tail wheel contac point

gosd

gosd

Charter Member
I have downloaded some aircrafts but the tail wheel doesn't touch the ground on the airfield. How can I correct this ?:kilroy:
 
By adjusting the contact points in the aircraft.cfg file. The landing gear's contact point designators are in the first three number strings and are the fourth number set in the sequence as I have highlighted below. The red number in the first string is the tail/nose wheel gear. The blue numbers in the second and third string are the l/r gear respectively. The difference between the tail wheel number and the l/r gear numbers accounts for the pitch angle of the aircraft when its parked. The higher the number the higher the landing gear will be off the ground. Reducing the number to low will cause the gear to sink below the ground. For example if the tail wheel was floating you would reduce -7.2 to -6.2 and so forth or vice versa. Below the contact points are the static height and pitch which I highlighted in green. These must also be adjusted to correspond with any contact point changes you make. These are actually the spawning height and pitch and will cause ground hop when not in sync with contact points. When you select a plane from the dropdown menu and it first appears, some planes will be slightly high or low but immediately snap to the correct height. Or some planes may appear with the pitch slightly off when selected but immediately snap to the correct pitch. Syncing up the static positions with contact points will illiminate that. Adjusting the static pitch from 6.8 to 5.8 would reduce spawning pitch angle. Adjusting the static height from 6.0 to 5.0 will lower the spawning height etc.

[contact_points]
max_number_of_points = 15
point.0 = 1, 8.3, 0, -7.2, 1600, 0, 1.125, 30, 0.3, 2.5, 0. 9, 4, 3, 0, 150, 159
point.1 = 1, -4.3, -8.25, -6.2, 2200, 1, 1.5, 0, 0.5, 2.5, 0.8, 5.5, 7, 2, 150, 159
point.2 = 1, -4.3, 8.25, -6.2, 2200, 2, 1.5, 0, 0.5, 2.5, 0.8, 6, 7.5, 3, 150, 159

static_pitch= 6.8
static_cg_height= 6.0
 
If only the tail wheel doesn't touch the ground, then follow lewis's advice, but be sure you're adjusting the correct contact point, because they don't have to be in the order he shows!

The correct contact point will have the first value as 1 and the third (should be) 0: the fourth value, shown here in red, is the one you want to adjust.

eg point.some_number = 1, 8.3, 0, -7.2, 1600, 0, 1.125, 30, 0.3, 2.5, 0. 9, 4, 3, 0, 150, 159
 
And if you want some cheap entertainment, add 20 to the static_cg_height value and 45 to the static_pitch - then watch the aircraft dropping from a height on to its tail and exploding on the runway. Repeatedly!
Quite a good way to understand the purpose of these parameters, I found...
 
hairyspin said:
If only the tail wheel doesn't touch the ground, then follow lewis's advice, but be sure you're adjusting the correct contact point, because they don't have to be in the order he shows!
Click to expand...

I have adjusted the contact points one more than a hundred planes and I have yet to to see one where the landing gear designators were not the fourth set of numbers in the first 3 text strings. It has always worked for the main gear as well as the tail/nose gear so rest assured it will work.
 
hairyspin said:
be sure you're adjusting the correct contact point, because they don't have to be in the order he shows!
Click to expand...

The numbers should always be in that order because the air file reads them in that order. As in the photo the fourth number set in the text string is the vertical height in feet of the aircraft. The fourth number set in the 1st string will effect vertical height of the nose or tail wheel. The fourth number sets in the 2nd and 3rd string will effect vertical height of main gear.


View attachment 11138
 
Don't mean to obfuscate and confuse, Lewis! I just meant it's possible a modeller might specify the main wheels first and then the tailwheel, or be a really awkward modeller and put the tailwheel between the main gear sets and all the scrapes before that! I don't see anything in the SDK that says you must put the tail/nose wheel first in the list - but it seems like good practice to me.

The order of the contact point parameters in each line is of course all-important.

As a f'rinstance of good practice, the model's reference point should (but doesn't have to) be at the aircraft's CoG, but even MS didn't always do that - the stock Tempest V seems to have its reference at the spinner's tip IIRC
 
just to complicate things a bit further:

would the re-setting of these contact points to higher numbers also relieve the "mole effect" showing the aircraft half dug in the ground?
 
As far as I understand it, moling happens when the contact points are missing/mangled and the sim is unable to build a rough set from the flight model/aircraft model - something to do with not naming parts consistent with the SDK conventions.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top