Most Difficult to Fly: My Nomination

[Fleet Canuck]

Well, rotorcraft don't count. They're a category all their own.
Some planes are hard to fly because the air file is wrong.
But, some are accurate, and are very difficult to fly, like Mario Motto's Aeritalia F104. So much acceleration you've got to get off the runway and get the gear up before it goes past the speed for damaging the gear. Then on approach it's a challenge to slow down enough to lower the gear, then flaps, then keep moving the throttle forward so the tiny wings don't stall just short of the runway. I read somewhere that the Luftwaffe had a 40% accident rate with the F104. I've never flown anything as difficult as that. Are there others even more difficult to fly?

[stuartcox]

This is an interesting topic.
I reckon that 99% of simmers have not flown a real aircraft.
As the Microsoft advert says, "As real as it get's", - you cannot compare the flightsim with the real thing!
But I agree, the F-104's I have tested in FS9 are all very challenging.
Once in the air I find most AC easy to fly, but groundhandling is a different issue.
Environmental challenges play a big roll, something MS has got wrong with their crosswinds!
FDE programming also plays a massive part.. the largest!
As for the German Starfighters, they were known as the "Fliegender Sarg" (flying coffin), license built by Dornier.
I mainly fly my aircraft in medium reality settings, just to avoid extensive prop torque, AC stress, etc..., which I think are too emphasised.
My vote goes to the A2A Spitfire, which tends to topple over by the slightest rudder input, even at low speed.
That's FDE's again...

[binarkansas]

Agree, this is an interesting topic. The F-104, is indeed difficult. However the one model that I really wanted to be able to fly from the VC, repaint, and pretend I was Johnny Livingston in 1932, is the old free Clipped Wing Monocoupe by Golden Age's Paul Corish and Gil Halpen. If you think I'm wrong, go to 1930's Cleveland and try to fly even one lap of the course from the VC! And if you're really brave, try a landing.

Barry

[PRB]

A2A Spitfire? Very interesting? I have that one, but the older (pre-Accusim) version. It doesn’t seem that difficult.

The most difficult to land plane I’ve seen so far is probably the Alphasim GeeBee racer. In fact I’ve never managed to land it without crashing. That one may be FSX only… The second most difficult would be the Alphasim B-58. If you’re not on-speed and on-AOA you’ll roll it up into a ball…

I wish flight models out there better simulated the effects of engine-out flight characteristics. I keep reading how difficult this plane or that plane was to handle on one engine, but I’ve never seen any FS twin engine plane that was any more difficult on one engine than two.

- Paul

[Drzook]

I'd go with any Bf109--from the VC. Flying them: no worries. Landing: still not bad as long as it's from spot view. Trying to land from the VC-now that's a white knuckle experience in anyone's book. I prefer Paul Rebuffat's 109's but AF Scrubb and Sky Unlimited have some good ones too, not to mention the one you get from Kaz Ito if you e-mail and ask nicely. But they are all a bit*h to land from the VC. I'd say a good runner up would be Warwick Carter's Gee Bee Z for much the same reasons.

[Matt Wynn]

I'd go with any Bf109........Trying to land from the VC-now that's a white knuckle experience in anyone's book.

much easier with TrackIR, just have to crab it in slightly and lean your view closer to the canopy glass most warbirds/taildraggers can be a challenge even the taxiing is an art form with the 'taildragger weave' to keep checking what's in front (Seeing as we don't have groundies who can sit on the wings during taxi and use hand signals to guide you )

the F-104 i've gotten used to, it's one of my most flown aircraft, F-16 is normally a cakewalk although in reality thanks to fly by wire you point the nose and it sticks there, just wish we had a way to program FBW into FDE's, the Airsimmer Airbus A320 has it thanks to gauges.... how i wish Rob Barendregt would consider FBW as a plug-in gauge, that'd be perfect for plugging into modern aircraft

[Blackbird686]

The Plane Design Spitfire XVI isn't so much a challenge to fly as it is to manage on the ground. Take-offs are a trick because there is so much torque, one has to apply power gradually and stand on that rudder. Trucking around in the Spit XVI take a gentle hand and some seasoned ability to get her to to correctly perform the "Taildragger Weave"... as Matt described in his post. Be careful on those landings too.... ever so gently, she likes to bounce. :greenbo:

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[Motormouse]

Thomas Nilsson's Saab Draken. Ttfn. Pete

[Moses03]

One that comes to mind is the Warbirdsim P-51B/C series for FS2004. The prop torque on takeoff can really pull you over if you are not on top of it. Landings can be bouncy. Wonderful model but a handfull to fly properly.

