Newby: landing and Trim

[Double Dutch]

hello,

 

I watched several items about trim and even though I manage to land my plane every time I don't use it. It's not that I don't know how to use it, it's just that I have no feeling with it. I know it's a balance between throttle and trim. Yesterday I did the training and trimmed some and played with the throttle but I have no clue what I am doing, basically I am still flying it in just with a trimmed plane. 

 

I see these people turning the plane, 3,5G or some 30degrees bank angle.. and they fly so smooth while I feel like a F1 driver trying to make the green boxes in the training mission.

 

I do the HSI, TACAN, Course line. What do I do with the course line? Line it along the runway?

 

Anyone have any  pointers for a newby?

[speed-of-heat]

try 

 

[Double Dutch]

52 minutes ago, speed-of-heat said:

try 

 

hi,

 

Is this the same training only for CV and with points so you can see how to improve? I would be scoring 0 on every mission (and never landing since I s*ck even on land to do it by the book). Or does the training verbally guide you through the actions?

[speed-of-heat]

its an exercise, you have broad parameters, work on one of them, for example when i started, i spent ages trying to get my entry height and speed into the break right, and then i moved on to my turn to the downwind leg etc... take it slowly focus on small improvements

 

I find landing on the boat easier than the ground   the boat moves

[Kempleja]

About trimmed landing, basically you just put the velocity vector in the middle of the E-bracket, line up with the runway or carrier and just use throttle to keep the velocity vector pointing to where you want to touch down. If velocity vector starts to go long, reduce throttle a bit, if it starts to go short, add throttle a bit. I don't even touch my stick during landings, just correct my course with pedals, if I drift left or right.

[Double Dutch]

7 minutes ago, Kempleja said:

About trimmed landing, basically you just put the velocity vector in the middle of the E-bracket, line up with the runway or carrier and just use throttle to keep the velocity vector pointing to where you want to touch down. If velocity vector starts to go long, reduce throttle a bit, if it starts to go short, add throttle a bit. I don't even touch my stick during landings, just correct my course with pedals, if I drift left or right.

So when do you trim?

 

You do your gear after the turn, how do you manage the parallel to runway flight and the 3,5G turn? That's where I am already fighting the plane

 

Or is it, you set your speed according your (ICLS?) orange circle and if you lose your E-bracket, you just trim up or down?

 

 

Edited July 28, 2021 by Double Dutch

[Tholozor]

The lights display to the left of the HUD is the Angle-of-Attack (AoA) indexer. It's a visual representation of the current AoA compared to the desired on-speed AoA for landing. The orange donut is at or near on-speed AoA (~8.1°). Red is slow, too much AoA. Green is fast, too little AoA.

 

Here's a reupload of Lex's video, take it from a real Hornet driver:

 

[CBStu]

My recommendation is forget doing pattern landings either on land or boat - for now. Do straight-in landings instead - for now. Pick any of the missions where you start 10-15 miles behind the boat/airstrip at maybe 3000ft and at 300. Probably best to start at an air strip. In fact it may be best to forget landing, just hold the plane at 3000ft. Pull the throttle back to idle, stay at 3000ft and watch the speed drop to 250 and drop the gear. You now have the E bracket on the hud  and speed keeps dropping so you can ad a little bit of up trim if you want. Once speed hits 170-180 drop the flaps. Now start adding more up trim to keep the marker in the E bracket. You will end up at about 135kn once everything has settled out so, as speed drops to about 145, start adding throttle. Remember more or less up trim centers the flight path marker in the E bracket and that is all it does. Throttle determines how fast you will drop toward the boat/airstrip. Your stick keeps you centered left to right and that is all it does. At first you will drop too much speed or have trouble getting trim/E bracket right. Don't worry, just keep at it w/ your adjustments. Eventually you will be flying along at 3000ft, E bracket centered, flight path marker on the horizon, at 135-140. Once you are stable do some slight turns, straighten out, hit the throttle, retract flaps, retract gear, and get back to your start point of 3000ft, 300 and try it again.

[Double Dutch]

@CBStu thank you... I will try that this evening!!

 

Sounds easy to try and absolutely useful!

6 hours ago, Tholozor said:

The lights display to the left of the HUD is the Angle-of-Attack (AoA) indexer. It's a visual representation of the current AoA compared to the desired on-speed AoA for landing. The orange donut is at or near on-speed AoA (~8.1°). Red is slow, too much AoA. Green is fast, too little AoA.

 

Here's a reupload of Lex's video, take it from a real Hornet driver:

 

Thanks!

 

using your feedback for my nots. 14 pages of it already!

