Uncontrolable Aircraft

[EHM-1570 Bruce]

I am opening this item rather than try to respond to various queries on the same subject. I was reading through the forums and I noticed that quite a few people are having problems with the aircraft they are flying, the aircraft go into a nose up attitude and go out of control, I have had the same problems but I have overcome them. What I have found is that all the aircraft that have this problem, the CofG is too far forward, which will make the aircraft tail heavy, if you open up the Fuel Planner it shows where the CofG is and if it is well forward of centre you will more than likely have the control problem. What I have done to overcome this problem is, set up your aircraft as normal, take off and climb to a few thousand feet, if the autopilot is on turn it off and level out the aircraft, then take your hands off the joystick/yoke and trim the aircraft for level or a slight nose up attitude, this can be seen easily if you go to the spotter plane view, then re-engage the autopilot and the aircraft will fly like a baby. This has worked every time for me, hope it works for you.

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Well, I am not sure. Autopilot does not do anything else, than continuously adjust the trims, and then the control surfaces. So if you set up a trim, and reengage autopilot, it will modify your settings as it wants. You can check this process out, if you check your trim gauge/knob, when disengage/reengage autopilot...your trim knobs will surely move. That is what autopilot is for.

I think, what really helped you, is that, when you level a plane, your speed will be increased. With an increased speed you can more easily continue your climbing. At many planes, you need to start climb slowly, and continuosly increase the speed as well. If you saw your speed was decreasing you must decrease your climb of rate, until speed is normalizing. If the speed was continue dropping, you must level the plane.

But I am interested which planes of the EHM fleet is "so hard to fly" ?

[EHM-1500 Jim]

Robert, i'm currently flying the Piper Cherokee for the Autumn in the Alps Tour and it has a bit of a trim issue!! When you first load it up, the FS9 payload planner says it is overweight, when you check the payload it has quite alot of weight which i assume is simulated passengers?? Because i am simulating flying alone i remove all but the pilot weight and then set the fuel load accordingly. When you take off (with 1 notch of flaps) the plane goes into a horrible nose up pitch and stalls......now i set the pitch to almost full down before taking off and that makes it a bit more manageable....maybe i should leave the payload as it is but then i gues it will be overweight and slow??? Any thoughts? Cheers, Jim

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Hi Jim, I had the same problem with the Piper Arrow. Although it does not have anything with the payload. This aircraft have too much pitch effect on the wings, when got airborn. In FS2002 it flies much more fine, although with the same unrealistic negative trim : you must push the nose down to level the plane. So that is it, the plane was designed for FS2002 and dynamics are quite bad in FS2004.

[EHM-1500 Jim]

Cheers Robert, any plans on updating the fleet Piper to a FS2004 compatible model??

[EHM-1001 Robert]

I realized that many aircrafts have different reactions in FS2002 and FS2004 according to the AIR file, that contains main flight dynamics of the aircraft.

If you feel an aircraft flies different in the other game, you need to find a proper AIR file for that, and that must solve the problem. We have plans on updating continuously all the aircrafts. At the moment I do not know any better Piper, but I will try to search one.

[EHM-1570 Bruce]

Hi Roberto
  There is an Arrow for FS9 on AVSIM

Bruce