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  • Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.

    Post 16 Update

    Post 17 Warning

FR Super Cub problem taxiing on bush strips

1. Ah. Well, the burst, full rudder, and diff braking doesn't work as well off strip when she's having trouble just moving forward.

2. It was only sinking below ground level on the rough strips, so you may not have noticed it, but the ground often came up to the hubs (about half the wheel sunk) on the rough strips, even on the runway sometimes, but hasn't since I changed the size, although I haven't flown it that much yet.

3. I only experience the nose diving while taxiing. I'll try trimming nose up while taxiing and seeing if that makes a difference. But I'm trimmed fairly nose up from landing trim anyway. Well, I should have gotten the standard one, then, I guess.
 
These sinking-to-the-hub and getting stuck problems look very much scenery related to me. Tried everything but couldn't even remotely replicate your problems. I'm really sorry!
 
Probably. This is Orbx scenery, and I don't know how their mesh works at all.

I don't think the getting stuck is related to the wheel-sinking. I think the wheel sinking is just graphical interfacing. Try it at I97D or I99D with the original settings.

I think the getting stuck is because these strips I'm flying into don't have any flattens and are sometimes steep. They are installed on the terrain itself so that they replicate the real strips, which are anything but flat. Basically just paths in the surrounding terrain, so I suspect that the "ground" is rougher there than at any regular airstrip, even grass and dirt strips in most of FSX. I get stuck when trying to taxi up inclines. It's weird though, as sometimes I have no trouble on fairly steep inclines, and sometimes I get stuck on fairly shallow inclines, so I suspect it's a combination of incline and whatever settings determine the "roughness" of the terrain. I've noticed that it seems worse in the parts of the terrain that have the "forest" green mottled graphics than on the parts that have the "grass" graphics. But I get stuck in other planes here as well. So, getting stuck is very likely scenery related.
 
Hi you all,

I read carefully these 2 pages and I'm here reviving this thread just to make sure about the happy end of it and to give my contribution:

I have experienced the exact same facts that Griphos described and not on Orbx sceneries.
Same behaviour applies: perfect flight, perfect landings, perfect taxiing on tarmac, but when it comes to taxiing off the runway in some cases it's impossible to move and when you manage you end up flipping over and crashing.
I'm talking about Flight Replicas Super Cub, standard version (not tundra). I only have the A2A Cub to make a comparison with and this have absolutely no problem to cope with the roughness that makes FR Cub crash.

I don't have FR Super Cub Ultra to make comparisons with or to switch .cfg file settings with. So I'm here asking if any of you happened to find the final solution to the problem because even though I've read that the Ultra version has none of these issues whatsoever, I'm not planning to buy it.

Thanks for the attention

Christian
 
Hello Christian,

I made the changes you read about above, and it did improve things, but I've basically stopped flying it. I bought it to fly at the backcountry airstrips (such as it would be used in RL) and its ground handling at those remain far too touchy. I just fly a few of my other planes into those sort of strips now.
 
Nose up trim from landing? Super cubs require a bunch of nose down trim cranks with flap extension from the initial descent approach settings, however this usually ends up somewhere near the appropriate takeoff trim. Any load is distributed aft, also requiring more nose down trim. This can be a lot but since the stab is trimmed and full elevator is still available reasonable good pitch control is retained. Probably because of the thick airfoil cubs still seem to have good pitch stability at aft CG locations. Some of the high HP (heavy engine) planes can be a bit fwd CG when empty.

An AOA indicator is available for about $1400, thinking of getting one as the plane usually has a lot of flying left at an IAS of 40 mph, which is the point at which the AS indicator really loses interest. Not so important for float flying, so much cub flying is about how it feels, which is hard to replicate in FS.

Still fun planes! T
 
Given that FSX aircraft are fundamentally all identical when it comes to the gear animations and contact points (it's really just a matter of putting in the correct numbers to get the location, appearance and movement you want), I'm wondering if there isn't something else to try: suspension, gear travel, damping, etc., are one thing, but what about the scrape points?

I can't replicate this problem, and neither can anyone else I've asked (and I think there's only been two reports to Support in total), but as it's seems pretty likely a simple conflict somewhere between aircraft and terrain meshes, why not try, just as an experiment, to swap out the scrape points (usually point.3, on down, for the taildragger) with an aircraft or similar size that works? Just to see if the conflict is still there. Of perhaps even try taking out the scrape points entirely. Perhaps one is dragging too low for the terrain mesh altitude or something similar?

Mike
 
.
I'm fascinated with this thread, and I hate to be a stick in the mud, but . . . .

FWIW, I'm +1 with Griphos' problems. I have the FR Super Cub Ultra and had to stop flying it -- for the same reason as his: I wanted to use it as a bush-strip plane, but got frustrated with the aircraft "bogging-down" and/or thrashing itself to death.

Been doing this stuff since early FS9, so it was quite a surprise to see myself with so little control of an airplane, in the aforementioned instances.

After repeated tries, alas, I just found myself ignoring the plane.
 
I've pm'd a few customes with this problem but apparently this doesn't happen with any default dirt strip, only orbx airfields. As I'm not using any of these anymore I can't test. Seems to be a very restricted mesh problem.
You can soften the shock absorbers almost indefinitely so that they always 'work' on any ground but especially the tundra wheels are very springy IRL.
It's simply impossible to set the damping correctly for all ground variations as FSX does apparently have serious problems with non-standard meshes.
 
