Dirty Rotten Flieger

Oh thanks for the tip. i'LL look it up now

Hi I recently switched from a Spring Stick (extreme 3d pro) to a Force Feed Back stick ( MSFFB2) The difference is staggering, particularly with the WW2 birds. I really didn't used to enjoy the German planes because the amount of spring force of aileron to hold it straight was just enough to be annoying, unless I throttled right back to economical cruise which I would not be likely to do flying online. Now I have flown them with the FFB stick there is no "trim issue" at all. The Bf 109 and Fw 190 fly great and feel beautifully trimmed, balanced and delightful to fly at a large range of speeds and altitudes. I am starting to wonder why the difference is so great? I imagine the FFB stick moves the elevator surface and stick into the position of least resistance relative to the wind. This makes me wonder, does the spring stick zero position correlate to the elevator being inline with the stabilizer or inline with the wind? Because if the spring stick is zero when it is inline with the stabilizer then when I trim the stabilizer down the elevator will be pushed up into the wind and exaggerate the trimming of the stabilizer. Correct me if I am wrong. Anyway I suspect many of the people who are complaining of "trim issues" with the K4 are using spring loaded sticks and the guys who are saying it flies beautifully are using FFB sticks and maybe this difference between the two systems is part of the confusion. The FFB sticks centre relative to the wind and the spring sticks centre relative to the stabilizer. Do FFB sticks really "self trim" due to the airflow? I tried watching the stick position indicator HUD thing and trimming through the whole range but couldn't see the stick position move as the stabilizer moved. Please forgive my mentioning the 109 trim again. I don't want to flog a dead horse, but I think many people who are unhappy with it would change their mind if they simply got a FFB stick.

Oops , I found the ground trim tabs last night at 2am just before I went to bed and thought they were for the ailerons and elevators, but I was mistaken. They are for Rudder and Ailerons. Anyway, now that I have a force feedback stick I find trim is just not an issue like it was when I had a spring stick. Now when I think about all the threads about Bf109 trim issues I am quite sure that the guys complaining probably all have spring sticks and the guys enjoying the module probably all have FFB sticks. I would suggest that a FFB stick is really necessary to get the most out of these WW2 birds. and DCS in general. PS. I find that about 4 or 5 rudder left gives good, ball centred, almost hands off, balanced trim at climb power. Which is what I want for typical online flying. What I will be using the module for so I am still very happy.

I was delighted to see the ground adjustable aileron and elevator trim tabs have a slider in the options page ! YES! I played with them too. I am now using a MSFFB2 stick and can see that the experience of flying with a FFB stick is COMPLETELY different from flying with a cheap spring extreme 3d pro. With the spring loaded stick flying without trim is really painful and annoying. For this reason I was always very much interested in trimming the aircraft and sorely missed the trim tabs. Now I have a Force Feedback stick, trim is not nearly so important as constant stick pressure is not annoying. Anyway I still trimmed the plane a little bit more nose down so that the plane balances out at a higher power than default as we are flying online and not flying long distance at level cruise as they would have done in real life.. Thanks you so much for including this ! Большое спасибо :smilewink:

I think the key point is "heavy ECM environment". If his target is jamming then he may have to close the range to burn through the jam. That could take 30sec....

I just checked, the default short range load is 2xR60 on each outer pylon, R3R on each inner pilon, 490L centre tank and the ASO CM

That was funny. Right after a post about misunderstandings and miscommunications.... The nose cone is at the front of the jet. This thread is about the automatic exhaust nozzle at the back of the jet. Both have a manual override for when the automatic adjustment system fails. It seems to me that in real life the automatic nozzle exhaust system can fail from time to time and if it does so the pilot has the option to manually override it and force the nozzle closed for maximum thrust. Particularly useful for take off when the pilot needs maximum thrust the most. I haven't tested it in game but if it is simply closing the exhaust pipe when it is flipped then it would appear to be working properly.

Thank you so much Sokol1 . Really enjoying the FFB

Thanks, yeah the Mig21 is very interesting to fly with FFB. I have been reading the english translation of the pilot's flight manual and it is very interesting also. Basically all the subsonic birds feel as I expected and the stick force increases with IAS and G load. There is very little stick shake with guns firing. The Mig21 has almost no gun shake effect at all. The Mig21bis is the only supersonic PFM bird that I have and is quite different feel. The increasing IAS does not cause much increasing stick force. I have now read in the Mig manual that this is correctly modeled. The stick force does increase with G load though. Also I have read in the pilot manual that transonic speed can cause increase in G load as some of the airflow around the plane is supersonic and some is not. Not sure if this is modeled in DCS but it might be. If I am pulling G while supersonic and decelerating the G indicator may jump as I cross M1. Stick force seems to increase in such case.... Hard to say for sure. But the FFB with Mig21 had added extra layer to my experience of this great plane I really like the FFB with the helicopters especially and now I just want to find a force feedback editor so I can fine tune some effects to taste.