[TimRobertsen]

1 hour ago, CBStu said:

You now have the E bracket on the hud  and speed keeps dropping so you can ad a little bit of up trim if you want.

If you are configuring for landing: Dont add trim before you extend the flaps.

Add trim after the flaps are extended.

 

@Double Dutch

Learn the different functions (flaps, flaps-ballooning, gear, E-bracket/AOA, flying throttle-for-pitch, and what they do/their dynamics. Then play around with it. And before you know it you'll find yourself doing >65 point Bankler Case I recoveries 

[Double Dutch]

3 hours ago, TimRobertsen said:

If you are configuring for landing: Dont add trim before you extend the flaps.

Add trim after the flaps are extended.

 

@Double Dutch

Learn the different functions (flaps, flaps-ballooning, gear, E-bracket/AOA, flying throttle-for-pitch, and what they do/their dynamics. Then play around with it. And before you know it you'll find yourself doing >65 point Bankler Case I recoveries 

Well... I tried to day... free flight, under 250 knots, gear out, flaps out.... but my E bracket is waaaaay down like 12-14 degrees down angle. I have no Idea if I have to trim nose up or down. Meanwhile in free flight my load out is not symmetrical, so my plane want to go to the left as well what I am trying to trim... grrrr

 

What I do:

Slow down by throttle, when I get under 250 knots, Gear out (for the E bracket) and flaps on full.

 

But it looks like I am falling out of the sky....

 

Edited July 28, 2021 by Double Dutch

[Ala12Rv-Tundra]

1 hour ago, Double Dutch said:

Well... I tried to day... free flight, under 350 knots, gear out, flaps out.... but my E bracket is waaaaay down like 12-14 degrees down angle. I have no Idea if I have to trim nose up or down. Meanwhile in free flight my load out is not symmetrical, so my plane want to go to the left as well what I am trying to trim... grrrr

 

What I do:

Slow down by throttle, when I get under 250 knots, Gear out (for the E bracket) and flaps on full.

 

But it looks like I am falling out of the sky....

 

Just focus on the indexer light and ipress the trim hat that iluminates, that's is, if the upper part of the index is lit, press trim upper hat(trim down). 

Hornet has auto trimming. With wheels up, it forces 1g.

With wheels and flaps down, trim maintains aoa angle. 

That's why using the stick for ascending or descending messes the whole thing. 

And anticipate the exponential lack of lift when velocity is decreasing by increasing thrust

Let me wait till I get home, but there is a wonderful video about flying the hornet on speed on YouTube

[Jenson]

If you don't trim, your approaching speed at on speed AOA will be higher than when you properly trimmed. That will cause problem especially when landing on a carrier. 

 

Basically when you land, you don't give any pitch input but only adjust your throttle and bank input, this is not viable if not properly trimmed, 

[Tom Kazansky]

43 minutes ago, Jenson said:

If you don't trim, your approaching speed at on speed AOA will be higher than when you properly trimmed.

Can you elaborate on this? Why should the speed be higher when pilot holds the elevators so that on speed is established vs the FCS does it?

Edited July 29, 2021 by Tom Kazansky

[Jenson]

58 minutes ago, Tom Kazansky said:

Can you elaborate on this? Why should the speed be higher when pilot holds the elevators so that on speed is established vs the FCS does it?

 

 

Sorry I think I might be wrong after a reconsideration, without a proper trim or manual pitch input, the aircraft is unlikely able to achieve on-speed AOA in the first place. However in the original statement, My thinking was that without trim or manual pitch up, the aircraft needs a higher speed to provide enough lift at a 8.1 degree AOA. 

[Brun]

These topics always seem to be people struggling to understand how the velocity vector and e-bracket relate to each other, and how the controls affect them. It seems to be compounded by thinking that trim is a critical component of this, but I don't think that helps because it really isn't.

 

Consider this image....

 

 

Level flight and perfectly on-speed (ignore the crosswind offsetting the velocity vector). So it would appear that the aircraft is correctly trimmed, right? But look at the controls indicator in the bottom-left corner. You can see I'm having to apply considerable back-pressure on the stick to keep the aircraft in this state. If I were to relax the stick, the nose would drop immediately. This is *literally* the only thing that trim affects. You can fly any approach and landing without touching it, but will need constant pressure on the stick, which is uncomfortable and makes it slightly harder to control.

 

If anyone's struggling with the fundamentals of this stuff, my advice would be to ignore trim entirely. Simply practice getting the aircraft on-speed using the stick and throttle alone. This will give you a much better feeling for the controls, and hopefully dispel the apparent myth that trim is some magical force which is necessary to fly correctly.

