taildraggers & Stinson erratic ground handling

Question

Dear Sirs,

I want to support and confirm the two requests before me to fix the erratic, unpredictable, almost unusable ground handling of the Stinson and other tail draggers. I am a private pilot with

tail dragger experience, which I would have liked to refresh with X-plane 11.

One of the major reasons (I'm sure I am not alone) for my purchase of X-plane 11 was

to get the most realistic taildragger modeling using propwash over the elevator and

rudder.

A2A accu-sim planes in FSX come closest to reality, but I thought X-plane would be the

pinnacle for those embracing vintage taildraggers. I am SORELY disappointed.

PLEASE, address, fix promptly, and allow the full  taildragger potential

of X-plane 11.

Thanks

dts

Comments

And taxi operations with cross wind, may I add..

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This person made a Youtube video of his initial shocked experience and

the absurdity of the X-Plane 11 Stinson erratic ground handling.  This

is NO WIND. This faulty behavior carries over in some degree to

all X-plane taildraggers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0duuqbmr4o

Answer 1

In general, Austin codes the flight model based on his experience in very carefully controlled conditions. If his experience doesn't cover an area (like tail dragger aircraft) the flight model may not be tuned exactly right.

We hear complaints about tail dragger aircraft occasionally but have not yet gotten the type of data he needs to make changes. He will be looking for very specific mathematical proof to tweak the flight model for these aircraft. If anyone has specific data they should submit it via the bug reporter.

Comments

A student pilot here - in a C172 and use the Laminar C172 exclusively. In no wind conditions, the flight model seems reasonably good. Put in some wind/gusts (particularly cross-wind) and the model becomes unrealistic. Since almost all my hours seem to be on windy days (e.g.W 8kt G12kt) this doesn't help.

I realize that Laminar is a comparatively small group, but their efforts in VR seemed to have sucked the oxygen out of other areas - improving flight models, implementing Vulkan, etc.

I tried VR - even bought an Oculus Rift just for X-Plane - disappointed. After one gets over the "wow" factor, it's obvious the today's VR technology isn't really up to the speed, resolution, handling requirements of a program such as X-Plane. In VR it's more like an arcade game, rather than a professional flying tool.

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Even if you don't get the coefficients exactly right on the first try, it would be good to model the basic principles: the bigger the difference between the speed of the propeller airstream and the relative wind, the bigger impact the propeller airstream has on rudder and elevator effectiveness.

At slow taxi speeds, the rudder and elevator are basically flying in the propwash rather than in the relative wind, so they're much more effective than they would otherwise be. I see taildraggers using a little power to keep their tails off the ground all the way in (at least when they want to show off).