[Naismith]

Never mind flying, taxiing is a challenge in the narrow geared Bf109's of Flight Replicas. I'm forever falling over.

[falcon409]

I no longer fly FS9 (I have it but it isn't installed), but I fly a lot of FS9 portovers and so I'm on here just about every day to see what's new and exciting. In reference to airplanes that are difficult to fly however, everyone has mentioned things like "torque, speed, FDE's, VC views, etc" and they're all important factors to be sure IF you have your realism sliders all pushed to the right, crash detection on, fuselage stress on and all those other pesky options checked. I'm surprised almost every day by folks who have just bought a new addon aircraft or downloaded one of the more sophisticated freeware birds and then complain that they're unable to fly it after all. . ."so I guess I just wasted my money on this one". When I ask what they're realism setting are and they tell me, "Well, they're all to the far right". . . . ."wait for it", lol. . . .oooooooooooooooohhh, lol.

Stuart mentioned it above, in passing. . . .he flies with his realism settings in the medium range. Whenever I get a new aircraft and especially when I first started flying choppers, I had everything to the left. I got in the airplane and flew for hours that way, just getting used to the airplane, the VC, the knobs, switches, etc. . .take-off's, landings, taxiing and so on. If you're pulling your hair out trying to keep from overstressing the airframe, blowing an engine (sometimes the only one you have) and on down the line, what fun is that? Check your realism settings. I understand folks wanting to have the most realism possible both in the sense that the flight dynamics are "spot on" (which will never happen in flightsim) and the systems are properly replicated, but if you rarely fly that "I've gotta have this one" airplane because of the frustration level. . .check your realism settings, "dumb it down" for lack of a better term, and learn the airplane from the bottom up. The old adage that says, "Just fly the airplane", is the best advice. Flying is basically universal no matter what airplane you're fly. . . .it's dependent on lift, airspeed, altitude and situational awareness. . .if you have enough airspeed to maintain forward flight and enough altitude to maneuver, then keep your eyes outside the cockpit and enjoy the scenery.

Don't concern yourself with crashing and then having to wait until the sim resets you back at the end of the runway, or screwing up the gears on take-off because your airspeed was over the limits and then having to restart. learn the airplane first, go in steps, eventually you can move those sliders all the way to the right and be flying like a pro or you can discount everything I just said as coming from someone who hasn't a clue about what "real" flying is all about, lol. . . .this was just my 2cents, FWIW.:salute:

[HorusJ]

For myself its kind of weird.I do great in planes like the Bf109 and F-104 but when I fire up a single engine prop like a Piper or Cessna I'm lousy!
Large,unusual,complicated,fast,even Russian types(my favorite)no problem.Single engine GA types...crash!

Joel

[stuartcox]

[QUOTE=falcon409;73020 I just said as coming from someone who hasn't a clue about what "real" flying is all about, lol. . . .this was just my 2cents, FWIW.:salute:[/QUOTE]

Hi Falcon,

You certainly said it better than me, even though I have real flight experience.
A sim is a sim, - TV next to you, going for a p... after pressing 'P', and and enjoying a cup of coffee without spilling it...
OK, this was not the subject of the topic! :-)
In my opinion, there are too many factors to mention here! There are hardly any FS9 planes impossible to handle, if you adjust the settings.
There is no specific plane that I would like to mention, apart from the A2A Spitfire (Groundhandling), all depends on the (inaccessible).air file and cfg. setup!
Nothing get's close to reality though!

Stuart

[Willy]

I fly with all the settings all the way to the right, but that's mainly because all of our races require those settings and I don't want to get out of practice of flying that way.

