Correct way to do cobra maneuver

[carss]

When I do the cobra by pressing the S key and pulling back on the stick, the plane does the cobra, but after recovery, it over recovers and goes inverted, then the engines shut down and there is no way to come out of that. Is there a specific way of doing it or is this some glitch that needs to be fixed? :helpsmilie:

[Ironhand]

This video might help:

 

[DarkFire]

By default when in direct control mode (after the first time you press S) the nose will tend to pitch down strongly, so keep some back pressure applied to the stick to prevent this from happening. As soon as you're level re-engage the FCS (press S again). The strength of the nose-down pitch tendency increases with airspeed.

[holimoli]

or you hit the reset trim first and then S. keeps your aircraft pretty much in the same position without any stick inputs

[Aluminum Donkey]

When I do the cobra by pressing the S key and pulling back on the stick, the plane does the cobra, but after recovery, it over recovers and goes inverted, then the engines shut down and there is no way to come out of that. Is there a specific way of doing it or is this some glitch that needs to be fixed? :helpsmilie:

 

One thing to keep in mind is that the Flanker's FBW system, when engaged, applies it's own nose-up input as your airspeed increases. That's why you have to apply lots of nose-down trim as you accelerate after taking off.

 

With the FBW system disengaged (S key) there's no down-trim required to fly level. So, before you hit S, you have to center the pitch trim first to prevent the usually-lethal 'tuck under' of the nose. The Flanker actually doesn't have very much of a tendency to require different amounts of pitch trim at different airspeeds, it's done artificially by the FBW system to re-create the control feel and trimming requirements of a conventional (pitch-stable) aircraft. I believe it was done that way because pilots are generally trained to have an intuitive sense of airspeed based on the aircraft's state of trim, and mimicking it with the FBW system makes the aircraft safer to fly--but the Flanker doesn't naturally have that because it's an unstable design. So, you have to remember to center the pitch trim before turning off the FBW system--just like in the real-life Flanker.

 

Finally, when pulling the Cobra, apply some back stick as the nose drops to prevent the nose from tucking under, and it should 'settle in' nicely to nearly level flight with the stick centered again after the nose stops dropping.

 

A couple tries is all it takes to get good at it. Although, I've never actually had any use for it when flying combat missions, because the Flanker pretty easily out-turns just about every other jet aircraft in the whole sim, either player-flyable or not :)

[Aluminum Donkey]

or you hit the reset trim first and then S. keeps your aircraft pretty much in the same position without any stick inputs

 

It's interesting to fly it with the FBW off--the Su-27 actually requires very little trim change even as airspeed changes drastically, say, going from 400 to 1200 km/h.

 

When flying normally with the FBW on, you're *always* messing with the pitch trim. I'm starting to wonder why they did that, because it certainly increases pilot workload. A much better way to do it would have been to eliminate the nose-up-with-increasing-speed part of the FBW software, and simply apply automatic nose-down input when approaching minimum speed. It would have made the Flanker much less work to fly.

 

Great aircraft, but I don't understand the FBW pitch trim design philosophy, there are better and easier ways to keep the aircraft safe to fly without requiring the pilot to incessantly adjust the pitch trim. It's entirely possible that newer versions of the Flanker are done this way (it's easy enough to do, just delete the lines of code from the FBW software that produce the nose-up tendency as airspeed increases, while keeping the code that provides the pitch damping and AoA limit, so the max AoA won't be accidentally exceeded when flying at very low speeds.)

 

I'm not Russian, so I can't understand how they think :)

[FoxDelta]

cobra

 

reset trim first (strg T)

press S( i always fly with activated) (switch under the throttle hand for indication)

 

fly level, 400-500kmh, remove thrust, pull the stick back hard, when the nose is going upwards recenter the stick, when the nose starts to go down again pull the stick back and reapply thrust(move the stick gently,more and more the nose is coming to level)

[WildBillKelsoe]

be 380-390 km/h with at least 500 meter altitude for safety. Ironhand material is the best resource on the entire Su-27.