Easy Camel?

[Reflected]

Is there some sort of an autorudder function that I forgot to turn off, or the Camel requires absolutely no right rudder in a tight left turn? The FM is far below my expectations

 

edit: sorry, I mean left rudder in a right turn. 

Edited November 21, 2018 by Reflected

[Zooropa_Fly]

My first impression is that the wings fold under less loading.

[unreasonable]

Why would you need right rudder in a left turn - the rotary will tend to yaw the nose to the right as you pull back on the stick, so you should need left rudder to keep the nose level in a left turn: and left rudder to keep it level in a right turn!  https://www.flyingmag.com/pilots-places/pilots-adventures-more/calculated-sopwith-camel

 

edit: Steam has not uploaded the update yet so I have yet to try it in FC.

Edited November 20, 2018 by unreasonable

[HagarTheHorrible]

10 minutes ago, unreasonable said:

Why would you need right rudder in a left turn - the rotary will tend to yaw the nose to the right as you pull back on the stick, so you should need left rudder to keep the nose level in a left turn: and left rudder to keep it level in a right turn!  https://www.flyingmag.com/pilots-places/pilots-adventures-more/calculated-sopwith-camel

 

edit: Steam has not uploaded the update yet so I have yet to try it in FC.

 

I don't suppose you've seen the Fokker DR1 report that the article suggests is going to be done in the following months ?

[unreasonable]

8 minutes ago, HagarTheHorrible said:

 

I don't suppose you've seen the Fokker DR1 report that the article suggests is going to be done in the following months ?

 

No - I had a look but the site is not too easy to search: but no luck.

 

Although the same author did write up the Dr.1 in an earlier article: https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/what-the-red-baron-never-knew-22968921/

Edited November 20, 2018 by unreasonable

[HappyHaddock]

Hardly anything more than a first impression but having put in years as a camel jock in ROF my first gut instinct of the camel in FC is what a remarkably stable gun platform and "easy" ride.

 

How much of that is my previous experience and how much is the way the new game engine handles the FM I don't know but when I take my hands of the stick it just keeps going where I pointed it...

 

Next thing to check is that the update hasn't defaulted to some sort of setting with all the pilot aids turned on!

 

HH

[Archie]

Been shooting them down all day in my Pfalz
You have to keep the stick pushed forward in the Plalz, same as the Dr1. Not tried the Camel but interesting to hear that it flies straight and level.

[HagarTheHorrible]

40 minutes ago, HappyHaddock said:

what a remarkably stable gun platform and "easy" ride.

 

when I take my hands of the stick it just keeps going where I pointed it...

 

 

 

HH

1

 

Doesn't sound right to me, but then there is the old adage "Careful what you wish for".  Both the Camel and DR1 should be high maintenance type birds requiring constant attention to keep them from straying off the straight and narrow.

 

[migmadmarine]

Does the Camel have an adjustable stabilizer? I don't recall from ROF...

 

[HagarTheHorrible]

8 minutes ago, thenorm said:

Does the Camel have an adjustable stabilizer? I don't recall from ROF...

 

 

What sort of a bird do you take me for.  The mear suggestion, stabilizer indeed !!!!!!!  Me thinks you have me confused for a Tripe or SE5a ?

 

 

[HappyHaddock]

definitely something about this camel in FC that's "easier"

 

All the aids  turned off and I'm sharp shooting from perhaps twice the distance I did in ROF... it's just not as twitchy as I remember (or perhaps expect of a camel?)

 

HH

[LukeFF]

47 minutes ago, thenorm said:

Does the Camel have an adjustable stabilizer? I don't recall from ROF...

 

 

No

[Muff_Huggar]

I can't get the camel to fly level. Now I'm new and I am crap at this, but the camel for me wants to nose up and stall unless I hold constant down pressure on the stick. What am I missing?

[US63_SpadLivesMatter]

Called it.

