DCS: A-10 Pitch\Roll glitch

[jskycatcher]

Hello, long time lurker and real world pilot here. First of all I would like to congratulate for creating amazing game and amazing community here. Kudos for Eagle Dynamics and all of you guys.

 

I just purchased game and TH Hotas combo and I'm having strange problem. When my plane is in the air it starts to roll to the right and pitch down. You can see it on YT video below.

 

Trim is on neutral position, joy is stable, autopilot is off, ailerons both neutral, I have latest drivers from TH. Nothing were changed in Axis control configuration. I have no idea what might be wrong.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVcbaCxEDEA&feature=plcp

 

Any ideas whats is wrong here?

Edited June 27, 2012 by jskycatcher

[badger66]

Perhaps its unbalanced with differant stores weight on each wing , just trim it out level with the trim switch .

 

Unless you have track ir , the trim switch is set up for cockpit viem on the TM Warthog , so maybe use arrow keys to trim out .

 

Hope this helps .

[cichlidfan]

If you hit RCtl+Enter it will put a little graph of your control positions on the lower left corner of the screen. This can tell you if your controllers are not where you think they are.

 

Also, in flight with the A-10, zero trim is rarely going to give you level flight so that is very likely to be contributing to the perceived issue.

 

EDIT: When you exit a mission, there is an option to save a track. If you want someone to see what is going on either post the track or record it and post that. It is nearly impossible to see what is going on in the video you posted.

Edited June 27, 2012 by cichlidfan

[GGTharos]

On first glance - there's nothing wrong. Trim it out.

[Headspace]

No airplane is going to fly straight and level on its own. You need to use the trim.

[badger66]

No airplane is going to fly straight and level on its own. You need to use the trim.

 

You dont need to tell him that , he is a real pilot after all !!! :pilotfly:

[Yurgon]

+1 for trim. What's your configuration on that flight? Gear down and flaps 0? You'd surely need to trim under these circumstances. Not sure about the reason for the roll, the loadout looked symmetrical to me. But as cichlidfan pointed out, it's best if you save and post a track so we can check if it looks the same on our respective rigs or if there may be a controller issue on your end.

[MagnumHB]

Nearly every combat loadout used in A-10C is asymmetrical due to the targeting pod.

[Wichid]

Jettison all stores and RTB.

[Corrigan]

Also, wind could be affecting the situation. Or, does this behaviour happen regardless of mission, heading etc?

Other than that, I'd just go along with previous posters and say that looks to me like a (quite badly) untrimmed aircraft.

[Pyroflash]

Trim it off, and be sure to adjust the trim throughout the flight as in any aircraft, when you burn fuel and release stores, your CG will shift necessitating the use of additional trimming.

[effte]

Also, wind could be affecting the situation. Or, does this behaviour happen regardless of mission, heading etc?

 

Once airborne, a steady wind will NOT affect the handling of the aircraft, in spite of what plenty of people on the interwebs (and, unfortunately, a few people existing in the real world) will tell you in great length and detail. :)

[sobek]

That's because their mind never leaves the ground, insofar, they are right to a certain degree. :)

[mingocr83]

Trim it off man, the A-10 and a passenger airplane are complete different animals. The A-10 ALWAYS will need trim whether you like it or not. Passenger airplane well you are used to get CoG and that stuff programmed+take off trim on the ground. If you like to keep it simple on the A-10 use AP+2 or 3...to maintain altitude or heading and altitude

 

Enjoy!

[effte]

Aerodynamically, the A-10 has everything in common with other non-FBW aircraft in this respect. EAC would be the differentiating factor, and for the purpose of this discussion it is by-and-large irrelevant.

[Jona33]

I nearly always have to trim a little Left wing down in the plane, just trim it and it'll fly almost hands off for a while.

[Daze]

Looks impossible to recover from that, definitely eject!

[Yurgon]

Nearly every combat loadout used in A-10C is asymmetrical due to the targeting pod.

 

That's of course correct. But how much opposite trim does this require?

 

What I was referring to when I said the loadout didn't look asymmetrical was that there was no apparent imbalance between a GBU-10 on the right side vs. a single Mk-82 on the respective station on the left side or something like that, which would have been an obvious cause for the aircraft's right rolling tendency that was visible in the video.

