Big Jump in Cargo Weights

[Quickmarch 488]

Hi all you AH'ers,

 

QuikAire has been plugging along with DC3's and a BT67 with a few Beavers and a C206 thrown in for the small jobs. 

 

AH has been offering cargos in the range of aircraft capacity with the occasional overweight (for AI pilots) load that I get to fly myself by adjusting fuel on board. Sort of in the sub 8000 lb range.

 

Yesterday, I decided to take the plunge and lease a C-130 for my chief pilot and aluminum bender, Lauren. Cargo capacity on this baby is acceptable - 32740lb with full fuel. I was a bit mortified this morning when I loaded AH to find that most of the cargo offerings were way up in the 70K to 90K range - 2 to 3 times the full fuel cargo capacity.

 

So - I learned something valuable: Cargo offerings are based on MTOW, not on capacity. The C-130 has a whopping 174,000 MTOW, but carries a whack of Jet-A. If I fly it myself, the zero fuel capacity is 75,600. This means I should be able to carry sub-50K loads reasonable distances. However, the AI pilots will be making many multiple trips which is a bit of a management nightmare - planes all over the landscape. I sure hate to leave Lauren out there for an overnighter because she can run up some serious hotel/bar/restaurant bills in a short time.

[brett 2,284]

Haha, love those overnighters.  I only fly the Beaver and all my job postings are usually 85% within weight.

[UKJim 502]

I'm sure there is a slider in the settings for percent of the capacity of the plane and as I only want one trip cargo I set this low.

Not on the pc at the moment so probably talking out my backside but take a look

[Bobby 0]

_{Hi John,}

 

_{Yeah....you gotta watch Lauren....I've seen her expense ticket .... LOL}

 

_{When I lost my Company because I wasn't watching the IT guy back at the office; I started over again with a new Company running up and down the Cali coast. I started with DC-3's since that was all I could afford and as my rep went up, took out a loan for a DC-6B for the boss. You're right....all my customers must have thought I bought a Russian AN124 because the load orders were HUGE}  

_{So now I sweat every morning when I open up the ramp office and see who fell asleep and made a real crappy landing overnight. And I'm running flights with about 30 seconds of reserve fuel. I cut one so close I actually ran out of gas at 15,000 feet. Thought I was going to drop it right on the deck but thankfully I was over range control and got a tanker out of Vandenburg AFB to run me up some gas while I was gliding. ( I know changing the realism setting to unlimited fuel while gliding to the deck in an over weight airplane gives new meaning to the phrase "oh fudge" but it worked   )}

 

[Gunner 69]

That happens when you buy/ lease a new plane (cargo cap wise). AH will give you some crazy jobs at first, which even delivered by you would take 2 trips (usually it helps to get back the lease money fast). In a few days should drop back at "normal" values.

[allardjd 1,853]

You've got to love the C-130 though - sim or RW, they hit the ball out of the park with that one.  Great plane.

 

John

[Quickmarch 488]

I'm sure there is a slider in the settings for percent of the capacity of the plane and as I only want one trip cargo I set this low.

Not on the pc at the moment so probably talking out my backside but take a look

 

Found that, thanks Jim.

 

It was way up near the end of the scale. I moved it down a couple notches. Let's see what happens.

[Quickmarch 488]

You've got to love the C-130 though - sim or RW, they hit the ball out of the park with that one.  Great plane.

 

John

 

It is a great airplane. Sort of like flying a C172 (electronics-wise) crossed with a 737 (handling). It is a pussycat on the approach and I really like the way it stops when you slap those four engines into beta range.

 

I don't know if it's just my setup, but all aircraft need the trim adjusted in the .cfg file. Most need to be set around 0.7, but the C-130 I have set at 0.3 and I'm still chasing the trim (I use one of the top button sets on the joystick).

[allardjd 1,853]

I've got the Saitek Cessna trim wheel and it makes all the difference. It's about ten full turns stop to stop with about a 4" Cessna-type knobbed wheel.  You can make very fine adjustments with it.

 

John

[Quickmarch 488]

You guys with a room full of room got it made. I've got six square inches of space in the nav station for a joystick and that's it. One of these days when I swallow the anchor, I'll be able to enjoy such things as TrackIR, rudder pedals, throttle quadrants and trim wheels.

 

I'm envious as heck!

 

PS just finished typing this to the sound of the 8am Saltspring Beaver idling up to the dock.

[brett 2,284]

I have found that the trim alone is not enough to flatten things out. Adjusting throttle and props is the best way to fine tune trim unless I am doing it wrong. Even then winds and thermal lift will throw it back out of whack again.

