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Catalina PBY5A Flight Dynamics

K

kanizsa

Guest
I have just bought a payware package of the Catalina by Abacus. The visual model and textures are really exquisite but the flight characteristics suck. The manufacturers are reluctant to admit that there is a problem, they claim that from thousands of copies sold they had received no complaints. I would like to hear from anyone who also bought this airplane.:help:
 
I do not have this aircraft, but have done float plane FM's and have a lot of time in (real) seaplanes. Please describe your issues.

Cheers: T.
 
Iv'e ended up modifying most all aircraft cfgs as I found most of them in want of help. Don't know if its just my stick in particular but I like realism in performance. Be glad to help if I can but I can only tweak the cfg not the air file. Post the details and a copy of the cfg if you can.


Aero
 
The problems were mainly the result of an imbalance, a detailed study of the .cfg and .air files revealed serious errors:
  1. the length dimension used was 20 ft longer than the actual
  2. The wing and engines were positioned on the roll axis instead of 7.5 ft above (Catalina)
  3. The airplane flew extremely nose high in level flight
  4. In turns it dropped the nose
  5. There was too much roll stability, it would not hold a steady bank angle
  6. Pitch stability was almost non existent
By almost a miracle I stumbled upon a website www.mudpond.com where I found the most amazing software program AirWrench. Having downloaded it for evaluation I was so impressed that I bought a licence key from the author, Mr Jerry Beckwith whom you all know. After activation I loaded in the original .air file and within half an hour I produced a revised .air file and .cfg file. Upon flight testing the Catalina it flew impeccably and by now I have logged a few pleasant hours flying it around the Hawaiian islands. I cannot pass on the modified files because that would contravene the conditions of my ULE but I strongly recommend AirWrench as the best flight dynamics editor I have ever used. The beauty of it is that it updates the .cfg file as well to match the .air file which, to my knowledge, no other program does.

I have not finished yet, I am still doing minor changes to refine the characteristics to my total satisfaction.:applause::jump::amen:
 
Jerry Beckwith is a frequent contributor here and one of the real experts in reverse engineering the flight charcteristics of sim aircraft. The Airwrench program has continued to become more and more sophisticated with time.

Another program, which sadly is no longer supported is Aircraft Container Manager, which showed the position and dimensions of all sim features vrs the wireframe visual model.

Glad you are happy: T.
 
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