Slower pitch trim possible?

[Hiob]

22 minutes ago, IronMike said:

In reply to this and the previous quote this was replying to: Not even, what you need to do is to hold your stick and adjust, aka work for it. Trim is not there to achieve a level, pitch up or down attitude, but to ease off stick force.

You can fly any attitude in the Tomcat hands on, and because it isn't FBW, it is actually more of a should than can. It is a hands-on aircraft through and through. Which is the beauty about it. Flying precision is demanding, and thus rewarding and fun. And having a RIO is presicely what allows you, the pilot, to fully concentrate on achieving just that.

But that is exactly what I meant. His premise was, to fly hands off and hold a constant climb attitude. And that is not possible with trim - in any aircraft (except maybe computer controlled fbw ones). I wouldn't even try to achieve that in a Tomcat.

[IronMike]

9 minutes ago, Hiob said:

But that is exactly what I meant. His premise was, to fly hands off and hold a constant climb attitude. And that is not possible with trim - in any aircraft (except maybe computer controlled fbw ones). I wouldn't even try to achieve that in a Tomcat.

Yep, hence I added also in reply to his initial input, or basically underlining again what you said. This is precisely the issue here, that trim is being abused for something it was not meant for, added with having a concept of a "sweetspot" that simply does not exist.

A great teacher, I shall also add to all the above, is flying formation. Not even looking at your instruments, but training to stay put next to your lead, picking a reference and holding that reference. The fact that there is no sweetspot will become very clear very quick. You constantly need to fight for position, always. Holding an attitude is the same concept, minus the visual reference you get from your lead aircraft. Hence training muscle memory, fine inputs, "flying ahead of yourself" by expecting the required counter-inputs and the concept of fighting for position works well when training formation, in the beginning best done around larger aircraft, and better even next to a tanker - and one would learn AAR more or less along the way as well.

Edited June 15, 2023 by IronMike

[Hiob]

2 minutes ago, IronMike said:

Yep, hence I added also in reply to his initial input, or basically underlining again what you said. This is precisely the issue here, that trim is being abused for something it was not meant for, added with having a concept of a "sweetspot" that simply does not exist.

A great teacher, I shall also add to all the above, is flying formation. Not even looking at your instruments, but training to stay put next to your lead, picking a reference and holding that reference. The fact that there is no sweetspot will become very clear very quick. You constantly need to fight for position, always. Holding an attitude is the same concept, minus the visual reference you get from your lead aircraft. Hence training muscle memory, fine inputs and the concept of fighting for position works well when training formation, in the beginning best done around larger aircraft, and better even next to a tanker - and one would learn AAR more or less along the way as well.

 

Sorry, than I misunderstood you there. Thanks for the clarification. 

[IronMike]

1 minute ago, Hiob said:

Sorry, than I misunderstood you there. Thanks for the clarification. 

Anytime!

[GregP]

Lots of great input here, guys, so thank you for the replies.

I've been flight simming for 35 years and I suppose the overwhelming majority of that has been in either FBW or civilian aircraft where you can generally trim things out quite easily and fly hands-off in level flight for more than a few seconds without things getting out of hand.  But it makes sense that the Tomcat is simply a different kind of beast and trim doesn't serve the same purpose as in those other aircraft.  Luckily the complexity of the flying is one of the things that I love about the F-14 so no problem there! The trim acting this way just didn't seem intuitive to me at first.

[Hiob]

56 minutes ago, GregP said:

Lots of great input here, guys, so thank you for the replies.

I've been flight simming for 35 years and I suppose the overwhelming majority of that has been in either FBW or civilian aircraft where you can generally trim things out quite easily and fly hands-off in level flight for more than a few seconds without things getting out of hand.  But it makes sense that the Tomcat is simply a different kind of beast and trim doesn't serve the same purpose as in those other aircraft.  Luckily the complexity of the flying is one of the things that I love about the F-14 so no problem there! The trim acting this way just didn't seem intuitive to me at first.

play with the AP modes.... if you want to bury your head inside the cockpit for more than a couple seconds. That's the one advantage over a warbird. 