Hi I just got a MSFFB2 and I'm flying all my flight sims and trying it out with them. I would like to find a tool to edit some of the effects and forces but all the links I follow are dead for FEdit. Maybe some has a live link or another FFB editor? Thanks

So I finally got around to getting a MS FFB2 .... I've been sim flying for over a decade with extreme 3d pro. So anyway I am setting up my new force feedback stick trying different sims. WW1 and WW2 planes are great with FFB and it surely captures the real life characteristic of the stick feel and dynamic forces, But The Mig21bis leaves me wondering? What does the real thing feel like anyway? I am aware that supersonic flight requires all flying tails or stabilators with "fake" feedback. IIRC the stabilator pivots around a point near the centre of pressure so there is very little dynamic stick forces from air pressure as speed increases. So what system does the real life Mig21bis use ? What does the real life stick feel like? Does it have a spring to give the pilot some feel? Does the MSFFB2 give closer feel to reality or is the old 3dpro actually closer to what the real Mig21 stick feels like to the pilot. Any insights about this would be greatly appreciated, as would tips for setting up MSFFB2 for DCS in general.

WEll yes you can try it and see for yourself. If you extend the nose cone to maximum,like 90%, the engine will start to surge, the extra inlet doors on the sides will noisily bang open and closed, and the engine may flame out . If you lower the nose cone extension % below the amount the automatic system has it set to, the plane will simply slow down. The is no danger to the engine to switching from automatic to manual and stopping it from automatically extending further when you reach mach 2.

I am very happy to tell you that yes there is a better way ! Switch the nose cone to manual and set it at about 30% . Well that is a little simplistic because it depends on what your altitude is but the idea is that you look at what the automatic setting is before you switch it to manual and reduce it a little. If I am flying at about 12000m altitude at Mach2 the nose cone will be around 40%. If you are flying higher it will be higher %. Just reduce it a little and your max speed will be limited so you can concentrate on situational awareness. I also reduce burner power so the tail pipe temp is about 700 degrees but even if you run the burner full your speed can be limited with the nose cone. I just love speeding over the top of those F15's online and getting away at 2M ! F15 carry so many missiles they are too draggy to catch the little Mig21. Good luck !

I just wanted to suggest that when trying to maintain yaw control on the take off run it helps to give quick but strong flicks of rudder to keep it in line, rather than trying to hold a constant smaller rudder deflection. Give it a quick kick back inline. Especially at lower speeds. I also wanted to point out he that the Emil in the video didn't have a MW50 tank in the rear fuselage. And so we could speculate E series bf109 had less tail heavy character than Gustov and Kurfurst series for this reason. Although G % K series had heavier engine/armament forward of wing also... I still wonder if the leading edge slats are popping out at too low AOA though. Does anybody else wonder about slats behaviour?

Thank you so much ! I have done this many times and couldn't figure out what was wrong and had to quit and start again. I was getting so annoyed by this when I couldn't work it out.

Well in defence of poor old Otto the trim of the 109, or lack of trim, does seem to be one of the defining characteristics one notices when flying it. We have all flown badly modeled 109's in other sims/games that require constant and excessive amounts of rudder, aileron, and elevator to fly straight at cruise. It's a bit painful, where as a balanced plane that requires no trim is a pleasure to fly. I imagine the German engineers were showing off by not putting rudder trim on their plane. Judging it a more a elegant and efficient solution to simply design the plane to balance out at known cruise speed rather than put extra weight of trimming mechanisms on surfaces. I can understand it might be frowned upon to mention other sims but I notice that the lighter E series in CLOD trim at 1 degree nose up, the heavier F and G in BOS trim at 1 degree nose down and the heaviest K in DCS trims at 2 degrees nose down. The pattern does hold assuming the increasing weights are producing more and more tail heavy aircraft. They all use roughly the same frame don't they? And of course assuming the three sims all used true data. As for the zero angle stab at takeoff for least propwash effect I see your point is good. I can only imagine you agree with me that cruising with stab close to zero angle to airflow would increase range.

well if the put the plane on the blocks in level flight attitude then the stabilizer at zero would also be inline with the air flow and this would mean least possible drag. Which would seem to be the optimal position for maximum range... cruising. It certainly makes sense to design the plane to cruise with trimmable stab very close to inline with the airflow. But it was designed like this much earlier on a lighter model. Maybe the increase in weight has messed up the cruising trim. I don't think any of us really know. Saying it is takeoff trim makes no sense to me. You could just take off a few times and try some trim settings and decide which is best. There is no reason to measure it so precisely for take off trim. What advantage do you see in taking off with the stabilizer at o degrees? I see none I don't want to sound like I am saying your FM is wrong. I really don't know .It is very interesting discussion for me.

