Flying tail draggers

[old tail dragger]

I think the Stinson was put in the XP as a bad joke. I found the best way to get it off is to taxi to the sod area of the airport to take off so as not to blow out the tires. I got my license in 1958 in an Aeronca Champ and it never did what the Stinson does. My solution is to takeoff and land on a turf runway.

[Tjitah]

Hey fadasczik, I totally agree with you - the XP11 Stinson on the ground sucks. I read a post by a real life Stinson pilot some time ago and he also confirmed our findings. He added that the Stinson in real life is a beauty to fly.

Over time I have found a very good technique to tame the XP11 Stinson. When you want to take-off, pull the stick all the way back towards you (elevator up), and then add throttle gradually. It will gain speed and just float into the air, remaining perfectly straight. Ease the stick forward (back to neutral) as it leaves the ground so that you don't pitch the nose up too much and stall it. Easy as that.

With a bit of practise, you will find that you can start releasing back pressure on the stick earlier as it gathers speed and before it leaves the ground, allowing the tail to come up a little before lifting off. It looks like the secret with this aircraft is to keep the tail "planted" as much as possible in the initial phase of the take-off. It takes off very rapidly and once you've nailed this take-off technique it is a wonderful aircraft to fly.

This take-off technique is very different to what I used when flying a Tiger Moth in real life. With a tail-dragger in real life, you want to get the tail up as quickly as possible so that you can control it with the rudder (in other words stick forward as you open the throttle). While the tail is on the ground it is very susceptible to a ground loop. I'm sure you did the same with the Aeronca? The XP11 Stinson completely defies this real-world technique and requires almost exactly the opposite - very confusing for us real world stick-and-rudder pilots!

[-OrLoK- Слава Україн]

Xplane is far from ideal in many areas.

the best place to give feedback is on the official forums.

there's often tweaks etc to solve many issues.

e.g. ground handling of the c172. one can buy the REP mod (which is great) or there's advice how to edit the plane to act more realistically.

firkling and tweaking is an essential part of the Xplane experience.

never expect perfection out if the box.

I don't think there's a single plane I fly regularly that I've not tweaked/modded Laminar or 3rd party.

but, for me, that's part of the fun. I can see how others may not like that.

[old tail dragger]

Thanks Tjitah, The proper way to take off is to move the stick forward to get the tail up. I will try you method as it sounds like it will work.

[PvWolf666]

Unfortunately the devs will not listen to reason on this occasion and believe that their mechanics are perfect... This has led to the death of the ASGD Supercub. A great plane, but the dev for that plane has selfishly closed down his website due to a dispute with Laminar, cutting me off from redownloading if I needed to....

[Tjitah]

Originally posted by PvWolf666:

Unfortunately the devs will not listen to reason on this occasion and believe that their mechanics are perfect... This has led to the death of the ASGD Supercub. A great plane, but the dev for that plane has selfishly closed down his website due to a dispute with Laminar, cutting me off from redownloading if I needed to....

Hey PvWolf666, that is not a good story. I've had similar experiences in the FSX world, where developers just close up shop and then leave customers without support or a product that cannot be installed anymore due to DRM restrictions. Makes one mad ! However, I see the ASDG Supercub is still sold on the x-plane.org webstore, so the developer is still around (that price of $42.95 is too much for me thankfully).

As far as Laminar stubbornness is concerned, yes that is well known. Apparently Austin Meyer was never a fan of Track-IR and therefore it was poorly implemented up to X-Plane 10. Now it works fine in XP11. The ground handling of aircraft in X-Plane leaves much to be desired, not just the Stinson. I read in the PC Pilot magazine (Issue 118) that the developer Milviz is reluctant to release aircraft on X-Plane due to the "overbearing effect that even small crosswinds have on aircraft". And then of course there is the tail-dragger issue where they handle exactly the opposite on the ground, compared to real life. One would think that over decades of programming and the 11th generation of the X-Plane product that those sort of things would have been smoothed out, right?

Anyway, I still love X-Plane 11 - the pros outweigh the cons and I fly more in X-Plane nowadays than FSX or P3D.

[PvWolf666]

Well luckily, Milviz released their superb version of the Cessna 310r. I had only 2 months before purchased a Cessna 310 from X Aviation but I can't bring myself to fly it. It has a lot of charm but has perspective issues within the cockpit, very elongated dials and what looks like the whole cockpit slopes backward whenever you look up..... It just spoils the immersion. I have tried putting 3 reviews up on the X Aviation website but they never publish them suspiciously...

[Tjitah]

Yes I have that exact same Cessna 310 from X-Aviation and have the same issue. I think of it as a fish-eye effect, like those camera lenses which make things bulge out of proportion. Always wanted to leave a review there, but now I won't bother.

The Milviz C310 is great, bought it back in 2016 for FSX and it since got an update for P3D v4 - I just can't get myself to pay $40 for it again for X-Plane. Got the vFlyteAir Piper Twin Comanche PA30 instead (on sale for $18), to make up for the X-Aviation disappointment.