Aircraft behaviour - Landing, Taxiing and Steering

Landing, taxiing and steering

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Landing, taxiing and steering tips

Spoilers - how to make them auto-deploy
For the spoilers to operate correctly, the main wheels must be on the ground and the throttles retarded to IDLE. The auto-retard in FS2002 is flaky. To make the spoilers work you must have disabled the autothrottles on approach and retard them manually at the flare, then the spoilers work. Every single time.

Stopping your aircraft veering to the left
Disable your joystick. Use the arrow keys and hit the 5 key to center the stick. Save the flight as your default. Exit FS. Restart FS and confirm that using the keyboard that the problem is gone, then re-enable your joystick.

Somehow the settings will get stuck for the joystick and it will not re-center. By using the keys you can make the problem go away and when you restart it will be gone. Reactivating the joystick will then put you back in business with the joystick centered.

Float Plane taxiing - how to avoid using maximum power
[WEIGHT_AND_BALANCE]
reference_datum_position=0, 0, 0 // (feet) distance from FlightSim Reference position: (1/4 chord, centerline, waterline)
empty_weight_CG_position=0, 0, 0 // (feet) longitudinal, lateral, vertical distance from specified datum
max_number_of_stations=50
station_load.0=0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000
empty_weight=8000.250000 // (pounds) Reduce weight here
empty_weight_pitch_MOI=35000.000000
empty_weight_roll_MOI=30000.000000
empty_weight_yaw_MOI=25000.000000
empty_weight_coupled_MOI=0.0
max_gross_weight=9000.250000 // (pounds) Reduce weight here
CG_forward_limit=0.000
CG_aft_limit=1.000

If the aircraft lifts out of the water too late, adjust here:

[airplane_geometry]
wing_incidence=1.500000 Increase if less than values
oswald_efficiency_factor=1.0 Increase if less than values (between 0.0 and 1.0 but you can try more than 1.0 values)

Pushback steering
If you stick to one view from the start you can steer the aircraft backwards using pushback.

1) Number pad keys 1 and 2 do not work - use the main numbers row.

2) The aircraft will only respond to a left or right turn after it has traveled it's own length in the direction it's currently going from the time you press 1 or 2. So anticipate the turn by the length of the aircraft.

High speed taxi fix
(Note: The following editable lines are more commonly found in the devices.cfg file)

AXIS_EVENT_06=AXIS_THROTTLE_SET
AXIS_SCALE_06=127

AXIS_EVENT_06=AXIS_THROTTLE_SET
AXIS_SCALE_06=130

High speed taxi fix
To resolve some of the high-speed taxi issues with turbo-props try changing the beta _min= line in aircraft cfg.file to a lower number.

[propeller]
thrust_scalar=1.0 //Propeller thrust scalar
propeller_type=0 //0=Constant Speed, 1=Fixed Pitch
propeller_diameter=8.9 //Propeller Diameter, (feet)
propeller_blades=4 //Number of propeller blades
propeller_moi=22 //Propeller moment of inertia
beta_max=45 //Maximum blade pitch angle for constant speed prop, (degrees)
beta_min=12.7 ***************** //Minimum blade pitch angle for constant speed prop, (degrees)
min_gov_rpm=25520 //Miminum governed RPM
prop_tc=0.004 //Prop time-constant
gear_reduction_ratio=17.9 //Propeller gear reduction ratio
fixed_pitch_beta=0 //Fixed pitch angle of fixed pitch prop, (degrees)
low_speed_theory_limit=80 //Speed at which low speed theory becomes blended in (feet/second)
prop_sync_available=1 //Prop synchronization available? 0=FALSE, 1=TRUE
prop_deice_available=1 //Prop de-icing available? 0=FALSE, 1=TRUE
prop_feathering_available=1 //Prop feathering available? 0=FALSE, 1=TRUE
prop_auto_feathering_available=1 //Prop auto-feathering available? 0=FALSE, 1=TRUE
min_rpm_for_feather=700 //Minimum RPM for prop feathering
beta_feather=79.3 //Feathering pitch angle (degrees)
power_absorbed_cf=0.9 //Coefficient of friction for power absorbed by propeller
defeathering_accumulators_available=0 //Defeathering accumulators available? 0=FALSE, 1=TRUE
prop_reverse_available=1 //Prop reverse available? 0=FALSE, 1=TRUE
minimum_on_ground_beta=1.0 //Miminum pitch angle on ground, (degrees)
minimum_reverse_beta=-14.0

Change oversensible steering on ground
This can be changed by editing the specific parameter for the maximum steering angle of the steered (front) wheel. But this also means that the ability of doing narrow turns on the ground will get worse too.

To change the steering angle open the aircrafts aircraft.cfg file with notepad or similar editor. Look for the section [contact_points] and here for the point.0, which is for the steered wheel.
Change the 8th entry (separated by commas) which in the following example is 30.0.

point.0=1, 0.48, 0.00, -3.58, 1500, 0, 0.5, 30.0, 0.3, 2.5, 0.7, 0.0, 0.0, 0 //Change 30.0

Decreasing the value makes the ground steering less sensible. Try out different values, something about 15 to 20 will be allright for most aircrafts.