Hi everyone, I was looking for sensitivities to use for pitch and roll etc… I find that when I use a lighter plane like the a321 the inputs are more agressive then if I was using a heavier plane like a 747 I just wanted to know what your senses are to get some ideas on what to use.
I use the normal sensitivity (The one that is used when you first download the game) then I adjust the trim, flaps, take off speed according to the aircrafts weight. So you may not be using the correct amount of trim of flaps or rotating too early. So if you use a light plane with the same configuration as a heavy plane then the heavy plane would be much harder to fly.
Hello Ben,
I use the low sensitivity since I use IF on my phone, so I can’t be as exact as someone with an Ipad could (because an Ipad is larger). This is pure prefference though. I encourage you to experiment with your own sensitivity and what settings you like.
Greetings,
Mats
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Alright thanks for you guys help, and Ryan I had one more question for you, so maybe for a heavier plane I need more flaps more trim what’s your opinion on what the config should be for a more heavy plane and a more lighter plane?
Thanks!
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The configuration will depend on a little more than big plane or small plane. Look in Community Tutorials and there are good toutorials for most planes. A larger, and heavier aircraft is going to feel more sluggish on the controls. This will depend on the handling characteristics of each aircraft but in general a larger aircraft will have more inertia and take more time to react, but in turn will need less small inputs because small changes in wind and such don’t have as much of an effect.
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There’s a paradox here I can’t answer to myself. I agree that we experience what you’re saying, but I don’t completely understand why. When you scale an aircraft up in size and mass, that includes the control surfaces. So why do the control surfaces as they get bigger, not keep up with the scale up in angular inertia?
If you double the angular inertia but at the same time double the angular force (the torque), you would get the same angular acceleration (control response). That’s apparently not happening. I ran it by AI and it went off on something about flutter, but it seemed like a misdirection.
Something lags in the scale-up, but I don’t understand what or rather why.
I honestly think it probably isn’t that different, the control surfaces do roughly scale, and they have a longer moment, I think it probably isn’t very different for two aircraft of similar design generally but just different sizes. The difference would be more noticeable with the same aircraft loaded differently.
I wonder though if part of the effect, if present, is just because larger aircraft get less effected by winds/turbulence and therefore realistically need less control authority, especially quick corrections. Control surfaces are always going to be as small as possible so I wonder if that plays a part. I was also curious if perhaps larger aircraft have more built in stability but that doesn’t seem to be the case, for example the a380 has the exact same dihedral angle to the a320 apparently, and the 747 is only one degree more than the 737. Interestingly that actually seems to scale more with age than size, newer aircraft, and Airbus aircraft as well, seem to have lower dihedral angles which would make sense as they are more reliant on flyby wire and can have less stability. Though it is all split by just a couple degrees so this could all be a coincidence, I have no idea how much a degree or two really impacts the flying characteristics. But this has gotten me down a rabbit hole of how newer composite aircraft with significant wing flex are impacted by having a relatively variable dihedral angle, probably amplifies the effect of being more sluggish at heavier weights.
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I was thinking though about short final having to be at lot longer for the larger aircraft than a smaller one (allowing for any difference in speed). A 747 seems more challenging to stabilize in the tight space than a tbm for example, or even a 737? That lack of finesse is there that seems to go along with the difference in bulk, again kind of arguing against the control authority scale up being the same.
I need to think more about this and the other things you said.
The larger stall speed of the larger aircraft due to their mass requires them to have a higher speed. Although the angular acceleration is the same, you will have travelled a longer distance which causes you to feel like the aircraft is reacting less. This is what I would reckon though, not sure if this is the correct answer.
In a given aircraft, more lift for more mass (force of weight), requires more speed for a given AoA. But a larger aircraft has a larger wing geometry to create the difference in lift needed from the smaller aircraft, so the relationship you mentioned is not true (as a comparison between aircraft types).
The point is that the angular acceleration is not the same (you have less bank agility), and the feel you get is related to how fast and with what agility you can achieve a desired bank, pitch or roll angle.
If it is 20 degrees you need, it doesn’t matter that an a380’s wing tip will travel a much greater distance than a c172, because you only experience it as how readily you experience the rotation from 0 degrees to that 20 degree angle.
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Now I’m wondering about roll rates on larger aircraft being intentionally designed to be less responsive. For example, Airbus has roll rate laws that limit the maximum roll rates. Before fly by wire, perhaps this was also a stability and safety design criteria. If so, this could affect whether flight control surfaces are scaled proportionately (they would not have to be).
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Thanks all for your help!
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