The airbrake spoilers of the Fly by Wire Airbus retract when I need them most - a technical question

[GamingCat2130]

Hi aviation fans,

tonight I have excessive tested flown the pure greatness of the new Fly by Wire Airbus.
The development version of the Fly by Wire Airbus has many bugs fixed (except some flickering of various announcements on the primary flight panel like TO-GA or AP or stuff like that).

But I still have severe problems when landing it - and now I know why!
The spoilers suddenly retract and the aircraft is gaining tremendous speed fast (sometimes up to 200 or 250 knots with flaps fully out) and that´s why I almost overshoot the runway every single time.

Is this a bug that the Airbus suddenly retracts the spoilers on it´s own when I am approaching the runway?
The spoilers come out again after touching down.

Here is a typical landing:

The spoilers are set to fully out, and the flaps are set to fully out.
This is the way how I always land the F-16 too otherwise it would get too fast when going down base and final approach.
Only with airbrakes out the machine is not gaining speed when losing altitude fast. Everything is going smooth and perfect.

The flaps go out, everything is allright, the speed is kept fully stable on 140 or 150 knots or so:

But suddenly while descending in the base and finals the Airbus is retracting the flaps on it´s own which causes him to gain speed very fast even with engines idling.
The finals - and the airspeed is going up insanely fast because the spoilers are suddenly in:

The plane cannot land because it is so fast and no airbrakes are available and it overshoots the runway with no way to slow down or land:

The landing worked after the second try, but only by doing some stupid cheat-like trick: Pausing the sim, letting the Airbus sit there hoovering in the air paused with engines at idle at the beginning of the runway and wait till the speed finally gets down to 130 knots - to be finally able to flare and land smoothly.

My questions are:
How do I brake this beast in the air, and why does it retract the spoilers on it´s own when I need them most during the finals and at the beginning of the runway?

Thanks in advance for landing tips, and sorry I don´t have any handbook for this plane I fly it like … hm… like I feel it needs to be flown intuitive…

[CasualClick]

Moved to #third-party-addon-discussion:aircraft

[Aeluwas]

Sounds like you’re coming in way too steep? Have you tried flying an ILS approach, so that you know you’re descending at the correct angle, and ensuring you have some flaps out before you capture the glideslope (at something like 2500 feet or so, rarely more than 3000 AGL)?

You should never have the speedbrake active late in an approach. Gear down and flaps full should be more than enough; the engine should not be idle, either, because the gear and flaps add enough drag that you’d get dangerously slow.

[GamingCat2130]

Because I always fly all my planes fully by hand and good trimming and navigate always by VFR-map (plus tab-switching to Google maps to look for a specific airport or real points of interest) and never pre-program the FMC and let the autopilot to do a route automatic on it´s own, I don´t know yet how to make an ILS approach.

I have landed all my FSX planes with the help VASI-lights only (I think these are called PAPI lights now) - how does the old VASI saying goes… red over red and you are dead, red over white and you are right
Hm but this “Sunyani” airport had no lights at all, no landing strip illumination at night… needed to switch time back to early evening because without night vision goggles landing would have been impossible.
But I was curious how Africa looks like with the Bing satellite data that´s why I tested this continent tonight.

Flying the DCS for months had me trained to do very steep descends with airbrakes on and sharp overbanking turns, airliners are flown more smoothly. Need to getting used to this a little bit more.

But thanks for the tip, I will now study a few YouTube videos on now how to do an ILS approach on a specific runway.
I hope ILS is possible without programming the FMC because I don´t know yet how to do this and I heard the Fly by Wire Airbus doesn´t have a functioning FMC yet.

Have a nice evening and thanks for the tips!

[Aeluwas]

The FMC on the FBW works well enough with what it supports (VNAV isn’t really implemented). I just did a full flight with it, including ILS.

The easiest way would be to fly the stock A320, enter a destination on the world map, and select an ILS approach right there.

Then when you’re close to the airport (closing in on the straight segment leading to the runway), hit “LS” and if you see the purple diamonds on the PFD, hit “APPR”. The vertical diamond should be above your current altitude for the plane to capture the glideslope. Try to be at something like 2500-3000 ft above the ground (or check the actual charts if you want to!).
Also make sure to set the speed to VAPP (“PERF” page in the FMC) if the plane doesn’t take care of that; not sure if either the stock or FBW handles that in managed mode or not.

Another way to try this (without ILS, without flight plan even) is to use the TRK/FPA button which should work on the A32NX. I haven’t tried it myself there, but you should be able to set up a angle of -3.0 degrees and get a feel for the angle use on most approaches.

Edit: Another way is to set up for the ILS, but fly it manually. Altitude-wise your goal then is to keep the vertical diamond at the center. Once you have it centered, keeping it there shouldn’t be a problem without speedbrake, if you’re at roughly the correct speed (usually something like 125-145 knots).

