Reply To: Realistic trimming in P3DV4 and XP11

[medtner]

I’m using the AP when I sometimes have to get some food during longer flights. Even complex IFR-flying in the system (PilotEdge) I do by hand. It’s extremely rewarding, and one only gets good at handflying by doing handflying. 🙂

Let’s say I’m climbing out after takeoff. I handfly without trimming until I have reached an altitude where I deem it safe to start “cleaning up” the plane – transitioning from takeoff to climb/cruise-climb. At that point the aircraft will have reached a higher speed, and I will use quite a bit of force to keep it at my desired climb rate. If I start trimming the airplane the yoke will stay in place, but I will need less and less force. In practice one is moving the “neutral position” with the trim wheel, and you can see it when using the trim wheel when the CLS2SIM program is activated and the yoke is synched (before starting the sim). Moving the wheel will make the yoke move.

So if I level out without trimming the plane from TO-position it will require lots of forward pressure on the yoke to keep it from climbing. Trimming will remove that force gradually. Feels fantastic, and is exactly the point with such a device as the Brunner Yoke. Using a standard spring/rubber band yoke is for me now laughably unrealistic.

As an aside – the amount of precision in the Brunner Yoke was a surprising element for me. The tiniest movement has a corresponding response in the sim – you feel like you have endless precision available. The smallest inputs are registered smoothly, and one of the greatest places is during the transition from final decent and flare. The feeling of the controls becoming less responsive – lighter – and the control one gets over this during the transition is second to none. My landings improved within minutes of starting to fly with the Brunner. The plane speaks to you, and you can respond with the correct input, without being pestered with sticky controls or center detents, or uniform resistance from the spring/rubber band.

I only wish I was very rich so that I could buy a Brunner-set for all true flight-sim geeks. Not all need to have the Rolls Royce of controls, but the ones that get it will forget they paid the price. It’s easily on my lifetime top 3 purchases.

Rant over 😉

Yours,

Erik