A2A Piper Cub Released!

spotlope said:
You definitely have to be in the right frame of mind to fly a Cub. I think of it as hovering practice. :icon_lol:
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I've used the "helicopter" technique at least a couple of times so far.

After landing at Sisimuit (BGSS), Greenland and refuelling I taxied back out for the take off. When I got to the hold at the east end of the runway I was at the wrong end for the take off but the wind was blowing 20+ from the end I was at. Rather than taxing all the way to the other end I pulled out onto the runway turned facing the wind and applied full power while keeping my feet on the brakes. As soon as I could hold the tail wheel steadily off the ground without moving, I let go of the brakes. I'd say she was off the ground in about 2.5 lengths of the aircraft and climbing vertically with very little positive GS.

Coming into Nuuk (BGGH), Greenland I was facing a very stiff 30+ wind blowing pretty much straight down the runway. I was having to keep her near firewalled to crawl down final for the landing. It felt like I was on my 2 mile final for at least 20 minutes. I touched down right at the threshold and had her on the ground just long enough for Heidi to tell me what a great landing it was. Then for some reason I let it come back up off the runway, and for a brief moment I realized I was flying backwards off the runway. I had to apply full power to get moving forward again so that I could re-land. :)

FAC
 
Took a fun flight in the Cub last night with another video producer. Man, we spent just an hour last night fiddling with brake stands, turning on dimes, doing hammerheads and attempting rolls... For rolls, expect to have a lot of altitude!
 
I gave in and bought the Cub with Accusim. All my realism setting are maxxed and although fun, I do have a few minor issues with the FM. The spins are much to fast and use up alot of altitude. Ive done dozens and dozens of stalls in real life and none were so abrupt or ate up so much air. I realize that none of the MS fs series did stalls or unusual attitudes right so its not biggie. The Cub has legendary known stabilty but its not a hands off,stable as a rock 747 feeling either. Maybe this one is perfectly rigged. Feels alot more heaver and more mass where as the real Cub IMO feels more like the trike. At or just over gross in the summer she handles like a wet blanket however. The only real issue I want changed or I may tweak it are the parameters that effect drag. The Cub has alot of resistance and when you chop the power it slows down fast. When you drop the nose it does not pick up speed quickly at all. If you slip it you can bring the Cub almost straight down and spot land right above stall speed. Last night I attempted alot of short field landings at alot of various locations. The Cub power off,yes I used f1 to verify throttle back, glides forever. Any landing over a 50 ft obstacle situation onto a short area requires you to basically stall the plane over the obstacle and fall like a feather to make the landing. Not the procedure I was acustomed to when I landed many times onto a 800 ft cow pasture surrounded by tall pines. Not a rant just sayin.
 
JIMJAM,

The glide problem is one A2A are aware off and are working on, so good news there and I hope it will be to your satisfaction. Your input and input from other real pilots is invaluable and is never seen as a rant.

Keep on sayin is what I'm sayin :ernae:
 
I don't have the model, but I'm enjoying the grown-up conversation: well-informed, but also good-natured.
 
I own all of A2A's planes including all their older warbirds. Best of the best in my opinion. I waited this long to buy the Cub because I was afraid I would quickly bore with it. Slow,underpowered and not really any systems to monitor. Did I say slow? The Cub is a one trick pony for me and its only appeal and draw to me is simple. Pattern work and short field landings.
What makes the Cub alluring and fun to pilots who fly complex,larger aircraft is its hands on,stick and rudder raw flying. IMO their P-47,377 have more enviromental feel and immersion than the smaller,ligher Cub. The real Cub is loud, shakes,vibrates,creaky and the A2A is much to serene. I am going to totally eliminte my deadzones and crank up the sensitivites to try and get some life into the plane. The Cub is stable but with 1/2 load of fuel,no passengers and a strong engine, you can fly the snot out of it. You are really working those legs and arm but this Cub I do n ot get much of a work out even in windy conditions. Watch some of the "drunk pilot" or the farmer who steals the Cub airshow routines and you can see just how much you can wring out of this plane.
The reason I like Simouthouse is that most are fairly laid back and you can make constructive comments and not get your head ripped off yet I am still apprehensive. But lets face it, A2a's planes have set the bar so high that a critique like mine is like adjusting the Mona Lisa or Van Gogh a little left or right hanging on a wall. When alot of people talk about any plane, thats good. Its the ones nobody says anything about that you avoid.
 
