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Trimming


Belisarius

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Been reading a lot on this forum lately about trimming, but I can't seem to find a description of the actual procedure. So at the risk of sounding dumb ( not the first time, certainly not the last) could someone please point me to a step by step description of the procedure? Thanks

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Ideally have the trim function mapped to a hat switch. Then if you find that when you don't touch your controls and the plane turns or pitch changes trim in the opposite direction. For example, if your plane naturally rolls to the right then trim to the left a bit. If the nose wanders upwards then trim nose down a little. It really is that simple, it's just to keep the plane flying without you doing anything.

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this is something you learn by tactile sense. no advice I can give that would be 100% procedural, but I can say that I'm now very familiar with trimming to the point of combat employment. Practice makes perfect just like with AAR.

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Air to Air Refueling.

 

When trimming, don't hold the hat switch. Simply tap it until you get the desired effect. Most cases if the plane starts drifting it only takes a couple of quick taps to straighten things out.

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The TM Warthog trim hat is set for view and the trim is a shifted function. If you have TrackIR you can get rid of the view settings and make the trim the primary setting.

 

With respect to trimming as the guys said above it means just balancing out the aircraft so you need minimal input to keep the aircraft flying level & straight.

 

Asymmetrical loads will be the main cause the roll issues, particularly as you drop ordinance. Another thing to remember is that your airspeed will affect your pitch trim. If you speed up the plane will climb so you need to trim down a bit and vice versa. So if you have to fly at a certain speed it may take a combination of throttle and trim to get set.

 

Once you've done it for a while it becomes second nature... enjoy

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The best method (and I believe the correct method) for trimming is to hold the stick to maintain the attitude you want, like straight and level flight, and trim the stick pressure off your hands so that ideally you can let go of the stick and the plane will remain at the attitude you left it at.

 

If you trim with your hands off the stick you can easily over trim or have the aircraft run away from you. The trim shouldn't control your plane, you should, and the trim should just be holding it where you want it or when you're still holding the stick significantly reduce the force needed to keep the stick where you want it.

 

Trim happens constantly as you change altitude and speed and configuration. While landing you should be trimming constantly as your speed reduces until you get on speed/on AOA and that is significantly nose high compared to level flight so not trimming when landing is actually kinda dangerous. When it comes to flaring at touchdown you don't want to be already deflecting your stick into your gut.

 

Another thing, is when doing things like high speed attack runs, you can pre trim the aircraft for the higher speed because its better to not worry about the trimmer when you trying to align a pipper with only 4 seconds of slack to do so, and if you don't trim the pipper wants to dance a lot more since you're further from the neutral centre position. You'd do this by flying as close to your attack speed and trim for that, slow down, go in for the run, ???, profit.


Edited by P*Funk
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Warning: Nothing I say is automatically correct, even if I think it is.

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I can't imagine playing with kb hopefully you get your joystick first fallowing by a set of HOTAS

Logitech 3D is a good thing to start you are still able to set up many modifiers

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The TMWarthhog is a really nice thing, just too much money ATM and I don't have anywhere comfortable to mount it. Is there any other twin throttle sticks?

 

At least one or two I think, but a single throttle one does just fine too.

 

The only thing that dual throttle really benefits you with is ease of managing engine failures, restarts, and sharp turns at taxi.

 

For every guy rocking a TM Warthog there are probably at least 20 doing it with an X-52 and even more than ought to be legal doing it with a Logitech 3D POS.

Warning: Nothing I say is automatically correct, even if I think it is.

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Pitch trim is a constant battle in any aircraft. Most airliners and general aviation aircraft have a big huge 'wheel' for pitch trim. Changes in weight (moving passengers, burning fuel), changes in power or speed or altitude will necessitate a pitch change. So you grab the wheel and adjust until the nose is level! (The autopilot works by adjusting trims). In fact, in most smaller general aviation aircraft simply sliding back in your seat will raise the nose up!

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In fact, in most smaller general aviation aircraft simply sliding back in your seat will raise the nose up!

 

I've read about how F-16 pilots (at some point in time I cannot recall) would transfer fuel from the forward tanks to the rear ones for some reason that I cannot recall right now, and if they forgot to rebalance the tanks forward again before landing sometimes when they'd be so nose light that they wouldn't be able to activate the nosewheel steering and when they hopped out of the cockpit the tail sagged to the tarmac.

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Haven't heard that about the F-16 but the P-51 was like that with it's auxiliary tank.

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Another thing, is when doing things like high speed attack runs, you can pre trim the aircraft for the higher speed because its better to not worry about the trimmer when you trying to align a pipper with only 4 seconds of slack to do so, and if you don't trim the pipper wants to dance a lot more since you're further from the neutral centre position. You'd do this by flying as close to your attack speed and trim for that, slow down, go in for the run, ???, profit.

 

A note, if you're in a hurry the quick and dirty way to do this is to add a few taps of nose down trim before you roll in. Obviously, this isn't as reliable or accurate as getting up to speed and trimming for that, but I find adding just a little bit of nose down trim before rolling in for dive bombing makes the plane much easier to control.

 

[offtopic]

As for the X52, I can personally attest that it's a great HOTAS. I mean, you get what you pay for, but it's a nice stepping stone between very cheap sticks and extremely high end ones. For the price it's great. Plus, with a couple buttons set as modifier keys, you can get just about all the DCS HOTAS functions mapped to it, plus a few other things like flaps, gear, etc.

