Centering Control Surfaces

[Turbohead]

I've ran FS for a while, and FSUIPC. I prety much understand the concept of both, and have had pretty good results.

I just bought another computer, (a bit faster machine) and loaded FS, a few add on aircraft, and FSUIPC onto it. Fortunatley, I have the older machine beside me, and was able to see and copy a lot of my set ups, (Buttons, Axis, settings etc.) into the FSUIPC.

I went out to fly and test things, and my Eagle Soft CJ-1 rolled down the runway, and progressively veered to the left and I had to declare a "Harry Carry" :)

I dug into the FSUIPC settings, recalibrated everything, looked at the taxi winds, and anything I could think of that might be casuing the pull to the left. I Found nothing that looked wrong.

Eventually, I had a brain storm, and played around with the rudder trim and aileron trim, and, fixed the yawing tendency. However, this took a lot of trial an error up and down the runway a few times to get it centered.

My question,(finally) is, how can I see the location / position of the trim tabs to calibrate the trim tabs. I looked at the 3D Spot view, but there's not enough resoloution to see exactly where things are, and, apparently the tabs are articulated, and are difficult to see the centering. As mentioned, everything in the UIPC looked okay, but it appeared to be the rudder that was almost "Hard Over". There are no indications on the ES CJ-1 that help with Aielron and Rudder trim either. The elevator trim is marked and displayed very legibly, but the others are a bit difficut to distinguish their settings with.

As far as FSUIPC, I could see the raw data, did what I thought was right to calibrate everything, but I'm not too clear on that section. At any rate, it didn't appear to be calibration of the controls tha caused the issue. It was in the rudder and aielron trims that caused the issue. The strange thing was, I would have assumed that the aircraft would have come set pretty standard from the developer, and the controls would have all been centered.

If anyone has a suggestion on how to calibrate the trims, I would love to here how.

Thanks

Mark

[Pete Dowson]

My question,(finally) is, how can I see the location / position of the trim tabs to calibrate the trim tabs.

Some aircraft panels have the aileron and rudder trip controls and indicators on screen.

There are no indications on the ES CJ-1 that help with Aielron and Rudder trim either.

Okay. Maybe with that aircraft you are really supposed to have them dead centre in any case. Really you only use either trims in an engine out scenario.

It was in the rudder and aielron trims that caused the issue. The strange thing was, I would have assumed that the aircraft would have come set pretty standard from the developer, and the controls would have all been centered.

Well, these things aren't really preset there. It sounds like there's something in the Flight file you are using which has them offset. Best thing to do is centre them exactly and save a flight. Use that flight to start with for that aircraft.

If anyone has a suggestion on how to calibrate the trims, I would love to here how.

If you don't assign any joystick axis to them then you don't calibrate them -- there's obviously nothing to calibrate. Unless you want to use those trims (e.g. you are planning to try emergencies like engine failures), then I'd recommend just getting them to zero and leaving them there. Probably thee easiest way to be sure (assuming you have no panel trim indicators) is to edit the values in the FLT file -- look in the [Controls.0] section. There should be two lines:

RudderTrim=0

AileronTrim=0

There are FS controls you can assign to buttons or keypresses (via FSUIPC) for trim adjustments (Aileron trim left, Aileron trim right, Rudder trim left, Rudder trim right), but without a good gauge showing you the values/centre, they won't really help. You could get FSUIPC to display them for you -- Logging Tab, right-hand-side. Enter offset 2EB0, type FLT64, and offset 2EC0, also type FLT64. Check the "FS window" or "Advdisplay" option below, and OK. The two values (aileron trim and rudder trim) will be displayed on screen. 0.0 is centred. the values are in radians of deflection angle.

Regards

Pete

[Turbohead]

Found the solotion.

In the Eaglesoft CJ-1, if you have tool tips on, and hover over ther aileron or rudder trim wheels, it will display the trim setting in the tool tip balloon.

I had the tool tips set to off, so, obviously I was not seeing anything when I hovered over the controls :(

Hot it got hard over in the first place, I don't know.

Anyway, problem solved

Thanks P