I’m sure this has been discussed but I’m unable to find any recent threads on this forum.
As a frequent flyer of the PMDG 738/77W I’m often curious what my touchdown rate is. I think it would be cool if developers included this information with the product. Like an optional arcade style pop up that evaulates your landing in fpm, or something less in your face, that can be toggled by the user.
Since something like this does not exist to my knowledge, can anyone advise what are the best freeware and/or payware tools that provide an accurate landing rate on touchdown?
There seems to be a strange focus on landing rates these days. While they are a factor, most pilots prefer to keep the transition between flying and driving as short as possible and try to make a soft yet ‘positive’ landing. You want all your wheels in the tarmac and gripping.
If you have a very low vertical speed on landing, you run the risk of just part of the gear on the ground. That is dangerous, as you will have extra drag on one side of the aircraft, which can cause instability. Certainly, on a degraded runway, this is problematic, for the 737 Boeing considers a 120-180 fpm ideal. That’s your goal, not below and not above.
We have no plans to add something like that to aircraft that do not display that information to the crew.
Once I started practicing go arounds and performing more hand flying I noticed my landings began to improve. Perhaps I currently have a strange fixation on the landing rate, always learning.
I know you guys like to keep it real and authentic at PMDG and I don’t expect you to change that. (I’ll probably try a third party app such as Gees suggested above for additional landing info.) All I can say is keep up the great work.
One thing to keep in mind is that I don’t know if there is a generally accepted way to present the landing rate. I say this because my calculated landing rate from Volanta and the landing rate in NeoFly4 are never the same. They obviously use different algorithms to determine it. Maybe different filtering or averaging. Which one is “real”? No idea
Good point. I’ve heard that in the past from the streamers. (Perhaps its due to the sample rate or defining moment of touchdown, or other factors?) Out of curiousity, are the results within a similar margin or do you sometimes find large differences?
I’ve never done a specific study, but I would say I’ve seen maybe max 100fps difference, usually less. I don’t remember one always being better than the other.
I’ve been using Gees 2.0 and have been happy with it since. I have my doubts whether the landing rate is always spot on but it gives me an idea of where I’m at, pops up on landing and is very easy to use.
Additionally, Gees 2.0 offers other valuable features, such as bank/sideslip information, g-force metrics, a record of your last 100 landings, and an automatic recording function (which I haven’t explored yet).
