MSFS 2024: Excessive float and pitch control issues in the landing flare

richjb

Greetings all,

I'm flying the F28-4000 in MSFS 2024. I noticed a few issues when in the landing flare. First, I have noticed some delay between an elevator control input and response in pitch. This leads to some overcontrolling in the flare. Second, I have noticed a significant amount of floating and ballooning when rounding out for the landing flare. I do not recall this being as noticeable in MSFS 2020. The ballooning results in significant height gain. It appears that ground effect is much too strong for the aircraft.

I also notice that, in MSFS 2024, that there tends to be a loss of lift (associated with the inherent wind shift/velocity decrease below 300') that seems to be exaggerated. All combined, they make things a bit difficult to land the F28 in MSFS 2024.

I made sure that control settings were all linear and that there were no null zones.

I can't say that I notice anything else when I manually fly the aircraft.

Is anyone else experiencing this same effect. Any suggestion on how to address it?

Thanks,

Rich Boll

Mark

It is expected behaviour that the F28 should be susceptible to floating when entering the ground effect. The F28 has a low wing, much lower than most conventional aircraft due to the lack of engines, and it also has a very thick wing that is designed to generate lots of lift at low altitudes. Combine both of those factors with an approach speed which is similar to more conventional airliners, and it's likely that the aircraft will be rather susceptible to ground effect.

If an approach is carried out following standard procedures, it is standard to extend the speedbrake as the aircraft crosses the runway threshold (there is a callout for this in the F28 Professional). When the speedbrake is deployed, the extra drag will slow the aircraft down to the VREF speed, thus reducing any tendency to float. Upon touchdown, the liftdumpers will automatically deploy (if armed), which are used to spoil any remaining lift that is being generated by the wings.

The act of extending the speedbrake during the final approach is something unique to some of the aircraft we develop (F28/146/RJ), and does differ from the more conventional aircraft, but once you start doing it a few times, it starts becoming second nature.

There are few settings in the simulator that we may recommend changing that could improve your experience with both points you raise:

We recommend using linear sensitivity curves for all of our aircraft. This is what the flight models in our aircraft were developed around, and provides consistent control throughout the control range. The sensitivity curve can be adjusted in MSFS 2024 Settings > Control > then click on the cog icon next to your joystick/yoke/controller > Hardware Settings.
We recommend using the "Low" turbulence setting. Based on various feedback we receive from real-world pilots on our testing teams, the "Medium" and "Realistic" turbulence settings tend to produce overly aggressive wind effects in the simulator. Therefore, reducing this setting to "Low" will provide a more realistic experience, and may reduce any wind effects/ground effect caused when low to the terrain. The turbulence setting can be found at MSFS 2024 Settings > Assistances > Turbulence.

Hope that helps.

Mark - Just Flight