Question on Phoenix and planes

[LN400]

So I finally got a plane. An ST Models Beaver that comes with both wheels and floaters. Plan is to learn on the wheeled version but it would be fun to fit the floaters on at a later point. Now, I have Phoenix but me knowing nada about airplanes, I have to ask: How well are planes modeled in the sim? Any peculiarities of the real models or the sim models I need to be aware of?

All other info for a complete and utter newbie very much appreciated.

[ronj]

Great post, I've been wondering the same thing. I have a T-28 Trojan on the way and wondered if it was anything the same as the Phoenix model.

The Beaver looks like fun. I've been playing with it on Phoenix and have been enjoying that as well.

[rojack]

Phoenix is fine for planes in my opinion. I don't have RealFlight to compare which sim program is better, but I have several planes and Phoenix does a decent job of simulating RC planes from my experience. I have a Radian glider and with a little editing, the Phoenix version was very close to my real Radian, and I tried a bunch of stuff in the sim that I was too scared to try in real life. After a lot of sim practice I went out and flew the Radian much more confidently and it acted pretty much like in the sim. Good for me!

I also have some smaller electric planes and practice the small weak ones in Phoenix so I can learn better to deal with stalls and such. Also I do a lot of 'torque practice' in Phoenix so I can 'hover' my planes and do harriers. Also practicing knife-edge and inverted flight.

I think the sim is good for planes!

[LN400]

Thanks for the replies, guys!

As for flying style, this will be one to fly in a scale manner, no 3d or inverted or anything fancy. One thing that is a bit unsettling is, on the sim, these planes seem to weight very very little making landings "interesting", to say the least. Not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, if it better prepares myself for the easier real life landing or if it will lead me astray. For now I can only accept the floatyness of these planes and do my best getting them landings down as good as possible but I'm curious about how easy the real model bounces and balloons after touchdown.

Here's how I go about it until someone can tell me it's not how to do it

For the tail draggers I keep them level using speed alone to control descend rate, also experimenting with different flaps settings. I like them to come down as slow as possible without going all wobbly and stalling. I found that, especially the Camel and Tiger Moth, will bounce, stall and nose dive to a crash if the wings have even the slightest positive AoA after touchdown until the speed drops to a crawl. I keep it level until the speed drops for the tail to settle down by itself. Is this just the weightlessness of these sim models or is this how they really behave?

[Mojappa]

As long as you're leaning the coordination then you're good to go. There are too many variables for it to be realistic. Take the Edge 540 Red Bull plane, that thing hovers like its got gyros in it, easier than the big gas planes. If you can take off, fly in a controlled manor and land about where you want to land, not just where it ends up, them you should be good to go.