OK, flew this for about 3 hours, testing the aircraft against the videos with the limitations of the MSFS TP and flight models. Pretty good all things considered.
FOR TRIM, you are 100% correct, unless it’s in a very small window, about 160-170KT it is quite difficult to trim. I flew it without thinking and didn’t realize my hand pretty much rests with the thumb on the trim and my index finger on the throttle and I constantly adjust to keep it ~100 +/-. It’s best spot for holding trim is around that 160-170 kt. It will still creep out of the phugoid effect at some point, and that’s in 4KT winds at ~6000’, which would be an unrealistically ideal weather situation. In real winds it’s really not ever going to hold trim, pretty much nothing will.
But in a near vacuum state of weather, it will waiver +/- even as close as +/- 50’ for a few moments and sure enough it WILL find a way to wander beyond 400fpm +/-, which I always corrected at that point so not sure if it would ever fly into a stall or nose dive if left alone. This is with or without YD. You are not going to be remotely hands off at 190+KT. And I have trim set with a very large curve so a quarter turn is only about 4% of trim, so we’re talking extreme small movements of trim and it will still ‘fall’ out of it into a climb/decent.
I do find throughout MSFS when you reach the top cruise design speed of ANY aircraft, all of a sudden trimming becomes extremely difficult. Kind of when the ‘wind noise-you’re going fast sound’ kicks in. Even something humble like the 152 does it.
Without thinking about it, I do hit a click or two of rudder and aileron trim when holding it level manually, along with the elevator and prop, so it takes a lot of babysitting. Other fast aircraft are like this but most DO find a state of equilibrium chasing the set trimmed speed. I don’t know if this type of aircraft will ever be hands off trimmed(even if phugoid was modeled perfectly), but it definitely does not have a natural balance that a simple aircraft clearly has, like a Savage Cub, which will turn into a paper airplane with a throttle/trim miss-match.
I’m not sure if that is part of modeling this aircraft at it’s real heft plus the wing/flap features and cheating the limited TP model. Hard to say. Any maneuvers when hand flying I’ll usually do those, but it was really hard to not just engage a simple AP profile, such as basic heading and ALT or just LVL. In the videos the plane is usually put into AP in almost every instance as well. I’m OK with it regardless as I won’t just change trim endlessly as you do when you have no AP in a simple aircraft like a WACO or Archer II or Savage Cub(which are all pleasant to do so). I don’t think I’d really ‘hand fly’ the TBM for any level cruise scenario. The Kodiak is after all a $3M 700+hp flying Suburban.
On approach, I find a setting of ~ 22-27% positive trim(depending on desired decent rate) seems to emulate what the aircraft IRL does with varous flap settings. It will be VERY throttle sensitive to hold the approach angle, but with the slight delay of TP, so you have to be patient and careful, very similar to flying slow with a heli, if you chase what you see immediately you will always be behind, so it needs to settle in. I’ll be ■■■■■■ if I didn’t land at Barth 10 last night without thinking about it and crossed the road at 74KT and stopped 50’ past the taxiway 8 out of 8 times no matter where I started decent from(can’t imagine how many times I’ve flown that approach, thousands?). But yes, hand flying 15+ miles level kind of sucks…
It has a very heavy feel to it. I’ve extensively flown the Black Square Caravan, and agree with