With today's changes from Andy, the YASim DC-3 now flies, beautifully. Rudder corrections do work during the later part of the takeoff roll (after you've lifted the tailwheel), but they have to be small and anticipatory -- i.e. if you hold the correction until you see its effect, you've held it too long (I stole that from a writeup by a real DC-3 pilot, but it seems to apply here as well). I let the plane weave a bit, but it wasn't too bad. The real challenge will be taking off in a crosswind, but I haven't tried that yet.
I flew a circuit around KSFO at 1000ft ASL, and the plane handled beautifully. I extended the crosswind and downwind slightly, but otherwise flew the circuit exactly as I would in a C172 except that I kept my inputs small and started them well in advance. I was amazed at how easy the plane was to handle and at how smooth and graceful its responses were -- either Andy's model is too simple, I'm a better pilot than I think (unlikely), or the DC-3 really deserves all the affection it gets from fliers. On final, I was so busy worrying about flaps, MP, RPM, gear, etc. that I didn't notice the plane climb back up to circuit altitude until I was fairly close to the runway. I pulled the throttle to idle, applied full flaps, and lowered the gear, and the plane practically flew itself down. The flare was beautiful -- the plane seemed to glide forever just above the surface, and it was still easy to control after the mains made contact (thank god for long jet runways). Nice work, Andy. For anyone else who wants to try this, the tailwheel is now locked by default, and you'll have to use 'l' (small L) to unlock it for taxiing. I'll have to start work on the 3D interior. All the best, David -- David Megginson, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.megginson.com/ _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