[/offtopic]

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A note, if you're in a hurry the quick and dirty way to do this is to add a few taps of nose down trim before you roll in. Obviously, this isn't as reliable or accurate as getting up to speed and trimming for that, but I find adding just a little bit of nose down trim before rolling in for dive bombing makes the plane much easier to control.

 

Absolutely. In any case, you want the nose to be a bit heavy when rolling in. If you're nose light you're pretty much guaranteed that you'll be fighting the pitch when lining up on target.

 

When doing CCIP attack runs you're supposed to roll in, put your plane into the correct dive angle and have the TVV remain on the same relative position on the ground ahead of the target, depending on the attack type either before or after the pipper is on the target. If you don't do this then you're just making the LASTE and IFFCC constantly recalculate the firing solution and in the end you'll end up with a far less precise release. When doing a gun run it makes it so that any release of PAC1 will inevitably knock your pipper off target so you're not going to be aiming with any ease. With dumb bomb delivery it means you'll be short or long most likely.

Warning: Nothing I say is automatically correct, even if I think it is.

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Haven't heard that about the F-16 but the P-51 was like that with it's auxiliary tank.

 

Hmm... not the P-51 I'm sure. It was a tail dragger. It's tail ALWAYS sagged to the ground when it landed. That's how it worked!

 

Though the P-51, like any tail dragger, has huge issues landing if it's nose heavy. You can't use any brakes, or the nose will be in the ground (until it's slow enough for the tail to stall and no longer generate lift, once the nose is pitched upward you can finally slow down!)

 

Center of gravity is very important on an airplane. Ever been asked to switch seats on a partially filled airplane? It's gotta be in the right spot for both takeoff and landing. So is weight of course. Trim only works when the airplane is moving at a pretty decent speed!

 

In fact, on 9/11 a tremendous amount of jet fuel was dumped into the atmosphere. Millions of gallons by some estimates. That's because all air traffic was grounded, and some international and cross country flights had just taken off. Civilian airliners sometimes take off ABOVE their maximum landing weight (especially the big jets). So they can takeoff, but can't land until they burn off a ton of fuel. Center of gravity is off, and the weight is more than the gear can handle! (which is why they have dump valves).

 

If there is no dump valve, the other solution is to "fly dirty", which is to fly gear down, flaps down, speedbrakes up and throttles as high as you can get them without overspeeding the aircraft until you've burned up the fuel. Although in an absolute emergency, (like a birdstrike taking out your engines after takeoff, too low to dump fuel and not enough time anyway) they CAN land overweight. But they cannot takeoff again until a series of inspections is completed!


Edited by Romans5.8
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So they can takeoff, but can't land until they burn off a ton of fuel. Center of gravity is off, and the weight is more than the gear can handle! (which is why they have dump valves)...........

 

.......... Although in an absolute emergency, (like a birdstrike taking out your engines after takeoff, too low to dump fuel and not enough time anyway) they CAN land overweight. But they cannot takeoff again until a series of inspections is completed!

 

Mostly correct, BUT ..........

 

At take-off the weight of the aircraft must be distributed so that the centre of gravity is within the safe limits (not "off" as quoted) - otherwise the plane would be unflyable. As the fuel is used up during normal flight the consumption (and also the design layout of the fuel tanks) is arranged so that trim stays within this safe range. In large supersonic aircraft like the BAC Concorde there is a complication: during transition to supersonic speed (and back) the centre of lift shifts so much that, in order to keep the aircraft within a safe trim range, fuel has to be pumped between the main tanks and a fuel tank in the fin. The moral here is that an aircraft must always be kept within its safe trim range.

 

Also, what is supporting the aircraft weight at take-off? The landing gear! So it is possible to land at max take-off weight, but the inertia of touching down at normal vertical speed of landing (150 ft/min +/-) will probably overstress the landing gear. The other big problem is stopping, although, as we know, all civil aircraft must be able to stop from max take-off weight having reached the V1 speed. This is usually a point further down a runway than the touch-down point. :smilewink:

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Hmm... not the P-51 I'm sure. It was a tail dragger. It's tail ALWAYS sagged to the ground when it landed. That's how it worked!

 

Actually yes the p-51. Over in Aces high it is common knowledge as the issue is simulated.

There are many references to it on-line but here is one:

http://www.mustangsmustangs.com/p-51/p51variants/P-51B.php

 

" Fully fueled and loaded, the P-51B and P-51C were a handful in take-off and climb. Pilot's soon learned to burn most of the fuel in the fuselage tank first, then switch to the drop tanks before you had to drop them and fight"

 

Here's a thread where it was discussed, including a 51 pilot.

http://www.mustangsmustangs.us/thehangar/index.php?action=printpage;topic=115.0

"Initially we were unaware of the stability problem with a full fuselage tank and so in an effort to conserve fuel we would use the drop tank fuel first. The problem was that in a steep turning contest over Ploesti, our guys were reporting that once the turn had been established, they found themselves pushing FORWARD on the stick with all their strength to prevent the turn winding up. Some succeeded, some did not. Those that could not prevent the turn from getting tighter and tighter reported that the bird would whip over into the most vicious high speed stall snap roll they could imagine. This often culminated with a spin. To the best of my knowledge most were able to recover in the 30,000 feet or so they had available; however, it is possible that some who did not return might have failed to recover.

 

Within a couple of weeks we were given orders that after takeoff, we would burn the fuselage tank down to 35 gallons which would prevent the above from happening....well theoretically at least.

<S>


Edited by Hamblue

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