[GamingCat2130]

Thanks for the tips!
Tonight I tried the FMC and ILS in the Airbus for the first time, but failed even if it looked rather easy in the tutorial videos.
When having enjoyed the Fly by Wire Airbus for the first time there is no going back to the simpleton stock Airbus. Never
More study and more flight practice is necessary, and maybe a little simulator help in form of switching on these glide slop visuals to have better guidance to the runway even when the runway itself is not yet visible.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 20 - Fly by Wire Airbus Development Version showcase Düsseldorf Lufthansa

Tomorrow will be an intense day full of IFR flight training to finally master airliners for the glorious oncoming study-level DLC planes, and tomorrow everything will be done correct and by the handbook.

[sidnov]

@GamingCat2130 We might have made just the right thing for this task, feel free to have a look. It’s not too comprehensive, but should definitely give you a good start operating the A32NX. Happy flying!

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[DaveR44]

@GamingCat2130 – it’s possible you’re triggering a go-around somehow, which (I think) would make the spoilers retract immediately.

General tip, though – don’t fly the A320 like a fighter. Steep descents are fine; steep approaches definitely are not. Keep in mind that with the A320, the plane really just wants to fly itself, which it can do very well if you let it. If you don’t set it up correctly, it will fight you at every turn if you actually try to take over. It took me a while to get used to that. Also, when you actually do take over, remember that you don’t have the sort of TWR to always get yourself out of trouble and back onto the glideslope, like you would in a military jet. The engines don’t respond as quickly as a fighter’s, so keep a close eye on your rate of descent and try to stay a step ahead of the game.

Stick with it! Once you get the hang of how to fly this thing (and you will, trust me), it’s extremely rewarding.

[F0RML3SS7996]

Am I correct in reading that you are extending the flaps to full and the speedbrakes while on approach, as if the A320 flies like an F-15?

If so, then the beginners guide that was linked above should be the first place you start. So you learn the correct wat to operate the A320.

[NeoKingRthur]

I agree with most of the commenters here. Airbus has a specific learning curve that uses a different philosophy than other aircraft. If you’re coming from a military jet aircraft like F-16 which you are used to it. Then you need to rethink the approach a bit when it comes to Airbus.

F-16 is a single pilot light aircraft that’s nimble with great response and manoeuvrability. Airbus A320 is a boring civilian aircraft designed to carry up to 200 people with their luggage. It’s not about speed, and manoeuvrability. It’s about slow, steady, and stable flying.

I’m okay with you landing manually. But your definition of “manual” maybe different from what the Airbus calls itself “manual”. There’s a bit of a learning curve to understand how Airbus works, and you definitely can’t fly the Airbus the same way you fly the F-16.

I was about to comment on the specific areas that you need to improve on based on your video, but I find it to be too many of them to mention. Instead on top of the other links that other users have posted. You can take a look at 320SimPilot channel on YouTube or even my own channel. Once you learn how to handle the A320, you’ll be landing smoothly and comfortably even on manual landing.

[Voyager4871]

Spoilers (speed brakes) should be properly armed on approach, together with the airplane being in the proper configuration calculated using the EFB and based on OAT, tailwind, CG, weight/loadsheet (should be in the flight plan anyway).
Flap configurations are also determined for Vref, Vapp by using the proper calculations.
Finally, auto-brake level should be set accordingly (braking system similar to ABS on a car), also calculated with the runway surface conditions taken into the equation (rain, snow, drizzle, etc.).

On touchdown, upon reaching certain Lb per square inch of load pressure, the sensors supporting the main landing gear send the activation signal to the central Airbus computer which deploys the previously armed spoilers as well as activating the wheel auto-breaking system with the intensity that you predefined during the approach procedure based off on approach calculations.

Since you still just play with the A320, you do not know how to properly fly it according to the terminal arrival and approach charts, be it manually or using the autopilot - so you are overspeeding the aircraft, approaching the active runway in an unstable configuration causing the onboard systems to engage the emergency go-around procedure (which includes the retraction of spoilers).

I am expecting that the further implementations one day will take this beautiful new sim even further, with features such as Navblue Charts as well as, for example, the Navblue ROPS+ crew awareness datalink that offers a whole new level of insight into the approach and landing conditions - part of the Navblue package you can read more about here:

—> ROPS+ - NAVBLUE an AIRBUS company

Flying airliners such as Airbus or Boeing is quite exciting, there are a lot of high quality resources on YouTube, so you might want to learn how to operate and fly the A320.
You can start with the basics as fellow simmers wrote before me. The VFR and instrument flight rules training lessons in Cessna 172, then quickly onto MEP/IFR since you are already introduced to the simulator.
It shouldn’t take long before you grasp the basics of navigation, flight procedures and systems on A320 in the sim and make it the real deal flight simming.

Take care and cya in the virtual skies !

[GamingCat2130]

Hi and thank you very much for the answers!

So it´s an automated go-around safety system, well in this case this plane is impossible to land more steep and fast like the Boeings can.

And the first test when using the Airbus FMC for the first time when being used to fly Boeings for decades is finding the Enter button (exec) on the Airbus FMC to verify and activate an input

I failed to do so yesternight, one is not even thinking about such a problem while watching tutorial videos before being confronted with it inside the cockpit…

[SierraHotel2873]

A320 SIM Pilot has very nice YouTubes. He is indeed a real life A320 Pilot. Helped me a while back into the FBW (when they didn’t have the beginner tutorial yet).