Here’s something I had heard bits of before but never really paid much attention to it. I think part of why I ended up using the auto-pilot in flight sim previously rather than hand flying was because of that mistake. Trim is essential, I see now, and after a few flights utilizing it I could never go back.
It might sound silly to you veteran pilots out there or those of you who knew the trim wheel from the first flight sim experience but there must be many who overlooked this, and quite possibly put many off flight sim completely.
Trim is used to relieve control pressures during steady conditions of flight (climb, straight and level, descent). No more holding back the yoke manually for ten thousand feet. So how does it work?
On the trailing edge of the plane is a small trim tab that is operated by a wheel or handle in the cockpit. It’s job is to hold the elevator displaced by aerodynamic force rather than control pressure and it does that by effecting the airflow. When the trim tab is deflected down, for example, the airflow over the upper surface of the elevator increases speed and as I learned previously, reduces the static pressure. Voila, no need to hold that yoke in place and get tired.
The problem with flight sim is that Trim doesn’t seem easy – at least not to me. On one of my last flights (see my last post here) I tried using Trim but I found it rather difficult. Maybe it’s because I can’t feel the pressure on the yoke, but it was hard to tell when I could release the yoke (or joystick in my case). That meant a lot of bobbing up and down as I released the yoke, saw my nose dropping and would pull back again and trim some more. I don’t know what it is like in real life, or if there’s a better way to do it in flight sim – I encourage you to comment below and give me your thoughts or even corrections if I got something wrong.
There’s still some more to be said for trimming, but I’ll save that for the next post. In the meantime I’d like to thank everyone who gave a shout out for FS Ground School lately – I appreciate it as I try to become part of the flight sim community.
Great blog. We can all learn. With you.
Thanks!