[unreasonable]

2 hours ago, Muff_Huggar said:

I can't get the camel to fly level. Now I'm new and I am crap at this, but the camel for me wants to nose up and stall unless I hold constant down pressure on the stick. What am I missing?

 

It is the same phenomenon as in the Dr.1  Read this thread to get the background on the issues. Basically the original plane also needs forwards stick pressure to fly level especially at low altitude and high speed, but if you have a spring centered stick it may make this more uncomfortable.  

 

 

 

[Muff_Huggar]

For me, it is nothing like the DR1. The DR1 has what I would call an upward drift while the Camel absolutely pulls the nose up forcibly. If I let go of the stick, it is like the plane is trying to do a loop on its own.  Reducing throttle doesn't help much. I have a 1600M and it has a spring-loaded center and this makes the Camel something I can't fly. I am disappointed because I look forward to FC improvements and additions, and I am not good enough to enjoy flying this plane.

[Feathered_IV]

What is the spin recovery method like?  I recall the RoF Camel required you to suck the stick back into your chest to stop spinning, then quickly push the stick forward and don't touch the rudder.  Is it noticeably different in Flying Circus?

[ZachariasX]

You can stop the spin immediately with opposite rudder an pushing stick forward when you do that as soon as it flicks. It is more work once you have it enter a spin and leave it for a couple of turns. If you overdo it in maneuvering and it flicks, spin recovery is immediate with all  FC planes (the Pfalz is hard to get there in the first place).

[HagarTheHorrible]

3 hours ago, Muff_Huggar said:

For me, it is nothing like the DR1. The DR1 has what I would call an upward drift while the Camel absolutely pulls the nose up forcibly. If I let go of the stick, it is like the plane is trying to do a loop on its own.  Reducing throttle doesn't help much. I have a 1600M and it has a spring-loaded center and this makes the Camel something I can't fly. I am disappointed because I look forward to FC improvements and additions, and I am not good enough to enjoy flying this plane.

 

The Camel has a large a large pitch up tendency with full fuel tank but this becomes less pronounced as fuel is used.  Try flying her with about 10% fuel and see what difference it makes.

[HappyHaddock]

36 minutes ago, HagarTheHorrible said:

 

The Camel has a large a large pitch up tendency with full fuel tank but this becomes less pronounced as fuel is used.  Try flying her with about 10% fuel and see what difference it makes.

 

Having read others comments about pitching up I was going to mention that I usually start with about two thirds full tank, perhaps purely by dumb luck I started on a fuel level that acts as a perfect trim for balancing this.... I'll have to try her both full and near empty and see if she's just as stable.

 

HH

[Reflected]

Sorry, I mean left rudder should be needed in a right turn, my bad.it was mildly present in RoF.  It’s not at all the case in FC

[unreasonable]

1 hour ago, Reflected said:

Sorry, I mean left rudder should be needed in a right turn, my bad.it was mildly present in RoF.  It’s not at all the case in FC

 

I thought you were a bit too much of an old hand to make that mistake....now that I have had a chance for a quick spin I agree.  The precessional motion when changing pitch is almost undetectable: I am not even sure if it is there at all. In the Dr.1 the tendency to yaw right on pitching up is very obvious, in the NuCamel not at all. I was able to fly around and make fairly sharp turns to left and right with my feet completely off the rudder bar and the nose tracks against the horizon the same both ways as far as I can see . It is almost as though the plane has been modeled with a radial engine instead of a rotary.  

 

This was with the fuel at 50% on take off which may make a difference: I needed constant stick back as the plane was nose heavy at this fuel state with my stick.

 

Anyone else have a different view?  Probably better to get a few more flight reports before making a formal bug report.

[keeno]

Hi,

 

I liked the old ROF camel which was much tougher to fly prior to the patch which made it too easy to fly (in my option). This "new" camel seem to be somewhere inbetween. I had a QMB play last night and actually found it easier than the DR1 to keep level and didn't spin it once.

 

Still love this latest patch though.

