Review of Flight Characteristics vs. Real Life

[FlyRvR]

I bought the Arrow III as soon as I got my new computer and MSFS 2024 this last Christmas. I selected the Arrow because, after some 28 years! I've recently started flying an Arrow III at my local FBO. Your model is almost exactly like the one I fly, with only a slight difference in the placement of the fuel gauges, and EGT.

The overall look and feel of the model is excellent!
The technical aspects of getting in, managing the start up, managing the systems, etc... is pretty much right on.
However, right away, I noticed something that I was able to confirm just a few hours ago.

I fly with a combination of controls on my laptop. I'm getting around 45 to 60 fps, so lag in controls and such is virtually non-existent. I use keyboard when I'm just playing around with the game on my lap. I use a Logitech joystick, nothing special, for most flying. But I also have a Honeycomb yoke, throttle quadrant, and pedals to plug into when I'm looking for full realism. I use MSFS for fun, and for keeping fresh on my instrument approaches at local airports.

With that said, the one problem I have with your Arrow III is the 'sloppy' flight characteristics, specifically, in the stability about the vertical axis, but also some uncharacteristic pitch stability when making power setting changes. The primary issue is the fish-like way the aircraft yaws when in any bank, or when climbing under power.

My initial thought was that this was pretty far from reality, but I held judgment till I could get data. I've got around 30 hours of Arrow III time in my logbook, and now that I've put a few hours on your model in MSFS, I went flying this evening with the intent of specifically comparing real life vs. MSFS. I flew with around 80% fuel, and around 300 lbs of weight in the cabin. The take off run and climb were as expected -- some noticible right rudder needed in comparison to a Cessna 172 or lower HP Cherokee. But the primary difference came when making any kind of bank. IRL, the Arrow is quite stable and coordinated. A bank of 10, 20, or 30 degrees should be accompanied by an increasing amount of rudder input and quite a lot of back-pressure by the time you get past 25 degrees or so. But the aircraft stays very easily in coordination. At 110 knots indicated, any standard banking turn can is almost always coordinated automatically by the aircraft. The ball will slide to the left or right, but will only just barely break halfway out of the centering lines on the turn coordinator instrument. When slight rudder is used, the ball will stay dead center.

In contrast, a slight bank to left or right in the simulator produces a yaw and slip or skid that throws the ball far out of center. I have attempted to fix this with multiple control tweaks on multiple devices, but even when flying on keyboard alone, with auto-rudder selected, the problem persists.

I mentioned the pitch characteristics as well. The problems I see here are no where near as drastic. This evening, when I transitioned from cruise flight to slow flight, and to a decent into the pattern, every step that I took had very predictable results. i.e., 22 mp/ 2300 rpm for a cruise, to 17 mp / 2200 rpm, which produced a nice slow-down and slight descent rate. Once I put the gear down, the aircraft pitched forward just a bit, and slowed right to about 95 knots with about -400 fpm, if no pitch correction was made. The airspeed held very steady and predictable to 90, 85, 80, then 75 on short final as I increased flaps, brought the prop to full, and dropped the mp to 15. The trim handled these changes very easily, but with lots of fine input.

In the game, I notice that small changes like these produce bigger results in pitch attitude than in real life. It becomes predictable, and with better tweaking of the trim, I'm able to ignore it till I get to about 80 knots. At this point, the pitch becomes difficult to control in the game and pilot induced oscillations becomes a real thing that I have not yet been able to tune out of any of my controls.

In short, the pitch stability seems to need a bit of smoothing out in slow flight, and to be a little more predictable when power changes are made anywhere above 100 knots. The yaw stability seems almost like a bug, and it would go a long way towards greater realism if this could be ironed out of the flight model.

In case anyone is interested, I took some iphone video of my flight this evening, showing some basic turns right, then left, without using any rudder. It is clear to see just how stable the yaw remains in a real Arrow III. <-- This is a shared video link from my Google Drive.

That said, I absolutely love the model, and will continue to fly it! I has come in handy for planning XC flights, and for IFR practice. Keep up the good work!