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A Couple of Bravo Quadrant Issues


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I've been flight simming for about a month, and have been using the Honeycomb Yoke with great success.  Last week I added the accompanying Quadrant Throttle to my cockpit and have hit a couple of snags which I'm hoping someone can help me resolve.

 

Technical Stuff:  I'm running MSFS on an MSI Windows 10 machine (I can provide the details if necessary, but as of now I don't believe that's part of the problem).  And the only planes I've been working with are the Cessna 172 and Cirrus 22.  I don't have enough expertise to experiment with any others.

 

It took me some learning time to get the Throttle mapped correctly; I needed to learn some aeronautical terminology, binding terminology, and what functions I needed/wanted to bind to which buttons.  But I finally have the main portion of the throttle where I want it and everything seems to be working fine there, with one exception which i'll get to in a minute.  But I'm having a problem with two of the AutoPilot functions (Nav and IAS). 

 

1.  There are multiple Airspeed functions under the AutoPilot menu and I've tried binding each, in turn, to the AIS button.  But when I go into the cockpit and try to set an airspeed I don't see anything change on the flight display (like I do when I set the VS and/or Alt buttons).  And the button doesn't illuminate when I press it, like all the other buttons do.  Could someone confirm for me which function needs to be bound to the AIS button and suggest how I can verify that it's working?

 

2.  I watched a number of tutorials on the quadrant, and in all of them I see the same procedure for enabling NAV when in AutoPilot.  I set a flight plan (Departure and Arrival points), take off, get airborne and level at cruising altitude then enable AutoPilot.  But if I press NAV, the plane drifts off of the flight path and doesn't return.  I can adjust the flight path by switching to HDG mode and making adjustments to the path that way, but NAV just doesn't seem to be working at all.  Am I missing a step?  is there some particular way I need to configure the NAV setting on the quadrant?  (By the way, the NAV light DOES illuminate, but that's it.)

 

3.  Finally, and not as important as the other two is the Trim wheel.  I know it's bound correctly, but when I go to use it during flight I don't see anything happening.  If I watch the trim wheel in the cockpit I don't see it turning.  To be honest, I don't yet fully understand Trim but that should be neither here nor there....I'm just wondering if I should see the "real" trim wheel in the cockpit turn when I rotate the Quadrant Trim wheel.

 

 

Anything anyone can tell me would be greatly appreciated.  Oh, and keep it simple!  I've only been at if for a few weeks and have barely scratched the surface with the terminology.

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  • Aerosoft
On 2/18/2022 at 9:22 PM, Richinlesta said:

1.  There are multiple Airspeed functions under the AutoPilot menu and I've tried binding each, in turn, to the AIS button.  But when I go into the cockpit and try to set an airspeed I don't see anything change on the flight display (like I do when I set the VS and/or Alt buttons).  And the button doesn't illuminate when I press it, like all the other buttons do.  Could someone confirm for me which function needs to be bound to the AIS button and suggest how I can verify that it's working?

---> To make sure I understand, can you please point on a screenshot the button you want to see turning in the cockpit and show us the binding you use ?

 

On 2/18/2022 at 9:22 PM, Richinlesta said:

2.  I watched a number of tutorials on the quadrant, and in all of them I see the same procedure for enabling NAV when in AutoPilot.  I set a flight plan (Departure and Arrival points), take off, get airborne and level at cruising altitude then enable AutoPilot.  But if I press NAV, the plane drifts off of the flight path and doesn't return.  I can adjust the flight path by switching to HDG mode and making adjustments to the path that way, but NAV just doesn't seem to be working at all.  Am I missing a step?  is there some particular way I need to configure the NAV setting on the quadrant?  (By the way, the NAV light DOES illuminate, but that's it.)

---> Can you check if this behavior also happens when you click the buttons on the screen (in the simulator)

 

On 2/18/2022 at 9:22 PM, Richinlesta said:

3.  Finally, and not as important as the other two is the Trim wheel.  I know it's bound correctly, but when I go to use it during flight I don't see anything happening.  If I watch the trim wheel in the cockpit I don't see it turning.  To be honest, I don't yet fully understand Trim but that should be neither here nor there....I'm just wondering if I should see the "real" trim wheel in the cockpit turn when I rotate the Quadrant Trim wheel.