 

Cheers

 

[76SQN-FatherTed]

13 hours ago, Muff_Huggar said:

 If I let go of the stick, it is like the plane is trying to do a loop on its own. 

 

This is exactly what Arthur Gould-Lee wrote in "No Parachute" about his first experience of the Camel, so...

[Reflected]

The Camel was extremely tail heavy, get over it. However, all accounts I've read it should need nearly full left rudder in a right turn. Now it needs none. THAT's the problem.

[Muff_Huggar]

Fine, I didn't complain. I asked if there was something I was missing. All someone had to do was say, "that's was the way it was." There is absolutely no excuse for comments like "get over it" when a new person is asking a reasonable question without denouncing the game or plane and just trying to understand. That was uncalled for. I am not an aviation maven, so I have to ask. Rude responses, I'm sure, will reduce my participation here in the future.

 

For the people who were civil enough to treat the question reasonably, I tried 15% fuel and much reduced power. When the stick goes to center, the Camel noses up horribly. As I said earlier, I'm not good enough to fly this plane as it is. If I'm just flying around level, I can keep the nose flat, but if I have to do any maneuvering, I'm porpoising. I can't fly it, so I'll stick to the Spad.

[unreasonable]

If you have a stick where you can adjust the spring centering strength, try reducing it or turning it off. I have a FFB stick and if I turn off the spring centering the Camel flies nose heavy! 

 

If you cannot do that you may have to wait and hope that the developers at some point allow custom response curves, as discussed in the thread I linked.

[wombatBritishBulldogs]

Some people like some dislike but he has flown them https://youtu.be/PWsca10FuUw?t=529

[ZachariasX]

10 hours ago, Reflected said:

However, all accounts I've read it should need nearly full left rudder in a right turn. Now it needs none. THAT's the problem.

How much foot you need depends on your airspeed. If you fly > 150 km/h then it is easy to keep it straight using little deflection. If you slow down (like 110 km/h) you start using considerable foot work.

 

Now tight turn to the right are much easier as the aircraft will have a nise down tendency, majing you fly a downward spiral keeping speed up. It takes not much of downward pitch to keep you speed.

 

On the other hand going left, nose pitches up slightly, just enough to decrease your speed below 150 km/h where it is easy to bleed of more speed, as you not only have to use full rudder to keep the nose down, but also full aileron out of the turn to compensate induced roll. with those two „air brakes“ deployed, one has a hard time to continue the turn. To the right side, the induced roll is not that noticeable, as you can compensate downward pitch momenr with the ekevator that does not induce roll. To the left side, you had to push forward if you were doing the same, then considerably widening your turn.

 

Besides excessive yaw stability, I think they have the Camel spot on.

[bzc3lk]

28 minutes ago, wombatBritishBulldogs said:

Some people like some dislike but he has flown them https://youtu.be/PWsca10FuUw?t=529

 

Has he flown a Camel as well as the Pup?

[Reflected]

ZachariasX that’s exactly what I’m not experiencing in RoF ?

[unreasonable]

4 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

How much foot you need depends on your airspeed. If you fly > 150 km/h then it is easy to keep it straight using little deflection. If you slow down (like 110 km/h) you start using considerable foot work.

 

Now tight turn to the right are much easier as the aircraft will have a nise down tendency, majing you fly a downward spiral keeping speed up. It takes not much of downward pitch to keep you speed.

 

On the other hand going left, nose pitches up slightly, just enough to decrease your speed below 150 km/h where it is easy to bleed of more speed, as you not only have to use full rudder to keep the nose down, but also full aileron out of the turn to compensate induced roll. with those two „air brakes“ deployed, one has a hard time to continue the turn. To the right side, the induced roll is not that noticeable, as you can compensate downward pitch momenr with the ekevator that does not induce roll. To the left side, you had to push forward if you were doing the same, then considerably widening your turn.

 

Besides excessive yaw stability, I think they have the Camel spot on.

