> After that I went to met up with > a fuel tanker to try and refuel. Trying to hook up with the tanker was > the most challenging part of the experience. I spent what felt like 10 > minutes trying to speedup, slowdown, noseup, nosedown, left, right until > I gave up.
I've only refueled in 707's, but: Everybody has trouble at first, but aileron and elevator response are almost instantaneous, and the control surfaces are sized and scheduled to give a certain amount of roll or pitch rate, so that's probably not where the delay comes from. When it comes to roll control the main problem is the receiving airplane's interaction with the wingtip vortices from the tanker. I don't know if their simulator models this effect. If it does, it could be mistaken for lack of roll response. Elevator response is not a problem usually. In fact, it's usually too touchy at first because the CG has moved aft as fuel was burned prior to refueling. As you take on fuel the CG moves forward and the pitch control becomes less sensitive. I don't know if swing-wing airplanes do this, as they have their own bag of CG problems and solutions. Speed response is pretty slow due to the airplane's inertia and the engines' spool-up time. The problem gets worse as the receiving airplane gets heavier. The interaction of the above may cause one or more channels in your brain to drop out for a second, which could also be perceived as slow response. This also happens when you first try to learn an instrument scan. You can practice refueling to some extent in FlightGear using the AI tanker. There is an annoying problem though, in that as you get close to the tanker it appears to jump in 30-foot leaps (so you can't *really* practice refueling). Also, we don't model downwash, wingtip vortices, weight change, and CG travel. Dave -- **************************** David Culp davidculp2[at]comcast.net **************************** _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
