Couple of Questions on the Twotter X

[twright 7]

Hi guys!

New to this forum but am a member of a couple of other FS related forums. I recently purchased the Twin Otter X product and must say that overall I am very impressed. It is my first Aerosoft purchase and it certainly won't be my last!

In the -300 model in particular I notice that cruise power is 40 PSI on the power levers and 75%RPM on the prop levers. I set this but find that the prop levers need to be pulled fully back to achieve 75% RPM (the tooltip says 0% when hovering the mouse over the prop levers). Is this normal? To feather the props, I can only do this by first pulling the levers fully back and then pressing SHIFT+F2. Is this a bug as it seems strange to have to pull the prop levers to their minimum setting for cruise?

Also a more general question on technique for landing the float variant! How do I do it?!

Kind regards,

Tom

[azflyboy 1]

Hi guys!

New to this forum but am a member of a couple of other FS related forums. I recently purchased the Twin Otter X product and must say that overall I am very impressed. It is my first Aerosoft purchase and it certainly won't be my last!

In the -300 model in particular I notice that cruise power is 40 PSI on the power levers and 75%RPM on the prop levers. I set this but find that the prop levers need to be pulled fully back to achieve 75% RPM (the tooltip says 0% when hovering the mouse over the prop levers). Is this normal? To feather the props, I can only do this by first pulling the levers fully back and then pressing SHIFT+F2. Is this a bug as it seems strange to have to pull the prop levers to their minimum setting for cruise?

Also a more general question on technique for landing the float variant! How do I do it?!

Kind regards,

Tom

I'm not sure about the physical setting of the prop levers, but keep in mind that the propellers on many turboprops have a very narrow RPM range (often only a couple of hundred RPM) that they normally operate in during cruise flight, which means that the levers will have quite a bit of travel for not much change in RPM.

As for the float landings, they're much harder in FSX than in the real world, so don't feel bad if they're getting annoying.

In the real world (I actually have a float rating), landing a seaplane is done mostly by using perpherial vision to tell where the water is, and basically flying the airplane onto the water at the appropriate touchdown speed and at almost zero sink rate with the floats essentially parallel to the surface instead of flaring like land-based aircraft would.

Since FSX doesn't do a great job of depth perception for water and because you can't really use your perepherial vision on a PC monitor, I've found that using the radar altimeter to fly the Otter onto the water works pretty well, and after a few landings, you'll probably get a better idea of what outside view looks like when you make a proper landing.

If might also help to make the landing from the VC view, but with a spot view window opened up so you can judge the height a little better.

After landing, bring the yoke all the way back, and either let the water drag slow the airplane down, or engage reverse thrust to cut down on the "rollout" distance.

In the real world, seaplanes with reversible pitch props try to avoid using full reverse at low speeds, since the prop-blast can throw spray into both the propellers and the engines, neither of which really like getting wet, especially in salt water.

[twright 7]

I'm not sure about the physical setting of the prop levers, but keep in mind that the propellers on many turboprops have a very narrow RPM range (often only a couple of hundred RPM) that they normally operate in during cruise flight, which means that the levers will have quite a bit of travel for not much change in RPM.

As for the float landings, they're much harder in FSX than in the real world, so don't feel bad if they're getting annoying.

In the real world (I actually have a float rating), landing a seaplane is done mostly by using perpherial vision to tell where the water is, and basically flying the airplane onto the water at the appropriate touchdown speed and at almost zero sink rate with the floats essentially parallel to the surface instead of flaring like land-based aircraft would.

Since FSX doesn't do a great job of depth perception for water and because you can't really use your perepherial vision on a PC monitor, I've found that using the radar altimeter to fly the Otter onto the water works pretty well, and after a few landings, you'll probably get a better idea of what outside view looks like when you make a proper landing.

If might also help to make the landing from the VC view, but with a spot view window opened up so you can judge the height a little better.

After landing, bring the yoke all the way back, and either let the water drag slow the airplane down, or engage reverse thrust to cut down on the "rollout" distance.

In the real world, seaplanes with reversible pitch props try to avoid using full reverse at low speeds, since the prop-blast can throw spray into both the propellers and the engines, neither of which really like getting wet, especially in salt water.

Thanks for your reply. I haven't tried that yet but I just did a couple of flights in the Otter and they were very enjoyable - sure is a fun aircraft to fly! I had no trouble setting the correct 75% RPM for cruise, yet it did seem a bit odd pulling the levers right back to set this.

I've also noticed that the oil pressure gauge always reads on the red line at 100 during cruise at proper cruise power, and in the -100 series Otter, the Engines spool up to over the red line on the Pressure gauge (top gauge of the engine instruments), which is the same position as they would spool up in the -300 series but on the -300 series the red line is further round than on the -100 series.