JIMJAM said:
I own all of A2A's planes including all their older warbirds. Best of the best in my opinion. I waited this long to buy the Cub because I was afraid I would quickly bore with it. Slow,underpowered and not really any systems to monitor. Did I say slow? The Cub is a one trick pony for me and its only appeal and draw to me is simple. Pattern work and short field landings.
What makes the Cub alluring and fun to pilots who fly complex,larger aircraft is its hands on,stick and rudder raw flying. IMO their P-47,377 have more enviromental feel and immersion than the smaller,ligher Cub. The real Cub is loud, shakes,vibrates,creaky and the A2A is much to serene. I am going to totally eliminte my deadzones and crank up the sensitivites to try and get some life into the plane. The Cub is stable but with 1/2 load of fuel,no passengers and a strong engine, you can fly the snot out of it. You are really working those legs and arm but this Cub I do n ot get much of a work out even in windy conditions. Watch some of the "drunk pilot" or the farmer who steals the Cub airshow routines and you can see just how much you can wring out of this plane.
The reason I like Simouthouse is that most are fairly laid back and you can make constructive comments and not get your head ripped off yet I am still apprehensive. But lets face it, A2a's planes have set the bar so high that a critique like mine is like adjusting the Mona Lisa or Van Gogh a little left or right hanging on a wall. When alot of people talk about any plane, thats good. Its the ones nobody says anything about that you avoid.
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Everything well said..
Especially the highlighted part.
 
I flew from Chilliwack to Langley in that wonderful Vancouver scenery this evening.

Uneventful start from Chilliwack, head east and drop through the Barnstormers' barn, hung a climbing right to 2500 feet and trimmed her out...

Went for supper, did some household chores, came back, still had 20 miles to Langley, still only at 2700 feet. Went away, watched the news on TV, came back and called in my landing intentions to Langley tower, landed, parked, shut down.

Overall flight distance around 45 miles / just about one hour logged in total including ground taxi time...

Really exciting.

Really Piper Cub...
 
JIMJAM, I have been practicing a few routines to see if I can reproduce this kind of thing for a video. I am getting VERY pleasing results, and it is very possible in the future I will do a drunken pilot routine video with this Cub. Many Cub pilots upgraded the 65HP model to the 75HP, which for all intensive purposes is a rather easy modification.

If I can find a bit of time however, I'll certainly make a video of this and bring it to SOH, just to prove to folks what this plane is truly capable of.
 
I flew a Cub owned by Aeriel sign company out of Myrtle Beach. It was used to tow banners and was stripped down to the bone. I do not remember the hp total or mods but it was noticably stronger than stock. Adding a few horses in the aircraft config isnt hard to do.
I have already experimented with some drag numbers to slow it down a tad with the power off but I think the engine is putting out power even though the throttle is off.
I was going to mess with the idle prop resistance but decided to leave well enough alone.
I have a x52/rudder setup and eliminated all the deadzones,bumped up the sensitivities,realism slider all right. I also fly 50% or less fuel and leave Lara Croft behind.
Fly the cub for awhile and then jump into the SU-26! She is a dog but a loyal one.
Cant wait to see the vid.
 
JIMJAM, don't worry about messing with the settings unless you are doing it temporary. I am pretty sure the guys at A2A found the issue.

RE the Cub, there are so many variations and modifications it is bewildering. I cannot imagine however a stock 65HP Cub doing banner work, so they must have uprated the engine and/or really removed anything unnecessary to get the weight down. This aircraft sounds like it would be interesting to have a look over to see what kind of modifications they did.
 
