Wheel Brakes not Working
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Couple quick tips I’ve discovered…
- There’s a bit of crosswind in TR#13, landing at Seoul 36R. if you don’t have separate axes for toe brakes, BMS applies some (?) rudder-differential to the wheelbrakes when you hit [K] (or apply brakes via single axis).
I don’t know what that equation looks like, but it feels like even the slightest rudder input reduces braking power significantly. Obviously every inch counts on that runway…
So, get lined up while aerobraking… but actually cheat a couple degrees further to the right, so you don’t have to continue to correct while braking, as the crosswind pushes on your tail. (Or maybe apply yaw-trim instead of rudder axis? Haven’t tried that.)
- Maybe this is just my stick calibration/deadzone but, for some reason, I find a few ticks of pitch-up trim on the approach helps keep me on the ideal glideslope and attitude… allowing me to focus on controlling AOA with the throttle, then flaring at the right time while continuing to manage energy before touchdown.
And, once on the ground, it holds the right attitude to aerobrake quite naturally, without much additional input.
I don’t know if this is in the manual/training or ever done in RL or not…
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That’s a good suggestion - choose your airport wisely given what you know about your gw. I will try the flare timing thing tonight, but sure will not be easy. Probably need to aim for a point well before the threshold so could end up in some trees!
I looked into Seoul and the BMS version is actually about 1500 ft shorter than in real life (https://skyvector.com/airport/RKSM/Seoul-Airport). Not that the real-life length would be fully sufficient for this case either, but it would be closer to what we need.
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Couple quick tips I’ve discovered…
- There’s a bit of crosswind in TR#13, landing at Seoul 36R. if you don’t have separate axes for toe brakes, BMS applies some (?) rudder-differential to the wheelbrakes when you hit [K] (or apply brakes via single axis).
I don’t know what that equation looks like, but it feels like even the slightest rudder input reduces braking power significantly. Obviously every inch counts on that runway…
So, get lined up while aerobraking… but actually cheat a couple degrees further to the right, so you don’t have to continue to correct while braking, as the crosswind pushes on your tail. (Or maybe apply yaw-trim instead of rudder axis? Haven’t tried that.)
- Maybe this is just my stick calibration/deadzone but, for some reason, I find a few ticks of pitch-up trim on the approach helps keep me on the ideal glideslope and attitude… allowing me to focus on controlling AOA with the throttle, then flaring at the right time while continuing to manage energy before touchdown.
And, once on the ground, it holds the right attitude to aerobrake quite naturally, without much additional input.
I don’t know if this is in the manual/training or ever done in RL or not…
I do not have toe brakes, I just use a keybind for the Wheel brakes (K by default). Interesting about the rudder impeding the brakes. I do not apply any wheel brake until I no longer aerobrake, so at about 100 kts of ground speed. By then I am at the end of the runway in this case and the brakes can not hold the plane from going off, I need to be sure I do not apply rudder then. I find that any wheel brake will immediately dump the front wheel down so its either wheel or aero braking. But for cables you need the front wheels to be down.
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I just tried three landings in TR#13 on rwy 36 at Seoul. Gross weight of ~39k. I crushed the gear on one attempt, but managed two. Forgo the rule about landing with fpm at the top of bracket and then transition to 13 dgr flare, that will eat up too many feet of runway. What worked for me is to be established flaring 13 degrees at touchdown and keeping glideslope at 2.5-3 degrees until then. Touchdown must be on the very first piece of tarmac available. Apply airbrakes immediately upon touchdown and tap the wheel brakes briefly and continously while aero-braking, every little bit helps, but not so much to take the AoA out of the aerobrake.
Edit: The AAR training mission has winds coming from 150 degrees, so more of a cross wind/tail wind for runway 36. TR#13 has winds at 300 degrees which I guess helps with the aerobraking to a larger extent?
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This is all very interesting, but why would a pilot ever roll the dice on an overweight landing vs. a Jettison? I keep empty drop tanks IF I did not have to engage A-A but thats it… Lose a plane and pilot or lose inventory, not a choice for me.
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My first question, should the ATC not direct me to the better suited runway given my config ?
ATC just don’t care at all about your confg or weight … It is 100% pilot’s responsabilities to first evaluate/calculate landing performances. If performances do not match, he has to choose another field or limit his weight/configuration.
ATC has nothing to do in this process.
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This is all very interesting, but why would a pilot ever roll the dice on an overweight landing vs. a Jettison? I keep empty drop tanks IF I did not have to engage A-A but thats it… Lose a plane and pilot or lose inventory, not a choice for me.