.
I'm fascinated with this thread, and I hate to be a stick in the mud, but . . . .

FWIW, I'm +1 with Griphos' problems. I have the FR Super Cub Ultra and had to stop flying it -- for the same reason as his: I wanted to use it as a bush-strip plane, but got frustrated with the aircraft "bogging-down" and/or thrashing itself to death.

Been doing this stuff since early FS9, so it was quite a surprise to see myself with so little control of an airplane, in the aforementioned instances.

After repeated tries, alas, I just found myself ignoring the plane.


Try the scrape points as mentioned above. It has to be something pretty simple.
 
Yeah, I'll try that too. It will be this weekend before I have time, but I'll report back.

It could be mesh problems with Orbx, in particular, I suppose, but I suspect that the Orbx backcountry airfields I'm flying to are really just terrain without any leveling or other airfield adjustments. It might be worth trying to land the Super Cub away from airports in non-Orbx terrain to see if the the problem can be replicated there.
 
The springiness of bush wheels (Ok I run Goodyears..) varies a lot with air pressure. The lower the pressure the more bean bag like. Less springy and better surface flotation, but more rolling ristance. Contact points cannot makeup for terrain mesh errors. You might try changing the mesh resolution in the display parameters. If The contact points work OK on the various default surfaces, that' about all the designer can do.

T
 
It might be worth trying to land the Super Cub away from airports in non-Orbx terrain to see if the the problem can be replicated there.

We did a great deal of the testing (especially the Extreme and Bush aircraft) on non-airport mesh, all over the FSX world, as it was pretty obvious that's where users would be flying, and didn't have any problems (and to date, it appears neither has anyone else). Then again, the aircraft were also flown from Orbx airports (I have Australian and North American airports on my computer) without issue, too, so who knows!

Mike
 
<snipped irrelevant="" stuff="" about="" actual="" plane=""> Contact points cannot makeup for terrain mesh errors. You might try changing the mesh resolution in the display parameters. If The contact points work OK on the various default surfaces, that' about all the designer can do.

T

I don't even know what a "mesh error" would be. I'm not talking about abrupt changes in elevation. It's relatively flat land with dirt or grass runways on it. I use the mesh resolution that is stipulated by the scenery. Again, I don't have this problem with other aircraft I fly into these same strips.

I'll try using some settings from the other aircraft as a test, though, as I said.</snipped>
 
This from a forum member at 'Bushpounders Flying'. Certainly makes it turn.

"Well, slap my hand. I couldn't change the tailwheel because I was changing the wrong parameter! I no good way to modify .cfg files.
Doh.gif

So. To make the tailwheel steerable with the rudder, in the [contact_points] section of the .cfg file, change the 7th entry of line point.0 from 180 to 60. (Example below) This changes the steering angle and the number is the deflection in one direction, so 60 means that you have 120° from full left to full right. The higher the number, the sharper the turn. I find that after 60, the steering gets too sensitive, but that's just me. 180 makes the wheel free castering.

[contact_points]
point.0=1, -15.85, 0.0, -1.05, 1800, 0, 0.256, 180.0, 0.07, 2.5, 0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0"

[contact_points]
point.0=1, -15.85, 0.0, -1.05, 1800, 0, 0.256, 60.0, 0.07, 2.5, 0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0
 
Example of mesh errors, I remember flying a chopper about in the alps, some places the visual and hard deck do not coincide, the skids sinking into the terrain a foot or so. When developing contact points I always test a lot of places, I am sure Mike did this.

T
 
Further point on tail wheel steering...

Though a cub has tailwheel steering, FS does not replicate it well. IRL it is through springs an is somewhat approximate and castors beyond a certain angle. Having periodically disassembled these tailwheels for cleaning and lube, they break free somewhere around 60 deg. FS steering is far too powerful and precise and does not break free.

My opinion as an experienced and current cub driver is that the 180 castoring CFG value best replicates the experience. Feel free to disagree.

T
 
I've been talking with Wozza, who knows more about terrain mesh than I do, and one potential source for a problem could be that in FSX the terrain mesh loads after the aircraft mesh. In other words, it lags behind the aircraft mesh. This is why aircraft jump sometimes when switching views: the terrain comes up after the aircraft loads and hits the contact and scrape points. Not too sure if it applies directly here, but it does help illustrate that there are differences in behaviours between the two mesh types in FSX.

Another thing to try is increasing the Impact Damage Threshold (Feet Per Minute) in the contact points. This is the parameter highlighted in red below, on a [contact_points] line:

point.0=1, -15.85, 0.0, -1.21, 1800, 0, 0.256, 180.0, 0.07, 2.5, 0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0

Try increasing this to a much higher number, such as 9000, and see if that makes a difference.


Mike
 
I99D is not a landing strip/field. It's a river bank. ANYTHING I tried load there on the "strip", sank into the ground. I think the campfire is the remains of a botched landing. The other nearby "landing areas" were not nearly as bad, I98D, I97D, and I96D. They were usable, needed full power and a prayer to move around, but do-able. IMHO, it is not an issue with the FR Cub, any of the different flavors, but the scenery.

Daniel.
 
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