I’m aware that on a single-engine aircraft the torque of the engine pulls the plane to one side with increased throttle, but this effect is exaggerated on the ground even at idle and it’s very sudden on touchdown. There shouldn’t be a drastic change like that when the wheels touch the ground. Instead the effect should gradually increase as air speed decreases but it should still be mild at idle.
Unless there is a crosswind of course…
I haven’t experienced the issue when it was not due to crosswind myself. My own real aircraft pivots into the wind very quickly on touchdown requiring a lot of rudder very quickly to keep it on the runway.
Maybe you are seeing something else but going by the info provided, it seems pretty normal to me.
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There is a large thread with a lot of info on this, as well as some cures.
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Thanks for that thread, I did a quick read through it. It could be the exaggerated crosswind effect upon touchdown (exaggerated because you don’t feel it before the front wheel touches down, and it suddenly turns on when the front wheel lands). It’s another symptom of the fake physics in MSFS that still need tweaking if they can’t be made real.
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Not very realistic, but if you put the flaps up immediately on touchdown you will have much much better steering but then need excessive braking to get the craft slowed… but its a simulator so no money lost (on the brakes anyway)
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I tried several “cures” and nothing worked. SO, I uninstalled and reinstalled MS2020, for the third time, and surprise surprise my first flight (so far) landed and did not veer off the runway. I hope this will be the case from now on and will let you know. Thanks for the help.
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Assume a crosswind from the right. In real life, in most aircraft smaller than airliners, you should be crabbing into the crosswind to maintain the runway centerline on approach. That’s going to put your nose – and therefore the landing gear – angled to the right of the runway. If you touch down in this crabbed attitude, then the plane is going to maintain that angle and run off the runway to the right unless you quickly kick left rudder to steer it back down the runway centerline.
This is not the correct way to land anything but airliners.
You should be transitioning from a crab on final to a “slip” technique somewhere prior to touching down. This is crucial for anything other than a mild crosswind. Again assuming a crosswind from the right, the crab technique has the nose angled into the crosswind to counter the drift. In contrast, the slip technique counters the drift by lowering the right wing to turn into the wind, while using left rudder to keep the nose (and landing gear) aligned with the runway center line.
Note that a slip is technically an uncoordinated turn. You are using the rudder in opposition to the direction of the turn – opposite to the direction of the yoke or joystick.
This “slip” attitude at touchdown means you continue to fly the plane all the way down to taxi speed, the nose wheel and rudder should remain aligned with the runway centerline, and there should be no point during which the aircraft should veer off that path.
SOURCES OF PROBLEMS
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Since a slip is actually an uncoordinated turn, you must have rudder pedals or a way to separately and precisely control the rudder.
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Currently (update 1.12 Dec 22), the default planes all suffer from a lack of adverse yaw. That means the planes automatically – and incorrectly – coordinate turns. Unless you manually, and separately, control the rudder, this means that you’re going to touch down with the rudder and the nose wheel in the wrong position – and [Yoda voice] “veer you will.”
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If you have any AI landing assist such as Yoke Steering for taxi or Auto Rudder, you’ll have the same problem with any sizeable crosswind.
SOLUTION
For hard-core simmers, get rudder pedals, turn off all the assists, start with a small crosswind, lower the gusts as far as you can, learn the slip technique, and learn to transition from crab to slip on short final. Then practice, practice, practice.
For the less hard core simmers, I only see the following options:
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Hope that Asobo comes up with a clever way to automatically avoid the veer. It won’t be realistic to pilots, but it will increase the enjoyment of casual flyers. Hopefully, they will add this under Assists so that hard-core simmers and real pilots can turn it off.
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Turn off wind.
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Always choose runways that are aligned almost perfectly into the wind. This will greatly reduce the crosswind component to where landing in a slight crab will not cause excessive veer upon touchdown and rollout.
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Find a mod that alters the aircraft behavior so that it reduces or eliminates the veer.
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Use a tool like USIPC7 to allow programmatic control over the transition from rudder control to nose wheel steering based on speed and whether the aircraft has touched down or not.
Happy flying,
B
I’m curious about how to ‘turn off the wind?’ While I don’t fly any longer (age + heart) I do have 8,000+ logged in B-52s, 707s, 172, AA1, etc and find the ‘modern’ flight model just ‘off’.
My answer has been to modify the FM cfg file, especially the stability parameter.
JS
First of all, much respect for you history and service, especially since you probably didn’t get much in your B-52 days – I’m guessing 'Nam if you went on to fly 707s.
As to turning off the wind, choose Custom weather and select any preset you want. In the little cloud and wind layer window, select the wind layer. You can set 0 wind if you want, but you can also leave a wind but just turn off the gusts. The trick to turning off the gust is to move the sliders all the way to the left (50% is the minimum), then save the setup as a custom preset. If you reload it, it will have 0 gusts.
One other thing. The sim is extremely sensitive to gusts so make sure that you always align the gust direction to the same as the prevailing wind. That will eliminate some of weird, jumpy behavior.
B
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