[Bremspropeller]

What's also important to note is that the aircraft changes character with the wings moving.

Wih the wings fwd, she might be a bit twitchy in pitch. Especially at slow speed. With the wings travelling aft, pitch response and pitch trim behaviour gets a little more settled down. The farther aft the wings are, the more the twitchyness transverses into the roll-response.

This might also be a thing playing into the aircraft feeling and trimming weird at first.

[RustBelt]

On 6/14/2023 at 8:07 AM, GregP said:

Sure, but presumably the designers of the Tomcat came up with a system that actually works as opposed to what we have in the sim at the moment. Why have a trim system if it doesn't actually allow you to trim out the stick force?

Tomcat trims out fine hands free on my FFB stick.

Time for an upgrade?

[fat creason]

4 hours ago, RustBelt said:

Tomcat trims out fine hands free on my FFB stick.

Time for an upgrade?

FWIW, myself and our pilot SME use the VKB F-14 stick with at least a 10cm extension. A lot of the problems people are having here are likely hardware related. Also I can't reiterate enough how much better FFB sticks are for getting a feel for the jet and the trim. It's unfortunate that most current consumer offerings aren't great or are really expensive.

Keep in mind that a trim state only exists at a particular flight condition, if you move away from that flight condition (change in speed, altitude, power, etc) the trim state will change. The F-14 itself also has a TON of movable surfaces including the WINGS themselves, which essentially makes it a different airplane at every degree of sweep. The F-14 is a fighter, it was not designed to be as stable as a Cessna 172 or an airliner.

Edited June 19, 2023 by fat creason

[Hiob]

Just a little sidenote (that comes from flying warbirds and helicopters, but I assume it works in a Tomcat as well) - if you want to precisely trim for  a level attitude without any climb or descent, it works better to do the finetuning with the throttle instead of the trim.

[RustBelt]

You’re really better off following the normal practice of: Set Power, Pitch for level, then trim off the force.
 

It’s a shame FFB flight sticks had to have a 20 year hiatus thanks to patent trolls. Once you feel it, the trim process feels intuitive like it does in real  non-fly by wire planes. 

[draconus]

At the precision level of trim the OP talks about there are no forces on the stick anyway.

[Hiob]

2 hours ago, RustBelt said:

You’re really better off following the normal practice of: Set Power, Pitch for level, then trim off the force.
 

It’s a shame FFB flight sticks had to have a 20 year hiatus thanks to patent trolls. Once you feel it, the trim process feels intuitive like it does in real  non-fly by wire planes. 

We left the realm of normal procedures a long time ago... 

[RustBelt]

14 hours ago, draconus said:

At the precision level of trim the OP talks about there are no forces on the stick anyway.

Well, not with a 20+ year old Sidewinder FFB2 no. And trimming around a spring centered dead zone is an exercise in futility unless you use something like an encoder to force single digit axis changes at like 10-12 Bits resolution.  It’s never happening with an 8bit input.

12 hours ago, Hiob said:

We left the realm of normal procedures a long time ago... 

the second you plugged in a spring centered joystick you sure did. In the 80’s and 90’s it was manageable because the simulation was crude. Simulators now have left them in the dust.

[Hiob]

10 hours ago, RustBelt said:

Well, not with a 20+ year old Sidewinder FFB2 no. And trimming around a spring centered dead zone is an exercise in futility unless you use something like an encoder to force single digit axis changes at like 10-12 Bits resolution.  It’s never happening with an 8bit input.

the second you plugged in a spring centered joystick you sure did. In the 80’s and 90’s it was manageable because the simulation was crude. Simulators now have left them in the dust.

We get it. FFB is great. I was referring to the idea to trim for prolonged handsfree operation. ...and wether this is realistic or not has nothing to do with your input device.

Edited June 21, 2023 by Hiob