One last wish prior to the end of early access.

[Avimimus]

Add an independent control for the Canard flaps... (even as an easter egg)!

 

It isn't flying correctly 'by the book'. But it is possible in real life. Pilots have done it.

 

I'm really curious to the experience it.

[renhanxue]

20 hours ago, Avimimus said:

 But it is possible in real life. Pilots have done it.

[citation needed]

 

How would they have done this? To the best of my knowledge there is absolutely no way to control the canard flaps from the cockpit, except indirectly via the landing gear lever (gear goes out, canards flaps go down together with it).

Edited June 26, 2021 by renhanxue

[Avimimus]

Something of a mea culpa here:  I was sure I'd read on the forums that this was possible, and even seen mention of the names of some pilots who managed to do it. But I haven't been able to find the quote on the forum and now I'm wondering if I dreamt that it was possible. So - sorry about this.

 

I must say that the aerodynamics are fascinating, as is the engineering. So if I am dreaming, it is out of love for the module and design. Anyway, I suppose if I want the experience I ought to just fly with the landing gear down.

 

P.S.

That said - it might have been that there is a way to adjust the automatic trimming of the flaps while they are down (obviously with the landing gear down)... this could have been mentioned and I might have misremembered it.

[Bananabrai]

In the Tornado there was a small phase of updates in the early 90s, where the WSO could use the radar stick to fly the aircraft.

It was just a "beta-test", and was removed eventually, because it made no sense, there is no throttles, no gear lever, no flap or wing pivot or rudder control in the back.

 

But it was tested anyway, so I could think of this being a test in the swedish airforce as well.

As an engineer I would a say it could have been done via the radar stick, if that was a real thing.

Air Forces do this stuff, and the companys that manufacture the aircraft as well.

Sometimes DCS guys are more strict than real life. 

[renhanxue]

On 7/19/2021 at 6:00 AM, Avimimus said:

P.S.

That said - it might have been that there is a way to adjust the automatic trimming of the flaps while they are down (obviously with the landing gear down)... this could have been mentioned and I might have misremembered it.

The canard flaps only have three possible settings: fully deployed (+30°), retracted (-4°) and extra retracted (-7°). That last option is used when flying with tail-heavy external loads (e.g. AKAN/ARAK pods or the ECM pods) and increases negative pitch authority as well as roll authority at supersonic speeds a bit. The option is controlled by a switch in a technical compartment on the fuselage and is set by the flight mechanic during the rearming procedure, if loadouts that warrant it are carried. There are no provisions whatsoever for any other flap settings anywhere on the aircraft.

 

What you might be thinking of though is that as the flaps move, they automatically re-trim the pitch continuously so you don't get a nose-up trim change when they deploy. This is done mechanically - as the flaps move, they act on a pulley system that mechanically interacts with the pitch controls to droop the neutral position of the elevons correspondingly, without any perceived trim change for the pilot.

 

15 hours ago, Bananabrai said:

In the Tornado there was a small phase of updates in the early 90s, where the WSO could use the radar stick to fly the aircraft.

It was just a "beta-test", and was removed eventually, because it made no sense, there is no throttles, no gear lever, no flap or wing pivot or rudder control in the back.

 

But it was tested anyway, so I could think of this being a test in the swedish airforce as well.

As an engineer I would a say it could have been done via the radar stick, if that was a real thing.

Air Forces do this stuff, and the companys that manufacture the aircraft as well.

Sometimes DCS guys are more strict than real life. 

Well, if you make changes to the aircraft you end up with a changed aircraft. But this is a simulator and the goal, I would assume, is to emulate the real aircraft as it actually worked.

 

I'm not an engineer, but I do know how the AJ 37's flight control system works, and I can tell you with a great deal of confidence that both having cockpit-controllable flaps and flying the aircraft with the radar stick would require major physical changes to the aircraft. The AJ 37's flight control system is really neat and interesting, but it predates true fly-by-wire and is mostly mechanical - it's physical linkages, pulleys, differential gearings and hydraulic servos almost all the way down. The electronically controlled part of the system is actually physically separate from the rest of the flight controls - the autopilot is in charge of that part, and it works exclusively with the outer elevons. Normally (with SPAK enabled) the outer elevons just follow the inner ones, but with the autopilot adding its oscillation dampening on top. If you disable SPAK you lose access to some authority on the outer elevons, because that's reserved for the autopilot's own use only (for oscillation dampening). If you somehow hooked up the radar stick to the flight controls electronically you'd only have access to those outer elevons, nothing else, because everything else is purely hydromechanical. The electronics simply follow the hydromechanical system; there is no interaction the other way around. They did things that way because they didn't trust the electronics yet and wanted the aircraft to still be controllable (although limited to half the elevon authority) in the event of an electronics failure. The JA 37 is a bit closer to actual fly-by-wire but still not quite there (I don't recall off the top of my head exactly how it works but I'm quite certain it retains the basic hydromechanical system, although the electronics have more of a say).

