Question for Jomni, PanzersEast or other Flight Simmers

[PanzersEast]

What are the best ground textures for X-Plane?  I mean the current ones are not terrible, but just wondering.  The Mesh from alpilotX is excellent. 

Here is my current setup....have not purchased any payware.. yet.

MESH
X-Plane 10 UHD Mesh
X-Plane 10 HD Mesh
Spain UHD Scenery

TEXTURES
Enhanced Runways HD
SKIDS HD Enhancement
TAXI - HD Enhancement Pack
Replacement Road Textures
Europe Library
OpenSceneryX
Realistic Powerlines

MISC
FlywithLua
Real Terra Haze
X-Camera
Vehicle Library Extension
Vehicle Library Extension
HeadShake


PE

[jomni]

I didn't replace any ground textures.

[Jarhead0331]

Well, my CH pedals arrived today. I didn't get to play too much before I had to shutdown for the night. It's going to take some time to get used to, but wow! I'm shocked. It's a totally different flight experience. Its really hard to believe how different flight control is with pedals as compared to the RZ twist axis on a stick. I feel like I will inherently have more control over the aircraft...it's really amazing that I had been missing out on this for decades!

[jomni]

 O0 O0
Twisting interferes with your other control axis.

[Toonces]

Jarhead, you amuse me.

Wait until you try the helos in ARMA, or biplanes in WoFF now!

[DoctorQuest]

Well, my CH pedals arrived today. I didn't get to play too much before I had to shutdown for the night. It's going to take some time to get used to, but wow! I'm shocked. It's a totally different flight experience. Its really hard to believe how different flight control is with pedals as compared to the RZ twist axis on a stick. I feel like I will inherently have more control over the aircraft...it's really amazing that I had been missing out on this for decades!

Welcome to a new reality.  You are truly one of us now.  O0

[Jarhead0331]

I'm still really digging flight with pedals, but I am really fighting the urge to twist the cyclic anytime I need to yaw the aircraft. It's going to take awhile to break this habit that I've developed from decades of play.

I don't think I'm going to last long with the CH pedals. They work great, but I'm pretty uncomfortable with them. My size 14 feet simply do not fit on the enclosed pads. I'm thinking I will upgrade as soon as the VKB mk IV comes out. That has no enclosed plate for the pedal.

Anyway, I have two really stupid questions. First, how is the pedal supposed to be set up. Right now, when I push the the left pedal forward, the nose of the aircraft yaws to the left and vis versa. This almost feels like it should be the other way around. What is the actual way it works in real aircraft?

Stupid question number two has to do with trim. WTF is it really and how important is it to controlled flight. I never use it. I never even set up controls for it. When you use it, how do you set up your controls for it?

Embarrassingly yours,

Jarhead

[jomni]

Step on left, yaw (nose) to left. It may sound strange but that's how it works.
Think of it as stepping on where you want to put your weight and where the plane must go.

[Tuna]

Making me want rudder pedals now too!.. Although, since I installed my new Motherboard, I have not gotten totally back into FSX yet.. so much pain reinstalling!.. Might be better to quit cold turkey save a LOT of money! 

[Skoop]

I'm still really digging flight with pedals, but I am really fighting the urge to twist the cyclic anytime I need to yaw the aircraft. It's going to take awhile to break this habit that I've developed from decades of play.

I don't think I'm going to last long with the CH pedals. They work great, but I'm pretty uncomfortable with them. My size 14 feet simply do not fit on the enclosed pads. I'm thinking I will upgrade as soon as the VKB mk IV comes out. That has no enclosed plate for the pedal.

Anyway, I have two really stupid questions. First, how is the pedal supposed to be set up. Right now, when I push the the left pedal forward, the nose of the aircraft yaws to the left and vis versa. This almost feels like it should be the other way around. What is the actual way it works in real aircraft?

Stupid question number two has to do with trim. WTF is it really and how important is it to controlled flight. I never use it. I never even set up controls for it. When you use it, how do you set up your controls for it?