 

Having flown some more I agree with you that it is there:  but it is very subtle, certainly compared to the Dr.1  Apply too much left rudder in a right turn and you will yaw right up out of the turn and spin out. (To my death in this case, as I have still not got the Camel spin recovery down well enough to recover from 4,000ft )

 

Using rudder to get into a turn helps a great deal: as you said earlier the aileron roll rate is poor. You note excessive yaw stability: perhaps this is also damping the precessional yaw?

 

2 hours ago, Reflected said:

ZachariasX that’s exactly what I’m not experiencing in RoF ?

 

You mean in FC. Try flying at about 1000rpm, and get your compass aligned with a cardinal direction. Then put in sharp pitch movements;  you can see the yawing on the compass more clearly than against the sky or ground, but it is only a tick on the compass either way.  So I think on reflection that it is there, but whether the quantity is correct I cannot say.  

 

 

[ZachariasX]

2 hours ago, Reflected said:

ZachariasX that’s exactly what I’m not experiencing in RoF ?

Are we playing the same game? I‘ve expended the „rudder assis?“ joke on unreasonable, so I suppose are right.

 

As for pecession: make pitch up an pitch down movements at higher and at lower speeds. Maybe you need to zoom in a little to see the yaw.

 

As for turns: enter a power turn to the left at around 100 km/h and keep it wit a 60 degree bank. Check what you have to do to keep the nose/turn level. Do the same to the right and compare stick inputs.

5 minutes ago, unreasonable said:

You note excessive yaw stability: perhaps this is also damping the precessional yaw?

It seems almost everyone has a distorted expectation of what precession does in quantitative terms.

 

The main thing is here that control surfaces get exponentially more effective with increasing airspeed. The more effective your tailplane, the less it can be twisted out of place by precession.

 

As for our dear Camel, I think (might be wrong and only my very own distirted expectation) that the Camel tailplane is too effective. Just keeping rudder straight doesn‘t make the plane depart its yaw attitude. Now if there is already a higher efficiency of the tailplane, this means the Camel becomes sooner more robust in attitude changes due to the very same precession. But this is speculation.

 

As for control of the plane: the rudder produces a lot of induced roll. Initiate the bank with the rudder and follow with the stick. Thise barn door ailerons are great airbrakes, snatching your airspeed when you need it the most, this is in the turn. The slower you are, the more you have to deploy control surfaces to keep it from departing level due to precession. It is a vicious cycle that evenually causes you to spin out of the turn.

 

I‘m really impressed how the devs made it work out.

 

Now, if you blew it and you flick out, IMMEDIATE counter rudder plus pushing (and blip) usually does the trick and you‘ll have the furry back after less than half a roll. If you miss that point, blip, full pull and rudder opposite to the turn. You can steer the ailerons inside the turn, but it often works without. You do this until the plane slows the roll and starts to shudder. Then all neutran an push forward, release blip. You can catch her in less than 2 turns.

 

 

[ZachariasX]

 

Maybe one more thing. I think most problems arise because pilots misunderstand the Camel as much as they misunderstand the Dr.I leading to wrong expectations.

 

Try to think of the Camel as a fast plane. I know it is not really that, considering its competition, but it still needs to be flown fast in its own envelope to give you what it can do. It has a thin wing profile that likes going fast plus going fast will require you putting all those barn dors less into the wind, further bleeding its speed. At higher speeds it is markedly more benign, as precession is felt much less and it will bleed less speed in the turns. If you drop speed once, you blew it and any work on stick and rudder will make bad things worse.

 

The opposite holds true for the Dr.I. That one is a slow airplane and can be flown as such. It has a high lift wing and real ailerons. It also climbs steep and slow, but it can dive as the rest can within distances of close combat. The Dr.I easily wins the slow fight over tha Camel. But if you keep the speed in the Camel you can reverse the tables.

[HappyHaddock]

Like the vast majority (if not everybody here?) I've never flown a real camel and so my expectations are based upon anecdotes from real pilots and experience of flying the majority of WWI flight sims that have been released since home computers became "a thing" back in the early 1980's.

