilot and copilot.

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The 152 being a very light pane with a 380# (?) useful load does feel more twitchy than the 172 and other aircraft that are 4 seaters. When starting to roll on level paved ground it didn’t take much throttle. I was always standing on the brakes to be sure it wasn’t going to roll forward even at idle (not that it would). Flying single vs with a full load you would lose a 150 fpm or so in climb. I remember one flight early on with my 210# instructor when we flew under a cloud with a concave bottom (strong uplifting air movement) and we saw the climb indicator at 1,200 fpm as we passed underneath the cloud.

How it responded to throttle was always based on elevator trim setting (or yoke movement). It required almost constant adjustments until the speed settled and you had reached a stable flight configuration. Then a gust of wind or passing through a rising air mass would temporarily upset things and you might have to readjust your altitude and heading.

It sounds like the JPL version might be easier to fly, but not necessarily more realistic.

Starting if I remember correctly it was all the way out then 1/4" in or something with mixture full rich.

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Moved to #third-party-addon-discussion:aircraft since a Mod is involved.

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As is the case with any fixed pitch propeller. Its not depending to yoke or elevator trim movement (at least not directly), the RPM on a fixed pitch prop is depending on the airspeed.

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Hmm, so now I’m conflicted. I prefer the sounds and the extra features of the JP Logistics mod but want the most authentic flight model too if possible…