Embarrassingly yours,

Jarhead

Are talking trim in general or just rudder trim ?  Trim is pretty important in high fidelity Sims, with Dcs modern aircraft the controls have dampeners and auto assists,  but in WWII AC you'll feel it if you not trimmed properly.  There's a ton of useful stuff for trim, like if a prop plane pulls hard to the left on taxi, you can trim the rudder to counter, then retrim for take of.  Plus it's great for long flights, you can set your trim and never touch you stick until you turn.

[Toonces]

Trim is about the first thing you learn when you're in flight school, and it's critically important to fly an airplane.

On your control surfaces you'll have "trim tabs" which act like little miniature elevators on your control surfaces.  What they do is put pressure on the control surface to deflect it, similar to how moving an actual control surface- rudder, elevator, ailerons- deflects the airplane's direction.

For example, you're in level, trimmed flight.  To go up, you pull back on the stick and this deflects the elevator which causes the nose to go up and the plane starts to climb.  If you let go of the stick, in a real plane (that doesn't have auto-trim like an F-16) the nose will go right back down as the elevator goes back to its previous position.  To keep the nose up, you have to keep the elevator deflected by holding the stick back.  In a real plane you have a lot of force feedback on the stick, and holding it at the precise position to keep the nose at a particular attitude is both tiring and difficult because you have to keep the exact amount of pressure. 

When you trim the plane, you deflect a trim tab to work like a mini-elevator on the actual elevator, and when the plane is "in trim" you can let the stick go and the nose will maintain its up attitude.

You can do this for all of your control surfaces.

In the P-3, our elevator trim control was the size of a car steering wheel by your knee.  When we were on approach, at about 200 feet we would set "land flaps."  They put out too much drag to use them earlier than that.  As soon as you called for land flaps you'd give the trim wheel three very full turns forward to trim the plane down, or as the flaps deployed the nose would be virtually uncontrollable due to the amount of lift pushing it up from the flaps.  Conversely, on a touch and go, while the plane was rolling down the runway, the co-pilot would call, "flaps, trim, go..." to set the flaps back to takeoff, and give three healthy pulls on the trim tab.  Otherwise you'd need to pull a good 20 to 25 pounds of force on the yoke to get the nose to come up.  Flying a plane that is out of trim is very hard, and in a P-3 it can be almost uncontrollable due to the huge control surfaces.  With two engines out on one side you needed about 50-60 pounds of pressure on the rudder to keep the  plane straight, and if you didn't trim that out you'd run out of strength pretty quickly.

In an F-16, like in BMS, the jet has auto-trim to maintain 1-G flight in all attitudes, so once you set the nose it will hold that attitude more or less.

Hope that helps.

[Toonces]

I set my trim up like this (CH fighterstick, throttle, pedals):

Ailerons: throttle thumb switch that looks like a sideways H, push up (left), down (right); Elevators: switch back (up), forward (down)
Rudders varies on the sim, because some are wonky with what they'll accept, but typically that pointy switch above the thumb switch, back (left), forward (right). 

[Yskonyn]

Great explanation about trim systems there, Toonces!

[Jarhead0331]

^Yeah! Thanks for the write-up Toonces. Very helpful, indeed!

[DoctorQuest]

I'm still really digging flight with pedals, but I am really fighting the urge to twist the cyclic anytime I need to yaw the aircraft. It's going to take awhile to break this habit that I've developed from decades of play.

I don't think I'm going to last long with the CH pedals. They work great, but I'm pretty uncomfortable with them. My size 14 feet simply do not fit on the enclosed pads. I'm thinking I will upgrade as soon as the VKB mk IV comes out. That has no enclosed plate for the pedal.

Anyway, I have two really stupid questions. First, how is the pedal supposed to be set up. Right now, when I push the the left pedal forward, the nose of the aircraft yaws to the left and vis versa. This almost feels like it should be the other way around. What is the actual way it works in real aircraft?

Stupid question number two has to do with trim. WTF is it really and how important is it to controlled flight. I never use it. I never even set up controls for it. When you use it, how do you set up your controls for it?

Embarrassingly yours,

Jarhead

For normal flight don't worry about putting your entire foot on the pedal. Leave your heels on the floor and place your toes on the bottom of the pedals. This should be more comfortable and it will give you more precise control of the rudders. It takes a little getting used to but that has been my technique for years and I think it works well. I got that recommendation from both my ground school training vids and a pilot who took me up for a ride.