Simviation Forum - Sopwith Camel - Little ground control with Rudder

May 28^th, 2009 at 3:22pm

JJH Offline
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Download - Vintage Page 40 - Sopwith Camel Package

I need some advice. The aircraft doesn't react too well to the rudder while taxiing, turns very very slowly. There are five lines in the aircraft cfg. which pertain to the rudder:

[flight tuning]
Rudder effectiveness=1
Rudder trim effectiveness=1

[keyboard response]
rudder=200, 1000

[airplane geometry]
rudder area=7
rudder limit=25

I've changed the rudder limit to 40 which has produced some improvement. The rudder area I am reluctant to change (if it would, in fact, change) since that may adversely affect the air performance and balance of the aircraft.

The other three items I have tweaked even though I don't know the relativity of the numbers, but without any success.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Jim B.

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Reply #1 - May 28^th, 2009 at 5:06pm

Formula_1 Offline
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Clearwater, Florida

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Hi

I don't have the plane, but if modeled correctly it has a fixed skid instead of a steerable tailwheel. It also wouldn't have differential braking, I don't believe.

If you have ever seen any WWI footage of these planes being operated on the ground, they had help turning. I.E. gound crews would hold the wings to turn them and get them pointed in the right direction.

Have you read the readme? Maybe it has some information on this and possible key commands that would replicate ground crew handlers, in some way.

Explore Everything, Then Decide

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Reply #2 - May 28^th, 2009 at 7:11pm

Romflyer Offline
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Formula_1 wrote on May 28^th, 2009 at 5:06pm:

Hi

I don't have the plane, but if modeled correctly it has a fixed skid instead of a steerable tailwheel. It also wouldn't have differential braking, I don't believe.

If you have ever seen any WWI footage of these planes being operated on the ground, they had help turning. I.E. gound crews would hold the wings to turn them and get them pointed in the right direction.

Have you read the readme? Maybe it has some information on this and possible key commands that would replicate ground crew handlers, in some way.

what he said Wink

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Reply #3 - May 28^th, 2009 at 7:48pm

MiltonShupe Offline
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If this aircraft is from FS2002, or like item, you can change contact point.0 to steerable by replacing the 180.0 to 45.0 or any suitable number.
(Although the skid may not turn, the FM will think it does)

In the aircraft.cfg file, Contact Points section:

point.0=1, -9.0, 0.0, -2.2, 1181.1, 0, 0.519, 180.0, 0.304, 2.5, 0.695, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0

If that works for you, I would recommend returning the other changed values to the original values.

You can also add braking, and individual brakes if you wish. Simply copy that Brakes section from another aircraft.cfg file, like this:

[brakes]
toe_brakes_scale = 0.68
parking_brake = 1
differential_braking_scale = 1.0

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Reply #4 - May 29^th, 2009 at 8:31am

JJH Offline
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You can so teach an old
dog new tricks
Oakville ON Canada

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Formula_1 wrote on May 28^th, 2009 at 5:06pm:

Hi

I don't have the plane, but if modeled correctly it has a fixed skid instead of a steerable tailwheel. It also wouldn't have differential braking, I don't believe.

If you have ever seen any WWI footage of these planes being operated on the ground, they had help turning. I.E. gound crews would hold the wings to turn them and get them pointed in the right direction.

Have you read the readme? Maybe it has some information on this and possible key commands that would replicate ground crew handlers, in some way.

Yup. Skid, no brakes and no info in the readme file. I'm going to try Milton's suggestion on changing contact points.

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Reply #5 - May 29^th, 2009 at 8:37am

JJH Offline
Colonel
You can so teach an old
dog new tricks
Oakville ON Canada

Gender:
Posts: 152

MiltonShupe wrote on May 28^th, 2009 at 7:48pm:

If this aircraft is from FS2002, or like item, you can change contact point.0 to steerable by replacing the 180.0 to 45.0 or any suitable number.
(Although the skid may not turn, the FM will think it does)

In the aircraft.cfg file, Contact Points section:

point.0=1, -9.0, 0.0, -2.2, 1181.1, 0, 0.519, 180.0, 0.304, 2.5, 0.695, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0

If that works for you, I would recommend returning the other changed values to the original values.

You can also add braking, and individual brakes if you wish. Simply copy that Brakes section from another aircraft.cfg file, like this:

[brakes]
toe_brakes_scale = 0.68
parking_brake = 1
differential_braking_scale = 1.0

I expect the number you highlighted is the number of degrees of movement of the "tailwheel". So I changed it to 45 (from 0) and now I can control taxiing. Thanks again, Milton.

The only thing I had left unchanged during my tweaking was the Rudder limit, which I have changed back to the original 25.

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Reply #6 - May 29^th, 2009 at 9:11am

MiltonShupe Offline
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That's correct; it is the degrees of deflection for the tail wheel.

180 represents free castoring IF the model is animated for that.

Any contact point for the center / steering gear can be changed in this way. 45 degrees is typically the strongest you will want to make it because of ground ops difficulty. Frankly I prefer 40 or less which works great unless you need to turn on a dime. Most manufacturers advise against pivoting on one gear in the RW.

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