I have been using FlightGear since 7.7 and have only recently begun to follow the CVS snapshot. I worked my way through college and a flight Instructor and have about 1500 hours in real ac. I also have flown many tail-draggers. I agree with your view of the tail-dragger ac and pilots. I have both the CH Products Flight Sim Yoke and the CH Pro-pedals. I have the joysticks.xml set up so I have differential toe brakes. I can repeatably take off in the dc3-yasim w/o the tail wheel lock and not using (I thought) any brakes.
Three observations concerning the dc3-yasim. 1. If the tail wheel is not locked, I find it much easier to take off after removing the coupling of the rudder with the brakes for both main gear from the dc3.xml. I always thought when early-on I had trouble that it felt like I had some brake on durring the take-off roll. Since I am always very active with the rudder to keep the nose straight, I was always getting brake w/o knowing it. 2. It seems to me that the dc3 always leaves the ground before I can raise the tail (even with full down elavator). This is not what a real tail dragger does. That is why you get the sensation in the dc3-yasim of a bouncing wheel landing while accelerating to VMC as soon as the tail comes up. Could it be that the main gear are too far forward, or the affective size of the horizontal stab is too small? 3. In a real tail dragger, once you can raise the tail, the main gear are still on the ground, and the ac quickly accelerates and the rudder becomes very much more affective. So w/o tailwheel lock, one would expect to be very busy on the rudder (always ending any rudder correction with slight oposite rudder to stop any correction moment). As soon as the tail comes up, things get much easier, even in a cross-wind. Hope this helps improve the dc3 model! A good tail dragger is more fun, even in a simulator. Regards, Dave _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