 

It might be that the camel in FC actually behaves more realistically than previous simulations like ROF but there's no doubting that compared to the camel in ROF the FC version is both easier to fly and a more fearsome aircraft because of a significant boost in speed, and it may be as Zach says that the extra increase in speed is what has ironed out some of it's quirks by making it more stable. With a full tank of fuel making a sharp, tight turn at slow speed is still asking to end up in a spin so I doubt anyone would call it a docile starter plane for newbies.

 

Until I've spent a lot more time with the camel under variety of conditions I'm not going to criticise it or suggest the devs. latest camel is somehow "wrong", I'll simply state that it hasn't provide the challenge I expected it to.

 

HH

 

 

[BMA_Hellbender]

 

[unreasonable]

42 minutes ago, ZachariasX said:

 

 

As for control of the plane: the rudder produces a lot of induced roll. Initiate the bank with the rudder and follow with the stick. Thise barn door ailerons are great airbrakes, snatching your airspeed when you need it the most, this is in the turn. The slower you are, the more you have to deploy control surfaces to keep it from departing level due to precession. It is a vicious cycle that evenually causes you to spin out of the turn.

 

I‘m really impressed how the devs made it work out.

 

Now, if you blew it and you flick out, IMMEDIATE counter rudder plus pushing (and blip) usually does the trick and you‘ll have the furry back after less than half a roll. If you miss that point, blip, full pull and rudder opposite to the turn. You can steer the ailerons inside the turn, but it often works without. You do this until the plane slows the roll and starts to shudder. Then all neutran an push forward, release blip. You can catch her in less than 2 turns.

 

 

 

You appear not to have read what I wrote. My point is that too much left rudder caused the plane to spin out by yawing skywards in a slow right turn: I span out against the precession, not with it.   The precession should be pulling the nose towards the ground: but the effect is extremely weak even at low speeds, requiring little or no left rudder to counter it.  I can make a slow wide turn and keep the nose on the horizon just by altering the stick angle a little with feet off the rudder bar.

 

As far as I can see, it is easier to fly the Camel as though the precession is not there: something that is impossible in the Dr.1. While I agree that precession is there when I check the compass heading and make pitch changes in practice it is so slight that using the rudder to counteract it is liable to lead to over control in the opposite direction. 

 

When we fly Spitfires etc we do not worry about precession - although it is there from the prop - I suspect that just forgetting about it will lead to better flying than consciously worrying about left rudder in a right turn, etc.  Just make small rudder movements to put the nose where you want it.

 

As for the spin recovery: I will give it some more practice: from a higher altitude next time.....

[ZachariasX]

1 hour ago, unreasonable said:

The precession should be pulling the nose towards the ground: but the effect is extremely weak even at low speeds, requiring little or no left rudder to counter it.

You are countering it already by pulling with the elevator when doing a righthand turn. You really don't need to add rudder. You can only add left rudder if you are releasing stick and let the nose drop. Rudder outside the turn then can be used to attain horizontal attitude. In this sense, elevator and rudder act like a V-tail. But it comes at the price of induced roll out of the turn against precession (where your Camel will flip if you messed it up) if you use rudder instead of elevator. But if you are fast enough, it is correct that little corrections are sufficient.

 

Tipp: use less bank and just pull to turn right. Precession will make a 30° bank turn like a 40° bank turn (just expample).

 

Conversely, say if at your current flight speed, you can pull 2 G max. before stalling out (60° bank), then going right at full power means that you will be stalling out before that, depending on tail fin size/airspeed ratio. To the left, you wouldn't be able to pull 2 G even at 80° bank as you have to fight to keep the nose down as well as fight the indiced roll.

 

It is also reasonable that the plane snaps out in the direction where you push for with your rudder and not in the direction of the precession vector.

