I realize the brakes on FS2004 are either off or on, so there's no way to brake slightly. Different aircraft seem to have different levels of braking programmed in.
I find some aircraft, like Tim Conrad's top notch AA5B Grumman Tiger or Bill Lyon's excellent PA-22 Tripacer have extreme amounts of pitch down upon applying the brakes, even at slow speeds. Is there a way in the cfg file to "stiffen up" the spring on the front gear?
Braking strength is initially determined in Table 1101 in the .air file. The value range is -32768 to +32768. The formula to calculate appropriate strength is (ft/sec^2*2048). Values typically range from 10000 to 30000. Max braking rate only occurs with full weight on tires.
Now to your question, "Is there a way in the cfg file to "stiffen up" the spring on the front gear?"
Yes, you can stiffen the gear in the aircraft.cfg. There are 3 parameters that affect animation, stiffness, and damping. Parameters are the 9th, 10th, and 11th defined in the SDK as follows:
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9 (0.25) Static Compression This is the distance a landing gear is compressed when the empty aircraft is at rest on the ground (feet). This term defines the “strength” of the strut, where a smaller number will increase the “stiffness” of the strut.
10 (2.5) Ratio of Maximum Compression to Static Compression Ratio of the max dynamic compression available in the strut to the static value. Can be useful in coordinating the “compression” of the strut when landing.
11 (0.90) Damping Ratio This ratio describes how well the ground reaction oscillations are damped. A value of 1.0 is considered critically damped, meaning there will be little or no osciallation. A damping ratio of 0.0 is considered undamped, meaning that the oscillations will continue with a constant magnitude. Negative values result in an unstable ground handling situation, and values greater than 1.0 might also cause instabilities by being “over” damped. Typical values range from 0.6 to 0.95.
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Parameters 9 and 10 are usually set to "match" the oleo compression animation in the model. This means that the distance for modeled compression must be exactly defined by these two parameters or the visuals will not work correctly.
The first parameter (9) defines static compression and represents the distance the oleos should compress while sitting empty sitting on the tarmac.
The second parameter (10) is the ratio of max compression to static compression. Divide the total distance by the static compression distance to get this ratio. The larger this number, the stiffer the suspension. For example, a ratio of 2.5 yields a stiffer suspension than 1.8.
If you wish to change parameters 9 and 10, they must be changed together to maintain the same total animation distance. To do this determine the current distance.
For example if we have .9, 2.0, .7, the total distance represented is .9' X 2.0 or 1.8' distance. If you wish to change this to stiffen the suspension, you must increase the ratio. So, decrease the compression .9 to .6, then compute the new ratio. So, 1.8 divided by .6 equals 3.0. Now the new statement will be .6, 3, .7. Any ratio over 2.5 is pretty stiff.
The third parameter (11) is damping. The higher number gives less or no oscillations (like new shocks). A number like .5 will allow some softness feel with several oscillations. Typical values are .7 to 1.0.
I hope this helps.