 

As for the canard flaps, the landing gear lever is literally connected via a pulley system to a valve that controls the hydraulic jacks that actuate the flaps. That's it, "down" or "up" are all the controls you get. I mean, I guess you could add another separate lever connected in the same way but not connected to the landing gear, but that's a major physical change to the aircraft and we're well into fantasy territory at that point. It might be worth mentioning as well that on the JA 37 they actually simplified the canard flaps even further and removed the "extra retracted" position as well, so there's only deployed and retracted, nothing else.

Edited July 20, 2021 by renhanxue

[Machalot]

Maybe I missed something. Why would you want to control the Viggen with the radar stick? 

[Bananabrai]

I was wondering the same thing. My example orginiated from the Tornado, which has true fly-by-wire.
Maybe I did write in a way that it could be missunderstood, sorry for that.

 

The OP "asks" for let's say an easter-egg to control the canard flaps. 

My proposal was then, that this maybe could be done via the radar stick, at least that's how I would do it.

What I did not know is that the control system is completly incapable of such control. Thanks for the clarification.

 

Apart from that, the example was not made for flying the Viggen with the radar stick.

It makes no sense, there is a control stick for that. In the Tornado backseat there was however no control stick.
 

My example still shows that manufactures and/or operators do not build all aircraft up to the same standart and do test things out, even if you have a set of changed aircraft then.

These were still real aircraft that actually worked, multiple ones, of different squandrons, for period of time, in normal GAF service.

[Eldur]

On 7/19/2021 at 6:00 AM, Avimimus said:

Something of a mea culpa here:  I was sure I'd read on the forums that this was possible, and even seen mention of the names of some pilots who managed to do it. But I haven't been able to find the quote on the forum and now I'm wondering if I dreamt that it was possible. So - sorry about this.

 

You didn't dream, I remember that as well. There even was a video that shows how to do it by somehow unlatching the levers from each other, which isn't exactly easy, but doable.Within that discussion, Cobra jumped in and said they might consider modeling it, but unsure if they'll ever actually do, due to priorities.

 

But he clearly stated that they have been pointed at an error in the module which they'd definately gonna fix. That error being the flaps coming up directly together with the gear whereas IRL the gear would come up first, followed by the flaps afterwards. That post was somewhere in 2017, and the bahaviour still hasn't changed yet. Any chance we'll see that soon™, @Cobra847?

[IronMike]

On 9/16/2021 at 2:33 AM, Eldur said:

 

You didn't dream, I remember that as well. There even was a video that shows how to do it by somehow unlatching the levers from each other, which isn't exactly easy, but doable.Within that discussion, Cobra jumped in and said they might consider modeling it, but unsure if they'll ever actually do, due to priorities.

 

But he clearly stated that they have been pointed at an error in the module which they'd definately gonna fix. That error being the flaps coming up directly together with the gear whereas IRL the gear would come up first, followed by the flaps afterwards. That post was somewhere in 2017, and the bahaviour still hasn't changed yet. Any chance we'll see that soon™, @Cobra847?

 

 

It is on our list, Eldur. Thank you for reminding us, I almost forgot about it.

[renhanxue]

On 9/16/2021 at 3:33 AM, Eldur said:

 

You didn't dream, I remember that as well. There even was a video that shows how to do it by somehow unlatching the levers from each other, which isn't exactly easy, but doable.

 

On 7/19/2021 at 6:00 AM, Avimimus said:

Something of a mea culpa here:  I was sure I'd read on the forums that this was possible, and even seen mention of the names of some pilots who managed to do it. But I haven't been able to find the quote on the forum and now I'm wondering if I dreamt that it was possible.

I have to retract my earlier statements about this being impossible, and I apologise for unintentionally gaslighting you, because I found the thread: 

 

The SFI mentions absolutely nothing about this, but apparently the mechanism that physically connects the flap linkage to the landing gear lever is actually accessible from inside the cockpit, and it can be unlatched from the landing gear lever with some fiddling (you have to reach in underneath the handle of the landing gear lever and push on a latch down there). You're clearly not supposed to do this - the flap linkage doesn't have a handle, for one thing - but it is possible. I based my  previous statements in this thread solely on the manual which just says that there's a physical linkage - I interpreted that as it being permanent, which it is not.

Edited September 29, 2021 by renhanxue

[Avimimus]

14 hours ago, renhanxue said:

I have to retract my earlier statements about this being impossible, and I apologise for unintentionally gaslighting you, because I found the thread: 

 

Thank you for finding the thread.

 

Honestly:

1) I really appreciated your in-depth reply (and the other replies). I actually had a note reminding me to return to this thread to thank everyone but got distracted with work.

2) When I looked up control diagrams and original sources I was also convincing myself that it was impossible. What you wrote made sense.

 

On 9/15/2021 at 9:33 PM, Eldur said:

You didn't dream, I remember that as well.

 

That said - I appreciated reading this. If you suspect yourself of going mad, it is nice to at least know that some other people are also going mad with you! Less lonely if it is a mass hallucination!