 

In a short test flight I did yesterday, the nose down attitude was easily reproducible by lowering the landing gear but not lowering the flaps. However, with an instant mission loadout, my plane didn't bank to the right as strongly as the OP's did in his video.

 

Anyway, unless he posts a track, it's hard to guess what caused the bank, but it's easy to guess how to counter it: trim, trim and trim. :joystick:

[effte]

Any ideas whats is wrong here?

 

Pitches up at first, then down again as speed decays? Normal phugoid, I'd say? Then you have a left rolling tendency which, as others have pointed out, is probably due to an out-of-trim condition. Can't see if you are coordinated or not, but I assume you were.

 

Cheers,

Fred

[Dejjvid]

And SAS isn't working as intended if you play DCS World. Check the ball.

 

And trim, trim and re-trim.

[Pyroflash]

That's of course correct. But how much opposite trim does this require?

 

As much as you need to make it fly straight at your current configuration. There is not "set amount of trim" that you need to apply for any given condition, or at least not without doing some seriously crazy math.

[Yurgon]

As much as you need to make it fly straight at your current configuration. There is not "set amount of trim" that you need to apply for any given condition, or at least not without doing some seriously crazy math.

 

I wasn't actually looking for a definitive answer. :-)

 

But I just did a short series of flight tests starting midair at 270kts.

 

With TGP on station 10 the aircraft rolls almost exactly as it did in video posted by the OP.

 

With TGP on 10 and ALQ-131 on 1 there is practically no rolling at all.

 

The same holds true if I add otherwise symmetrical payloads.

 

As said before, by lowering the landing gear the nose down attitude looks just as posted by the OP, and finally the combination of gear down and TGP on 10 (but no ALQ-131 on 1) is a perfect match to what the OP called "glitch".

 

The aircraft is simply not trimmed in the example given by the OP, so I assume the OP's real question is: Is the aircraft trimmed for level flight at mission start? To which the answer is a definitive no.

 

(Other than the Black Shark BTW which is indeed trimmed for level flight if the mission starts midair).

[Fish]

...Trim is on neutral position, joy is stable, autopilot is off, ailerons both neutral, I have latest drivers from TH. Nothing were changed in Axis control configuration. I have no idea what might be wrong.

 

Any ideas whats is wrong here?

 

Proccess of elimination. First make sure you inputs are correct. Use RCTL ENTER (Show Controls command), to display the mini input hud. (you might need to hit the trim recenter and let go of the stick for a couple of seconds). You might like to increase the centre deatspace of the x,y axis of your input device to be sure.

 

If all is centred there, then your stick is properly configured, then the roll is due to aircraft inertia, due to unequal loadouts. For elevator trim, you got to set it (perfect position depends on aircraft weight, configuration gear flaps etc) . In fundamental terms the point of 'perfect' trim is infinitely small, so you can only hope to get close to it. (even the autopilot system will generate small oscillations around the control point). The closer you get, the longer interval between an input adjustment.

 

Like driving a brand new car on a very long straight road, you will still need small inputs to keep it straight after you have pointed it in the correct direction to start with.

 

If you fly you know most of this. :smilewink:

[diveplane]

Hello, long time lurker and real world pilot here. First of all I would like to congratulate for creating amazing game and amazing community here. Kudos for Eagle Dynamics and all of you guys.

 

I just purchased game and TH Hotas combo and I'm having strange problem. When my plane is in the air it starts to roll to the right and pitch down. You can see it on YT video below.

 

Trim is on neutral position, joy is stable, autopilot is off, ailerons both neutral, I have latest drivers from TH. Nothing were changed in Axis control configuration. I have no idea what might be wrong.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVcbaCxEDEA&feature=plcp

 

Any ideas whats is wrong here?

 

trim the aircraft ..

[Megagoth1702]

You dont need to tell him that , he is a real pilot after all !!! :pilotfly:

Therefore he should know that trimming is essential for level flight.

 

A10 is pretty much always unbalanced due to the different things on each wing. Every time I fire off a maverick I have to re-trim because of the weight balance. :)