 

Once you've got the hang of things, use trim so the aircraft will remain in its desired state when you relax the stick. That's really all it's for.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Brun

[macedk]

It is a coordinated dance, tape your run and break it into sections. I still struggle with my last 90 degree turn. I can not find a trick to it yet. Also make sure your jet is within parameters for landing. You can land at high gross weight in DCS but difficult and will teach bad behavior. Upload your attempt and let people help from there

[WytchCrypt]

I'm not an expert and only make about 40% of my carrier traps (and my LSO hates to see me in the stack) but I can say I was very resistant to learning the proper trim AOA technique of landing the Hornet for many months.  I kept thinking why should I bother with trimming, I'll just fly the AOA with the stick.  Well, after having zero success consistently landing with proper AOA, I decided I wanted to learn how to land the way the real Hornet pilots do so I finally bit the bullet and mapped the trim up & down controls to my flight controller.  It took many hours to get used to it but now that I am I find dropping the gear, flaps on full then trimming AOA and controlling altitude with the throttle to be one of the most fun things about flying the Hornet!

 

When I was learning I watched many youtube vids but this is the one that really clicked for me.  I like it because it's not just about trimming AOA for landing, but how to practice trimming AOA in general and get comfortable with it.

 

 

[CBStu]

"Slow down by throttle, when I get under 250 knots, Gear out (for the E bracket) and flaps on full."

Double, the 'flaps on full' is a problem at 250. The plane will head for the sky at that speed. I wait til the gear down has dropped the speed to 175 and then drop flaps. You can help it some by pushing the stick forward but why bother, just wait til 175. 

[TimRobertsen]

13 hours ago, CBStu said:

"Slow down by throttle, when I get under 250 knots, Gear out (for the E bracket) and flaps on full."

Double, the 'flaps on full' is a problem at 250. The plane will head for the sky at that speed. I wait til the gear down has dropped the speed to 175 and then drop flaps. You can help it some by pushing the stick forward but why bother, just wait til 175. 

Or deploy the flaps when the AOA is around 8-10 degrees, that way you'll avoid most of the ballooning.

The AOA is a bit more constant indicator, in contrast to airspeed.

 

Depending on aircraft weight, the speed for avoiding ballooning varies quite a lot, from 160 (light) to 210 (heavy), if Im not misremembering. However, the AOA will give you the right point for deploying flaps regardless of aircraftweight.

[Steel Jaw]

I find Hornet trimming very twitchy.

[Brun]

2 hours ago, Mower said:

I find Hornet trimming very twitchy.

 

Out of curiosity, do you have it set up as DirectX buttons or is it mapped using the keyboard? I'm wondering if a button press can be shorter than a standard keypress and whether that might make a difference.

[Steel Jaw]

DX

1 hour ago, Brun said:

 

Out of curiosity, do you have it set up as DirectX buttons or is it mapped using the keyboard? I'm wondering if a button press can be shorter than a standard keypress and whether that might make a difference.

DX

[WytchCrypt]

19 hours ago, TimRobertsen said:

Or deploy the flaps when the AOA is around 8-10 degrees, that way you'll avoid most of the ballooning.

The AOA is a bit more constant indicator, in contrast to airspeed.

 

Depending on aircraft weight, the speed for avoiding ballooning varies quite a lot, from 160 (light) to 210 (heavy), if Im not misremembering. However, the AOA will give you the right point for deploying flaps regardless of aircraftweight.

 Interesting...I'll have to give this a try.  Currently I drop gear and go full flaps when I pass 250kts in the break...then I stick forward to counter the ballooning and once I stabilize level then I trim to AOA...

Edited July 31, 2021 by WytchCrypt

[TimRobertsen]

5 hours ago, WytchCrypt said:

 Interesting...I'll have to give this a try.  Currently I drop gear and go full flaps when I pass 250kts in the break...then I stick forward to counter the ballooning and once I stabilize level then I trim to AOA...

 

Yeah, I got tired of having to force the stick forward to avoid the ballooning, it's a good workaround which gives a smoother landing-configuration-process.

 

Another neat trick, for speeding up the landing-config-process, is to deploy the flaps when the velocity vector is at 8.1 AOA on the E-bracket, and immediately give a quick tap on the trim-up-button. This will lock the trim to the AOA you had when you tapped the trim-button, completely bypassing the entire trim-process, and taking you straight into flying throttle-for-pitch. It comes in handy for fast breaks  

Although, this will produce ballooning, since the you are locking the AOA/trim at an airspeed far above the airspeed for straight and level 8.1 AOA-flying. But, the ballooning is not much of a problem since you're usually halfway through the break-turn when you trim. This has the added benefit of putting you at on-speed, at steady level flight (all good and dirtied up), when you level out of the break-turn. Giving you a nice and chill downwind leg