IRL or even BMS campaign, pretty sure that’s the right answer… I crushed my gear, struck tail or blew a tire in about half of the training test runs I did. And the other half, I plowed through a highway or neighborhood north of the airport.
This is just a sim exercise… learning the ropes and exploring the limits. learning that it’s reasonably safe to land up to ~33klbs on a 9,000ft runway, is valuable knowledge – eg. jettison tanks but keep a pair of HARMs or Mavs.
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IRL or even BMS campaign, pretty sure that’s the right answer… I crushed my gear, struck tail or blew a tire in about half of the training test runs I did. And the other half, I plowed through a highway or neighborhood north of the airport.
This is just a sim exercise… learning the ropes and exploring the limits. learning that it’s reasonably safe to land up to ~33klbs on a 9,000ft runway, is valuable knowledge – eg. jettison tanks but keep a pair of HARMs or Mavs.I guess for me it’s just one of those info overload things, I can’t retain 1/4th of the things I actually should know to thrive and survive a campaign so fringe stuff like this isn’t even on my radar…
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My interest in this topic was raised for two reasons (and I recycled this similar topic for that): I felt that I could do better generally when landing heavy and wanted to improve upon my technique. The 2nd reason was that sometimes you have to carefully make risky landings, although not hazardous ones, I agree. In some cases you have to touch down on a FARP for refueling and extended station time and that may be a highway strip which are notoriously short.
In any case, I have learned a lot from going through these exercises and discussions so thank you for that.
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Check lists (real) gives you graphs to know, depending on temperatures, weight … etc … the LDA you need to land. You can’t choose an airfield that o not match the required LDA.
In some cases you have to touch down on a FARP for refuelling and extended station time and that may be a highway strip which are notoriously short.
Runway must be compatible with performances. If you are too heavy, you have to reject the airfield or reduce your weight.
Example of computation for acceleration-stop distance (rejected take-off) : https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?40875-Anti-skid-is-working&p=559421&viewfull=1#post559421
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I felt that I could do better generally when landing heavy and wanted to improve upon my technique.
+1 to that … I’ve had some very bad (crash-)landings at around 30klbs. Eg: the GP-bombs training at KOTAR range… often end up with ~5klbs fuel remaining… and holding on to the empty tanks and BDU launchers, which seems like the appropriate thing to do.
But after practicing 40klbs, now 30klbs that seems easy.
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+1 to that … I’ve had some very bad (crash-)landings at around 30klbs. Eg: the GP-bombs training at KOTAR range… often end up with ~5klbs fuel remaining… and holding on to the empty tanks and BDU launchers, which seems like the appropriate thing to do.
But after practicing 40klbs, now 30klbs that seems easy.
Easy, or for me nothing to be anxious about any longer I feel I have improved by doing these excersises/challenges (however unrealistic they may be), I have gotten a new appreciation for the charts, knowing the wind, all that pilot stuff. And I must say I am impressed by how close the BMS F-16 performance matches the charts
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assign k to a hotas button
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…the REAL trick way to do it is to assign k to your toe brakes on the pedals and then use the pedal throw to control the repeat rate of the key…I used to do this on my Mac setup for FAF using ControllerMate and it was the next best thing to having proportional brakes. Given that anti-lock brakes actually do pulse, it’s “sort of” like having that.
I’m thinking Joy2Key might let you do this? Or some/any input utility that will bind a key and key repeat rate to an axis input.
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why not just use the built-in mapping for toe-brake axes? -
I because I was on a Mac and there wasn’t a mapping for those axes…
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FAF == Allied Force? They released a version for MacOS? In 2005, when that platform had <5% market share, maybe 2% for desktops?
lol I had no idea… that blows my mind. I suppose they were over-excited by the move to Intel x86, which happened around that time.
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Yes. And then they re-released it a few years back, updated to run under OS X…which it no longer does, but I still have a Mini that I can run it on very nicely on the 55" Samsung TV. Personally, I think the Mac versions of FAF were the best ones, and that the OS 9 version had some kinematic features that made it slightly better than the OS X release. I can also say that the surface to air threats and behavior are still in a lot of ways better and more RL current than even some of BMS today, though I have been watching BMS improve over it’s releases.
I attended an A/A tactics seminar once presented by a Top Gun graduate…who opened his presentation by saying - “you’re not really here to hear about A/A tactics, you’re all here because you want to know how to beat the Flanker in FAF”.