 

1 hour ago, unreasonable said:

but the effect is extremely weak even at low speeds,

I find it significant, just go left with 60°+ bank and slow. It will make you fly crabwise quickly during such a turn. Going right helps you because if you don't fight it sufficiently, all you get is more speed in the turn when the nose starts pointing ownwards, making everything easier, plus the elevator holds all your precession without the downside of induced roll. Turning right is the easy part if you want a tight turn. Turning left helps you for making a wider, climbing turn.

 

1 hour ago, unreasonable said:

When we fly Spitfires etc we do not worry about precession - although it is there from the prop

We fly like pigs here. But that's ok.

 

As for all anectotes pointing toward "full left rudder is needed in a right hand turn", this really needs some context for any other purpose than yarn. You really need to mess up a lot to require rudder assist in a right hand turn. Precession makes you turn a tighter circle with the same bank angle, meaning you can easily overdo to the point of stalling it when going slow. If you have to widen the turn for not stalling, then your only option is to use the foot to control pitch attitude, until you could correct the bank angle. Induced roll helps you there. You need considerable rudder in a slow left turn however.

 

1 hour ago, unreasonable said:

As far as I can see, it is easier to fly the Camel as though the precession is not there: something that is impossible in the Dr.1.

For the simple reason that the Dr.I is unstable on the yaw axis and will respond to any torque force in that vector plane. This makes you control the yaw all the time while the Camel at higher speed is stable in yaw, not requiring you to fight precession, even though it is there as well. If you don't feel precession, this means you are doing things right and you're going sufficiently fast.

 

If I had one wish for the Camel, then it would be givng it almost (but not quiet) as little yaw stability as the Dr.I. Also then you "feel" would correspond more to your expectation.

[unreasonable]

@ZachariasX Then I think we are in agreement essentially. If I understand you correctly it is there in the Camel, but most of the time you do not have to worry about it unduly. This is partly simply because we will often be faster than in the Dr.1 but possibly because the yaw stability may be too good. I also agree about the value of anecdotes BTW. 

 

Flying around in QMB with a 8v8 against Dr1s (the Camels won) I found I could more or less forget about the issue and just fly the plane, although I am having to change my recent WW2 habits of using ailerons to bank and going back to using the rudder to enter the turn. Easier to land without a ground loop than the Dr.1 as well. For me it was just something of a shock to find how untricky the Camel is after spending a fair bit of time in the Dr.1!  

 

 

Edited November 22, 2018 by unreasonable

[E_Davjack]

What ZachariasX is saying about speed playing a role makes a lot of sense.  In laymans terms: the pitching moment is more of a proportion of the total energy system at lower airspeeds.  Anecdotally, pilots were said to be killed by the Camel on takeoff and landing...slow and too low to recover. 

 

Because of the holiday (Happy Thanksgiving, knights of the sky!), I haven't had much time at all to hop in a FC Camel. I did about 3-5 minutes of flying it without pedals (at higher speeds) to confirm that was a thing, but I haven't fought in it or landed it yet.  Perhaps Kermit Weeks is right that (despite the CG/instability differences between it and a Pup) a Camel *can* be lightly flown feet off the rudder at cruising speeds, but that also results in an uncoordinated turn, and requires a shallow easy turn.  

 

Watch below, in a few seconds he initiates a sharp left hand turn and maintains basically full rudder deflection, and then lets off the rudder at the end when the turn is more shallow.  He also blips aggressively when entering the tighter left turn.  Then he does a left turn with a much shallower bank angle, light blip, and no rudder deflection, then he rolls out a bit, goes back into a tighter turn with left rudder.

 

Go back to 1:00 if you want to see the right hand turns, and notice that he actually uses a small bit of *right* rudder to tighten up his turns.  It's all on tape, folks. 

 

My takeaway is that a speedy, shallow left turn can be maintained, but to tighten it up into a combat turn, rudder is required.  I gotta spend more time in it!

 

 

Edited November 22, 2018 by II./JG1_EmerlistDavjack