J. Mac McClellan’s review of the WACO YMF-5 in Flying refers to it as a “tame” taildragger. I’d call that evidence - and did, when I was complaining about Carenado’s original groundhandling. The patched version matches the descriptions and videos. Takeoff and landing shouldn’t be Mr. Toad’s wild ride.
On topic - haven’t tried the Tiger Moth but will.
The Hellcat isn’t supposed to be tricky. The real one wasn’t. Grumman designed it for 200-hour pilots right out of training. It’s the opposite end of the spectrum from the Corsair.
What the FI Hellcat does give you is a castering tailwheel. Effective steering requires some airflow over the rudder.
Agree there’s something off about the Milviz Corsair - the wheel and wing -dropping behavior seems a bit arbitrary.
FlyingIron have custom coding for their castering tailwheel as the default sim doesn’t do them properly. I find that it handles completely differently from the other tail draggers on the ground, not hard but different.
Ah, that’s it? I was thinking they’d done something to make crosswinds a lot harder. I did sortof notice the castoring tailwheel I guess, but it’s not the first time I’ve dealt with one so I didn’t really pay attention.
There have been a few WACO real world pilots that said the real thing was much tamer than the original Carenado release.
Be interested in whether you think the TM is a bit too placid on the ground - it feels great in the air though…
The effects on the Hellcat carry over from taxi into the takeoff run and landing roll, but they’re subtle. The main thing is that the rudder is contributing a lot earlier in the takeoff run, and you’re not getting that sudden-onset rudder effect at 40 knots that shows up in so many other taildraggers. But the benefits are muted by the Hellcat’s overall stability. IRL it has that in common with the Thunderbolt, a similarly heavy airplane that was known for its jet-like handling characteristics.
I’m interested to see what the new Flying Iron ground physics do to the Spitfire when they arrive in the next update. Wondering if it’ll be more of an adventure… or a bit less.
I’ve been meaning to check out the Tiger Moth - I’m a big fan of Ant’s work from FSX and P3D days. I just need to get work to leave me alone.
To an extent, speaking generally, taildragger ground behavior is a developer’s design choice. There’s a case for making it ill-tempered and there’s an equivalently good case for making it milder - the reason being that in a real taildragger, you have seat-of-the-pants feedback, and that can make it easier to notice and correct bad behavior. More forgiving behavior in the sim is a possible way to account for this. It’s debatable - and was debated just recently when the iniBuilds P-40F came out. There are people who like that it’s manageable - and others who prefer the Big Radials P-40B, which isn’t tame at all.
Come to think of it, I need to catch up on the iniBuilds P-40 too - I own it but haven’t yet flown it.
Gonna be a long weekend…!
I think the biggest criticism of some of the early misbehaving tail draggers such as the Carendo WACO and 170B was not to do with the level of difficulty. It had more to do with the unrealistic nature of the ground handling, for example the sudden and extreme excursion to the right in many early addons when the tail wheel lifted or when the aircraft rotated. They were not difficult in the same way a real tail dragger can be, they were just difficult due to weird behaviour. One of the “tricks” with the WACO for example was to do what amounted to a three point take-off, keeping the tail wheel planted until it rotated. That was NOT realistic.
The Tiger Moth is fantastic in comparison.
I don’t recognise that behaviour with the Waco. It was a much more refined flight model, just needed a bit of rudder dancing to keep lined up. Have seen ithe behaviour you mention on other earlier attempts in MSFSthough.
When did you buy the WACO? It was insanely bad when first released.
Here is a typical comment from that time:
Jan '21
To begin with, no matter what factors (fuel, pilot weight , passenger weight, sand bag, etc) I adjusted, I was not able to get the CG in range. It was always 8-10% ahead of the forward chord.
Secondly, trying to fly it in that condition, as one might reasonably expect, didn’t work very well.
Thirdly, the ground handling is atrocious. Way too sensitive, no matter how far back you dial the rudder sensitivity settings.
Have flown tail-draggers both in real life and in the sim many times and this model is nowhere near authentic.
Hope that Carenado is paying attention and issues a prompt fix, or I’ll be seeking a refund (which is something I’ve never done befor
I think you’ve got it - there is definitely a trade off between IRL behaviour of taildraggers and what we can handle in the sim.
But I do think the Waco flight model was tuned about right - it wasn’t a wild ride on the ground at all but needed some TLC on the rudder to keep her lined up…
The TM for me now has by far the best feel in the air of any of the biplanes and at least still needs a dash of TLC to land smoothly without a bounce or a hard ‘arrival’. I did like the Waco flight model though - and I’m not really a fan of “democratic” or populist flight model improvements - we don’t want a rack of aircraft that all handle exactly the same in the sim just to make them “easier” for us simmers to fly like the old sweats.
Harder does not equate to more authentic.
Do not forget DC Stearman 
I always thought the wandering around when the tail lifted was rather overdone p-factor - some DCS aircraft will swing wildly as you bring the tail up if you don’t catch it & raise the tail too high, as a comparison of overpowered taildraggers - but after messing around for a whlie back then it was more like the transition between stationary physics & “flight”. Given the wheels are points then atm it seems the aircraft is flying as long as it’s not stationary, even if it’s microscopic hops. Tricycle aircraft used to have some wild swings too.
The TM’s main qurks are it’ll take off before you realised it if ti’s a bit windy, and it just floats forever ( which is realistic ). Otherwise nicely vice-free.
There was a post over on Sim Outhouse about modifying the CoG on the Corsair’s aircraft CFG file to get more realistic behavior from it. Check it out if you have a non-marketplace version
Thanks! Didn’t know that. I’ll give it a try.
On topic - finally did pick up the Tiger Moth. A very nice experience. Having a bit of a biplane renaissance at the moment between that, the revised WACO and the Jenny. Now all I need is for the winds to die down and the weather to warm up!
Biplanes are the best planes.
This works just perfectly. No more wing tip scratching. One may wonder how the addon could have been released with such a bad behavior on landing… Thanks a lot for the information and the link.
I uploaded a new texture via Flightsim.to for the DH-82 Tiger Moth from Ant’s Airplanes.
G-AHAN Checkertail.
https://fr.flightsim.to/file/49615/de-havilland-dh-82-tiger-moth-g-ahan-checkertail