The rumor was the mech just spray painted the plugs silver to fool everyone into thinking the engines were overhauled. I am guessing 30 plus hp,gutted plane with 160 pound starving,daredeveil kids trying to build hours. Rain,40 mph winds,rough running engine...Wanna eat,wanna drink, Spin the prop and let it rock! Lotsa stories. The ground guys had 2 banners laid out side by side. One of the guys made his swoop and just before he snagged it, wind blew the other banner over on top and he caught both. Pulled back into his climb not knowing what had happened. Stalled and put the plane into the intercoastal waterway. After that he told everyone he would take putting another plane into the trees rather than the water. He said "shi* water is hard." Losing engines was a weekly thing.
Yeah something is really wrong with the fm. I was just up in Tongassx at the mine. I could not get the plane down. Its retaining way to much speed and inertia. It s like the plane is filled with helium. If I slipped the crap out of it I could keep my speed in check but let the rudder come around and the speed jumps right back up. Many times I just floated 1/2 mile at 40 mph. Put the nose down and even in the most shallow of finals the airspeed creeps up. I also have the engine full back quickly command programeed into my stick. Its the one used to reverse thrust. I can pull my power back and when I hit that trigger, I can hear the engine rpms lower even more. The windmilling prop is producing thrust. When you are just about to stall, the speed bleed feels correct. But when the windmilling begins again, the power increases incorrectly.
I am also getting a red simconnectx error restart fsx that appears on the message line.
 
JIMJAM, please don't mess with the numbers too much. Unlike fs9, fsx is a lot more complex. Our Accusim products have much of the FM done out of the stock limited sim code but rather with our own system so changes to the stock numbers a can truly mess things up.

The sim connect issue you mentioned will also be an issue that can result in you not experienced the full physics flight model,.. however we have identified a propblem with drag on the propeller and another calculation appears to be cancelling it out. We have sent out a hotfix to the beta testers and will get it out to you guys asap.

In the meantime jimjam could I ask you go to our cub tech support forum and post re: your simconnect error so we can get you sorted out and flying.

thanks,
Lewis
 
Just an update.

We just uploaded a hotfix to our beta testers that addresses an issue with energy bleed.

I just want to clarify that during development, we measured and tuned a bunch of things against in-cockpit videos, including drag. Somewhere along the line, our prop drag stopped working. We confirmed this recently running the same side-by-side tests with different results. We looked into the code and discovered the Accu-Sim prop drag was being canceled out by some newer prop code.

We re-enabled the prop drag and our first side by side test with the in-cockpit videos showed the speeds bled down almost perfectly in synch.

This is a very small fix, but an important one, so we will make this hotfix available soon. Also, thanks to the excellent posts from JIMJAM.

Scott.
 
JIMJAM said:
-SNIP-
I am also getting a red simconnectx error restart fsx that appears on the message line.
Click to expand...

If that is the message that states something like "an error
has been detected and some features may not be available" then you get that 'error' message if you exit flight and reenter it with the AccuSim aircraft, or use the "reload aircraft"
command, commonly used to test changes that you may have made.

To get rid of that message you must exit FSX and restart it.

Paul
 
I knew something was not quite right with that prop and its energy bleed. I just fooled with that one config line but returned it back to original. I learned my lesson fooling with .cfg files a LONG time ago.
FYI- I run Active Sky Advanced once it loads start FSX from their menu icon. I have had lots of problems with all versions of AS and it almost always involved Simconnect errors. I have not had any in a long time and never seen that message before. FSX/sp2 Accel I7 6 gigs Vista 64 ult.

You guys are on the ball and its good to see such involvment with your customers.:applause:
 
ASX seems to be triggering the error. If I start FSX alone. No message. I can then go to desktop,start ASX and return to FSX. No error. Even with the simconnect error message,Accusim is working and I cannot see/feel/hear any difference.

Challenge- If you have TongassX load the heli flight at Reid's quarry. Load the Cub. Ok, thats your challenge. Take off and land it there. Next take off and land the Cub on the next ledge above that one. Making this Quarry landing is where you almost have to kill the engine to get your speed to decay enough to make it. Make a long,flat approach just above stall and get ready on the brakes.
I also think ASX is adding thermals especially in mountainous areas.
 
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