Ideal Flight Accessibility phase 3

[Steve Waite]

The climb rate is sensed in the feedback loop, so a simple modification I can do to the take off assist is to adjust the climb rate less steep if the climb can't be maintained. However, if the aircraft is too heavy to climb then the aircraft won't climb even if the climb rate is reduced to minimum.

[Steve Waite]

Regarding the possibility of the landing assist engaging too early, I am considering a small modification there, since the engines are cut and the brakes applied after touchdown. Those can be turned off in the Assist Window until just before approach. So if these are set to ON already during takeoff, and the aircraft touches down it will be as if the aircraft is landing. I will see what can be done to avoid take off bounces. Take off and landing bounces are recorded and It might be that the landing assist is coming on too early. In the meantime only enable landing assist after successful take off.

[Steve Waite]

...I've been inspecting the code regarding the landing assist features; Cutting Throttle, Turn off Auto Pilot, and runway direction steering with braking assist, none of these will actuate during take off, they only become available after your aircraft successfully climbed beyond landing gear and flaps up which will be at least thirty seconds after lift off. During take off, the vertical speed starts at 500 feet per minute for rotate, then reduces to 300 fpm momentarily to allow speed to increase until climbing, then increases to the value you put in the Aircraft "Flight Parameters" page, available from the button at the bottom of the Aircraft Selection page or the Flight Generator page.

[Steve Waite]

The Assist item "Corrected Attitude on Touchdown" pulls the nose up with elevator and actuates ailerons to keep level just prior to landing, and in the same way as other landing assist features only becomes available after successful take off.

[Steve Waite]

One problem I've found is taxi speeds are unable to stay slow when the speed restriction checkbox setting is enabled on the Flight generator page. That's fixed now and slow speeds on the ground are OK.

FSX users please note that with slow speeds on the ground the brakes are used to maintain slow speeds and FSX is not as smooth as Prepar3D v4 and v5 when using the brakes and can appear jerky.

[Orinks]

Well, as a first idderation the auto-throttle is great.

Tried using it without Tramp and PF3 ATC and it worked great, all the way up until approach where PF3 gave me a final altitude for the glide at 3000, and that was too high. Did the same thing with Tramp to compare on a new flight to see what I did wrong and Tramp had me descending to 2200 feet. Once I missed the glide I told IF to load an approach plan and tried to do it that way, but I left the approach parameters the default on the mission page and, since I don't do it that much, didn't recall the verdical speeds to set at the various waypoints. Time to make use of IF to load approach/final from the start and practice, I guess.

[Steve Waite]

With Ideal Flight Computed Approaches, you can set approach leg times on the mission page, the final will start 5 minutes out with the default settings, you can increase that if you like. The final time is computed with your final speed so you will be 5 minutes out at that speed - 10 nautical miles at 120 knots - so the APP1 waypoint will be there and TDWN waypoint will be at the start of the runway. If you are descending at 500 feet per minute that will descend 2000 feet in four minutes.

So I would approach at around 2000 feet above the runway, and the ILS should be above you 5 minutes out and should engage with Glideslope between 5 and 4 minutes to touchdown, check the airport altitude in Ideal Flight briefing last entry in the Route Table.

When near to final set your AP altitude to the nearest 100 feet below the runway altitude and set your VS to 700 and AP on APPR and the GPS drives NAV switch to NAV which should glide you down below the glideslope, listen to the HSI callouts for GSI above, if you are GSI below then you are above the glideslope.

When you use Ideal Flight built flights, the AP NAV frequencies are set already on NAV 2, so if you start a flight and go to the Ideal Flight waypoints menu and choose Final Approach the NAV is already set to the ILS frequency. Settings for setting up the NAV frequencies and NAV to use NAV1 or NAV2 are included in the Cold and Dark page accessed on the Flight Generator page when you turn off default warm cockpit. Select NAV1 or NAV 2 in the assist window during flight.

The auto-throttle should hold your descent speed quite well on final with your flaps and gear down. With the landing assist features enabled you will head toward the runway centerline and auto-brake with spoilers and when you come to a halt the parking brake will engage and after that you can use the assist to location to warp to just off the runway if you wish.

[Orinks]

I really wish that when you use the items to go to final, go to approach etc, that once it is set up when you unpause, IF should turn on autopilot, altitude hold and have an option to set the Ideal Flight auto-throttle to approach. I just tried to do a go to final and unpaused and I hit the ground because the autopilot wasn't on, and turning it on won't do much without the holds on, which I orgot the keyboard commands for.

[Orinks]

Interesting. I just downloaded a Dash 8 from an airline website, started it up, spawned to a runway, enabled throttle assist and set it to climb and it did not disengage parking brakes or move. I hit F3 and it works, so...

As I typed this I figured it out. FSReal Time synced up the time and I had to restart IF monitor.

I think, as I look at the briefing, I think the route should be cleaned up a bit as far as readability. I notice after the TOD I can see the suggest altitudes to be at, however does it also suggest a vertical descent speed? If so, I'm having trouble finding that value. Since IF doesn't have a vnav feature to handle that automatically, perhaps it should? I may have trouble landing this flight. I'll do my best given suggested altitudes.

[Orinks]

So I just did what I consider to be my first successful flight with the assists. Without ATC I used the briefing to guide me, and everything turned out great. I did use a computed approach and I landed 74 feet from the centre. I think I missed the loc, but I did catch the glideslope, unless that's all it had. I'm not sure with this runway.

One thing the auto-throttle does not do is actually cut the throttle before touchdown, maybe 20 feet above the runway? With the landing assists on perhaps a bit too late, I shut them off to prevent takeoff issues, and turned them on on final, and the throttle does not cut itself and idle at all from what I've experienced.

Also, when is the throttle supposed to anticipate speed on descent? I have auto-preset selection on and it doesn't seem to change presets on descent however it will during climb.