On Tuesday 18 April 2006 23:00, barsalou wrote: > I have been trying to trim the rudder so that the plane doesn't go to > the left off the runway when trying to take off. > > Maybe this is normal airplane flight? > > > I have made attempts at setting the dead-band and other things, but am > not succeeding. > > I realize I probably haven't given enough info here...please help me > how you can. > > Mike B.
Mike, All prop driven aircraft exhibit torque affects during the take off roll and at lower speeds when power is increased. The more powerful the aircraft the greater the torque affects. Also the direction you go will depends on the direction of the props rotation. For most aircraft this will take you to the left. Something like the P-51, which has massive amounts of torque, can require full rudder to keep it on the runway during take off. In a cross wind it may not even be possible to keep it on the run way even with full rudder depending on the direction and strength of the cross wind. In fact you may at times need to reduce throttle to keep torque to a level that can be handled by the rudder. This is particularly true at lower speeds where the rudder has less authority. Tail draggers are more difficult in this respect because when you bring the tail up you also add gyroscopic forces to the torque forces. During the transition while the tail is coming up you must add more rudder correction than will be needed once the tail is fully up and things have stabilized. So let the tail up slowly and be prepared to dance on the rudder pedals as the tail comes up. I have a set of rudder pedals and I can't see how it would be possible to handle the more powerfull prop aircraft without these during take off. IMO there is simply no way that can be done with auto-coordination or using key board rudder controls. Aircraft with less torque will only need modest amounts of rudder input to deal with this. Therefore aircraft like the PA-28, C-172 and C-182 can be flown with auto-coordination without difficulty. Even the J3 is controlable without rudder pedals in spite of the fact that it is a tail dragger. It does not have enough power and torque to require more than modest amounts of rudder input during take off. But it will be a little tricker than the tricycle gear aircraft. Hal ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Flightgear-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-users