I still don't understand why the German mechanics would bother to put the plane up on blocks and hang plumbobs off the stabilizer to work out exactly where zero was on the trim, when it is never used and doesn't matter. Seems like a lot of wasted effort. Unless they thought it was important for some reason. There are quite a few flying bf109's at airshows. of course they have no weapons and are not weighted the same but maybe it would still be useful to ask some of the pilots how the currently flying 109's trim out at cruise.

I would enjoy very much to be able try this and experience this crash from using trim tab. As I believe it would be the firs thing the real pilots would have done. Maybe the first ones to do it did crash. Lets try it and see. I live in a nanny state. no speeding, drinking, smoking... not even allowed to crash my flight sim in case I get hurt! :P

Maybe engineers designed plane to cruise with stabilizer close to zero but added weight of MW50 tank and heavier radio, IFF in rear was too much to balance against heavier engine and armament armament in nose. If this is the case and heavier equipment negatively affected the trim of the plane then what we have is historical accurate nuance, not bug. Even so if this was the case, the ground adjustable trim tab would surely be used to correct the nose up problem as much as was practical. Please allow elevator trim tab. Is it so hard to do? Is there good reason not to enable?

Can anyone explain what the zero on the stabilizer is for if not for cruise. Why have 7down 2up if they could just have 9? If zero is meaningless. I suppose zero is stab in line with the airflow? Would it be possible to design plane so stab is trimmed at zero at cruise? It would seem this would give least drag and best range? Was the Bf109 originally designed to trim at this zero setting but added weight of extra equipment to the rear fuselage as the plane grew heavier move COG rearward and meant the plane would no longer trim at zero? I can imagine as the design grew heavier the original trim was no longer possible. Also how much weight is in ammo? Of course Russians tested with hundreds of kilos of ammo in nose? maybe ammo wight would not account for such changes?

I think Otto has made is absolutely clear how the K4 was designed to fly. It appears what we have in the sim is how one particular captured, and possibly damaged/ repaired airframe performed in the hands of the Russians. I for one would prefer the bf109K4 as it was designed to fly. Well done Otto.

I just read this whole thread. Very entertaining! Almost as funny as watching Bosnians playing frisbee... I just loaded the K4 up and tried it for myself and cruising at IAS450km/h @ 5km 1.2ata 2100rpm +2 stab trim the plane is almost hands free in level flight. Really quite nice. It would be nice to have the trim tabs adjusted to give a little nose heavy so we can fly level like this at higher power settings but it is no where near as bad I was expecting after reading the thread. Surely it would not need much work to enable elevator trim tab to be adjusted as the ailerons and rudder are. Then everybody people would be happy. Well some body will still not be happy. But even they would be hard to complain! Also the original post was asking why the "elevator" trimmed down would give pitch up? I guess he has realised by now that the trim wheel is not for elevator but is for stabiliser.

Thanks for the reply Kurfurst. I hadn't even thought about the Mach number of the prop. Specifically I was thinking of a situation where the Bf109 was maneuvering in combat and had just leveled off after a steep climb and was just above stall speed. Very low IAS say 250km/h or 300km/h. With an enemy plane climbing up who is also near stall and unable to lift his nose and fire on me... I have been over revving the engine to 2600rpm hoping this will mean better acceleration. But then I realise that the engine may not even be making any more power doing this below critical altitude. I think it still may give a benefit because of the finer prop pitch for low speed acceleration. Have you ever seen a graph of a DB601 RPM versus engine power? Does the power curve peek at 2400rpm? Or does it continue to produce more power at higher RPM. Maybe it does produce more power but the heat would be too much for the radiators to dissipate at 2600rpm? The more I fly with these planes I realise there is always more I can learn.

Thankyou so much. This is great stuff! I just flew a mission and the F5 enemy's of the first mission were just cruising while I shot them down. I assume this is just a one off bug and they should fight back in general. Also my gun sight would not turn on. I'm pretty sure I did everything to turn it on correctly. Does this campaign have random failures?