[Quickmarch 488]

@ Brett - Kind of a RW thing. All inputs; attitude, throttle, props, fuel load, etc have an impact on the aircraft trim. However, once trimmed out, any aircraft will fly pretty much straight and level (wx effects aside) for long distances without any serious intervention from the pilot. Trimming in its simplest form is as JA describes his trim wheel. They usually have many turns from full forward to full aft trim. You usually deal with a very narrow range in the center (provided you haven't got your 300lb mother in law in the baggage compartment). Using the prop settings for trim is not usually done. Manifold pressure and RPM are manipulated with throttle and prop controls to arrive at a recommended engine configuration for each flight regime - climb, cruise, descent, etc. Trim is used to correct the minor differences after you achieve the proper setup. 

 

Where I'm having a lot of troubles with FSX is the amount of trim that results from a tap on the trim buttons. I've got a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick. This stick has two sets of thumb-buttons either side of the centrally mounted hat switch. I use the set on the right for prop settings and the set on the left for trim. Most aircraft have the trim value set to 1.0 in the .cfg file. In some aircraft, specifically the DC3 and the C-130, a microsecond tap on the trim results in an excursion way outside the RW norm. When I get an aircraft like this, I edit the .cfg file to 0.5 for starters and see how it goes while flying. I had to set the C-130 down to 0.3 to tame it. The DC3's are set to 0.5. My 182RG needs 0.8 to give me a reasonable feel.

 

The normal sequence, say on takeoff, is: Gear, Throttle, Prop, Flaps - Trim for climb speed (different aircraft require a mix of this sequence, but most piston engined aircraft want you out of max power condition - called MTO as soon as possible). When you top out of the climb and configure for cruise, the sequence is Throttle, Prop, Trim for altitude hold. Often there is little trim required as the act of reducing power for cruise drops the nose. I may be oversimplifying things because in reality a lot of these things happen almost simultaneously. Especially the prop/throttle relationship which can be done with one hand on singles and most light twins.

 

Flight simulators without the full range of controls such as John A has at his disposal are a poor representation of a fairly intuitive control system.

[brett 2,284]

Didn't mean to give you pointers on flying but just making an observation. Thanks for the lesson.   I haven't flown the C-130 in a bit, bought it a few years ago, but decided to look into my cfg and found this:

 

elevator_trim_effectiveness=0.4  //0.5, 0.7, 1.0 Changed trim to touchy

 

Obviously you weren't the only one having this problem. I guess I settled on 0.4 and then went on to other planes.   

[allardjd 1,853]

I think that the default powered trim setting is too fast for most AC, but am not sure tweaking elevator trim effectiveness is the best way to go at it. Has anyone tried adjusting the repeat rate slider for elevator trim in FSX Controls for Keys/Buttons? I think that's exactly the kind of situation it's there for.

John

[Quickmarch 488]

Thanks for the tip, JA,

 

I'll give that a try as well.

 

However, trim effectiveness seems to be airplane-specific. The default C172 is fine, as is the Grumman Goose and a bunch of others. Every once in a while I get a plane that is individual in it's reactions to the trim wheel (button), thus the correction to the .cfg file.

 

I have not yet found a way to use the FSX control configurator for individual aircraft. It seems to want to use the same settings for all aircraft, overwriting its internal configuration every time I make a change.

 

@Brett - Sorry, I wasn't lecturing. I was reacting to your comment: "Adjusting throttle and props is the best way to fine tune trim unless I am doing it wrong"

[Quickmarch 488]

I'm sure there is a slider in the settings for percent of the capacity of the plane and as I only want one trip cargo I set this low.

Not on the pc at the moment so probably talking out my backside but take a look

 

Going back to UKJim's original comment - I checked this out, as mentioned above, and the recent offerings have been much more in line with the capacity of the C-130. In fact, I might want to bump things up one notch.

 

That is, except for one that thought I might bite on a 17000 lb load into a water runway (see below). That's a whole lot of "Beavering" unless I can find a float kit for the C-130. 

 

[allardjd 1,853]

I have not yet found a way to use the FSX control configurator for individual aircraft.

 

 

That's available with the registered (paid) version of FSUIPC.

 

John

[Quickmarch 488]

I've got the paid version of FSUIPC, John, (I just haven't gotten into the guts of it yet).

 

It's the FSX (Default) configurator I haven't been able to convince to keep multiple files for different aircraft. Somehow, it seems that I always get the "last" configuration despite the fact that I save it under a different name.

 

I can't check it right now because it's in the midst of a backup, but later I'll research the various control configuration files and see if I can give you a bit more info. I do know that I tried saving a float plane configuration where one of the joystick buttons dropped/lifted the water rudders versus another configuration where the same button was used to lock/unlock the tailwheel.

 

Other configs that I need to sort out are: Prop=coarse/fine versus Condition Levers=Run/Ground idle/Beta

 

All this and I'm less than a week away from taking the great silver bird to Paris where my sim flights will come to a grinding halt unless I can use the Gamepad gadget - another thread with a great set of hints from Mistwalker. i know what I'm going to be doing in mid-Atlantic.