Thats what I said earlier just a little less drawn out.
Thanks for all the help! For reference though, where do I find the cruise power for the Cessna 152? Is it 2300 rpms as well?
C152 is 2300 rpm too. When I learnt to fly many years ago now I was taught the acronym PAT- APT for climbing or descending. At the start of the manuever set Power first then set your Attitude, wait for speed to settle a bit then Trim. At the end of the maneuver set your Attitude first then your Power and finally once speed settles a bit start to Trim.
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The Pilot Operating Handbook provides all the performance information. It is like an owners manual. Like any new tool… read the manual before operating. (I know, nobody EVER reads the manual. 
)
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And remember trim will change the longer you fly, as you burn fuel the weight of the aircraft will shift rear wards, so you need to tweak the trim to compensate.
Think of balancing a 12 inch ruler on your finger with a lump of plasticine ( fuel ) on the front at 9 inches, so it balances at say 7 inches. Take a bit of plasticine off the rule and it now tips towards the 1 inch end, moving the whole ruler towards 6 inches on your finger balances it again, the more plasticine you remove, the more you need to adjust. That’s what the trim does by moving the elevators down from the level position and forcing the tail up.
I guess I should also set a button to “Set trim to 0” since I will want to reset the trim after my level flight ends. I think there is a binding like that in the game.
Even in a real aircraft there is absolutely no need for a ‘reset’ button for trim. Most aircraft will have a mark on the trim wheel to indicate the normal takeoff position. This insures that you don’t encounter an uncontrollable pitch condition on takeoff. Other than that, there is no ‘center’ position. Stable trim setting will be different for every flight attitude, fuel load, center of gravity, etc.
As was mentioned before, don’t overthink it. Trim is not some magical control. Its only purpose is to reduce the amount of intervention required by the pilot to maintain a chosen airspeed/attitude. Learning to fly is not as easy as clicking an icon and grabbing a joystick. Understanding what is happening is more important that knowing how to do it.
Trimming sucks in FS (and basically in any sim).
There’s no force feedback on the stick like IRL which makes it easy to fine-tune.
Just activate autopilot for a second and deactivate again. Done, you’re trimmed for level flight. Works well for asc/desc as well.
Trimming in FS has nothing to do with real flying.
Not neseccarily the exact cruise speed given in the manual. But any given speed appropiate for what you are doing. I gave cruise speed as an example. So, if you’d like to fly 80knots with flaps set to 1, you’d have to set engine power to achive this speed, and then trim the aircraft to mantain the desired pitch. And so you keep adjusting engine power/trim to mainain your altitude.
Everytime tou change engine power you also trim. So in every stage of flight, the airplane should be retrimmed. With some training, you can almost set engine power and trim by instinct. If you fly a pattern and do multiple touch and go’s you’ll repeat the same engine power and altitude everytime around. So you barely need to think about it after a while.
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I know the autopilot trick, but I think autopilot is unavailable in tutorial which is what I am doing now. Even if you hack the Cessna 152 to have basic autopilot (this is simple to do in it’s config file), you can not use it in the official tutorial. I’m not sure if FS Academy VFR Missions will allow you to use it there either. I’m not even sure what airplane they use in the tutorials.
But being able to press Ctrl-Z (I think) to have the autopilot level is enticing to say the least.
That autopilot trick is a bit cheating though. And trimming is perfectly doable in fs. It’s different and somewhat harder then in real life. But it’s just something to get used to. And again, also in real life an airplane wil not stay level forever after you trim it. So don’t expect the trim to work like that in flight sims.
Also, some aircraft are alot more sensitive on the trim like the dr400. Cessna seem to be fine though
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First flight school lesson: increase or decrease altitude with power, increase or decrease speed with elevator stick, and use elevator trim to stabilize.
But every action has a secondary effect; i.e.: if you decrease power the nose goes down and the speed increase also trim up.
All that in a wind calm situation (expecially with light GA planes).
The secondary effect are also when you turn with ailerons that require a little bit rudder to do a coordinated turn: use the small turn coordinator (the little ball in the middle of basic instruments),
Trimming in a real plane can be just as hard.
Especially in windy conditions down range from mountains.
The atmosphere is like an ocean with constant waves. Up and down drafts are constant.
Sunny days are also very turbulent even with no wind. Due to uneven heating of the ground causing thermals.