 

---> Can you show me a screenshot of the trim bindings in MSFS ?
          Also, please make sure the ASSISTANCE OPTIONS are set to "TRUE TO LIFE"
          

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Thank you.

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Sorry for not getting back sooner, but thanks for the reply.  To be honest, I had searched through so many forums that I forgot where I had posted this question (it's an age thing).  

 

Regarding Airspeed, I eventually found that the nomenclature had changed between the time the video I was referencing and the time I received and was attempting to set up my quadrant.  In the video, it was called "Airspeed" so that's what I was looking for.  Eventually, I happened across some discussion that indicated it was the same as "Flight Level Control."  So I looked for that and found it.  I bound it using the same process as the video (but with the new key).  I'm still not quite certain it's working correctly, but haven't fully tested it yet....I've been focusing on the rest of the quadrant setup.  However, here's what I have set up for now.

 

Please login to display this image.

 

As for the NAV situation, I believe that I just had the wrong bindings.  As I may have mentioned, I'm new to both aviation and flight sims, so the terminology is all foreign to me.  But I now have the NAV AP working correctly.

Finally, I'll have to give your suggestion a shot with regards to Trim.  I found A LOT of discussion about Trim not working; apparently, numerous users noticed a significant change in how it works since a recent MS update (Update 4 I believe).  I followed another "recommendation" to change the trim wheel from a single button to an axis-like input device (using the AuthentiKit Tuning App).  In theory, it sounded like it addressed my issue, but I couldn't get it to make any difference.
 

But I know that I've been running Flight Sim in Easy mode.  Perhaps that's controlling the Trim so my attempt to adjust it via the wheel is useless.  So I'll set the user mode as suggested and see what happens.

 

Again, thanks for the help!  If/when I get everything right, I'll update this so that any future newbies will learn from my experience.

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  • Aerosoft

Hi Rinchinlesta,

 

Thanks for your feedback.

As for the trim, make sure you are running the simulator with the ASSISTANCE set to TRUE TO LIFE.

 

You may also want to check this tutorial :

Best regards.

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I'll check out the tutorial, but in the meantime I tried setting the Assistance Options to True Life as suggested.  This made a definite difference and appears to be the source of my issue.  As a newbie, I've been learning with the Assistant set to Easy-Peasy.  Apparently, that "helps" with trim, rudder, yoke etc.  So at the end of the day, it wouldn't let me do what I thought I wanted to do....but it was doing what I had CONFIGURED it to do.  My bad.

 

But now that I know how to solve my issue, I can ignore it until I improve my skills and release the assistant.  But I do have one question still regarding how the trim is supposed to work:  It appears to take a fairly large rotation (on the order of nearly two full rotations to move the cockpit trim wheel about one notch) of the Honeycomb Trim wheel to get a relatively small rotation of the actual trim wheel.  Is this normal?  I don't believe I should expect to see a 1/1 "gear ratio" but what should I expect to see?

 

Thanks.

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  • Aerosoft

Hi,

Can you please first check how many pulses per revolution

the trim wheel gives ?

You should count around 50 in each direction. 

Thanks.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I haven't been here in a while, but saw this most recent request from Aerosoft.  I'm not sure how to count the pulses, so I'll have to figure that part out.  But I believe the main issue was that I was running MSFS in Easy mode as I learned to fly and to us the game.  When I switched to true life, I WAS able to manipulate the trim to some extent, but since I don't know how to use it in "real life" I can't tell if it's working as it should be or not.  But I continue to use the Easy mode because I'm mainly using the game for sight-seeing until I get better adept at flying.  Then I'll step up.

 

However, I can tell you that it takes 12 full revolutions of the Bravo Trim Wheel to move the virtual trim wheel in the Cessna 208B from stop to stop, which appears to be something less than half of what I would guess to be a full rotation of the virtual trim.  Hope that helps...

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