Trying to keep an exact IFR altitude within 100’ +/ - is really hard especially while tuning radios etc. it why a lot of pilots fail the IFR check ride. It takes a really good scan technique.
For small fine tuning in a GA plane you are continually using the trim wheel. But in the sim it is easier to use the throttle for fine tuning I find. Either way is OK.
For the 152 the approach I was taught is to set 2300 RPM then put the horizon about 1/3 of the way up the windshield, so you see 1/3 ground and 2/3 sky. Then slowly adjust trim until you need little to no elevator input to keep it there.
“…PAT- APT for climbing or descending…” a… just a small note - I believe APT for climbing and PAT for descending is a bit more correct:) If there is a need to climb from cruise flight (I mean we are flying faster then Vx or Vy before we begin our climb, from straight-and-level flight to a climb) we: A (Attitude) raise the nose to the required degrees pitch-up on the attitude indicator (or whatever we use as AI), P (Power) add full throttle, and T (Trim) trim the airplane to maintain this attitude. Why do we raise the nose first and only after this add full power? Do we remember what happens with our plane when we add full power for take-off? She starts to drift left or right - depending on to which side our propeller rotates. (P-factor and some others) If we add full power first and immediately start to climb we have not only to back pressure our control but to use ailerons and pedals at the same time to compensate for drifting on course and this is not easy for a beginner. So, to not work hard on all the controls we change our attitude to climb attitude, when stable on attitude (this is fast if you know already your desired attitude for Vx or Vy from experience) we add full power (and at this moment we compensate drifting on course by rudder or ailerons and this goes easier as we are on a more or less constant airspeed here). And when we settle on Vx or Vy or another desired speed we trim. Why do we trim? To remove physical forces from our hands. The trick here is to do this in a proper temp, not going past Vx or Vy or a stall speed, and to be careful with Vma - do not make abrupt movements on controls if you are faster Vma (and this is the second reason not to add power first before the climb, the third reason is that we do not need to pull more Gs on our body and our passengers).
So, we can simplify or job when we change regimes - instead of fighting with imbalanced combined forces, we work with them separately. One more example - we are descending on a glide slope. We add power not to be “red over red” and at this moment our plane is not only raising her nose but drifts as well. Beginners at this moment rush on rudder or aileron to compensate for this drift and this affects their attitude as well and they try to compensate all this again and again:))). And as soon as they are “white over red” they reduce RPM and plane drifts again:))) How to avoid it? Fight your enemies separately. If when you change your RPM your plane drifts a bit (1 or 2 degrees) - let her drift, compensate for this when you are back on your initial or other “final” RPM.
Incorrect, on most Cessna’s, 152,172,182 etc, they have a tab on the rudder, but not the ailerons, the ailerons or wings are levelled by adjusting the aft wing spar bolt that is set through an offset cam, by rotating the cam then tightening the bolt we adjust the angle of attack on the wing until we get it to to a point where it stalls and flys level, that is the only adjustment you have. Bar the 152, the others can feed fuel from individual wing fuel tanks that can also throw it out.
Rigging the rudder you have to be careful when you set it because the secondary effect of yaw is roll, this is where the rudder tab is out, it pushes the tail left or right yawing, the secondary effect is one wing advances against the other so it increases lift on that side and the aircraft then rolls.
Hope that helps.
Agreed.
Although I am a fan of a slow, smooth application of power as the nose is pitched up when entering a climb from cruise. Too often, I find students tend to be over anxious to firewall the throttle after pitching up. ie: Attitude/power becomes a simultaneous action. Tends to reduce those g forces further.
Just a personal thing. Every instructor is different and we all right.
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Thanks guys! I started a flight in midflight on the world map a few times and trimmed successfully every time. Without your explanations, I could never had learned how to do this. The texts I had found previously were not in enough detail and the videos glossed over things too fast. Thanks for giving me my confidence back.
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One thing I learned 30 years ago from my Sublogic Flight Simulator 2.0 manual is not to chase the VSI needle. The VSI isn’t a primary instrument and it lags the actual vertical speed, so if you chase it trying to adjust the trim until it reads zero you just keep oscillating up and down. Set the trim approximately correctly, then move it one increment at a time. Then wait. Then another increment, then wait. Let it catch up between adjustments. Eventually you’ll get the VSI almost to zero.
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Hi there,
The FS Academy lessons are designed to be manually flown, but do not prohibit the use of automation.
It may be disabled by MSFS when in a tutorial, but this isn’t our doing.
Happy landings!
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