FS aircraft that I can't seem to take off and fly are few and far between unless it's something stupid that I've done. Enough so that I can't think of any offhand. But landings can be something else. The worst I can think of for landing is IMHO, Wozza's Gee Bee Z. It seems to have grenades attached to the wheels that unless you touch the ground just so with holding your mouth right, it's gonna explode. I flew it on one of our multiplayer adventures for a while and got to where I could land it about 2 times out of three, but I was also saving the flight just before final approach just in case it did decided to blow up so it would be easier to try again. The sad part about it is that other than the landings, it's a really nice aircraft for FS that I really enjoy flying.

I've been a fan of Gee Bees for years, and I've never heard of one in real life having landing gear problems.

[Sunny9850]

Let me start by saying that FS can in fact be quite close to the real thing with a bit of work.
I had somewhere around 2000 hours of Sim time before I started to get my PPL. Once I had picked a flight school and knew what airplane I would be flying I got myself a copy of te PA28-161 POH and a FS9 version of the Warrior made by Rien Cornelisson ( hope I spelled his name correctly ) and tweaked the cfg and air files until the numbers in the POH were closely matched in the sim.

On my very first lesson the CFI never touched the controls...though he had the hands close by the yoke at all times.

Once I had a few real hours in the Warrior I tuned the simulated one to match the actual airplane I was flying. In the end I could replicate 2124F' behavior near as makes no difference in the Sim and greatly improve my progress to the ticket.

I repeated that process when I started flying a PA28-181 and then used that airplane to get my IFR ticket and once again to practice for my Saratoga.

The reputation of the F-104 in the Luftwaffe as a crew killer at least in part has to be blamed on the brass tasking the aircraft to play a role it simply was not build to play. It was never ever intended as a ground attack aircraft....and it was absolutely ill suited for that role. And aside from a few mechanical issues that was where most of them came to grief.
It was of course a challenging aircraft to fly with a relatively narrow sweet spot where it was happy. Fly outside of that envelope and you are indeed balancing on a knife edge. The sim versions seem for the most part replicate that quite well.


When our team released the quite complex Lockheed Constellation series we expected a few e-mails that would deserve to be answered by a short and sweet ****. We did get a few of them but since most people had followed the build at CC were avid propliner fans actually not as many as I thought and of course we did not simply say **** either.
Falcon makes a good point regarding the realism sliders. Start easy and make it progressively more "real" as you get comfortable. In the case of the Connie's that would however still leave you with some of the build in realism/failures that do simply require knowledge and proper handling by the book.

I have been lucky enough to fly a number of different types in my time and hope there will be many more. In all of those cases except those where I was only riding right seat I sat down and read the POH and talked with a pilot who had time in type to get a few pointers on the do's and don'ts for the aircraft in question.

If you approach the FS aircraft in the same way and then establish your own performance sheet by flying a few stall series up high, go through a few configuration changes and note airspeed and power settings that work in general you will get much more enjoyment out of the new birds.

Ground handling of a tail dragged is difficult.. Period. If anything in some ways FS makes it too easy.
Dont believe me...invest $50-100 and find an airport near you where you can get an hour of Tailwheel instruction. I can tell you that a lowly J3 cub will humble you just trying to taxi to the runway.

A P-51 at full throttle has way more torque than the rudder can compensate for. The most recent accident of a P-51 at KCMA is a unfortunately deadly reminder how quickly a Mustang can get ahead of you.
http://www.aopa.org/asf/ntsb/narrati...20070720X00970

My AP owned and flew a D model with his brothers for some time and all three had learned to fly with conventional gear aircraft....and still one of them managed to bang the left wing tip onto the ground in a similar incident...but with much better outcome.

For me personally the most challenging FS aircraft is the magnificent Russian Tri-jet 152. But I have to admit that is largely my own fault because I still have not fully read that manual and the systems modeled are mindblowingly complex.

Cheers
Stefan

[Jagdflieger]

While my only experience in piloting real airplanes is limited to Cessna's, Beavers and Barons, I agree totally with the F-104 and the Me 109 series of fighters as being the hardest to fly in the Sim. Back in the day when these planes were flying, real pilots probably would have agreed too. The narrow undercarriages on both planes make for some interesting results during a fast taxi.

The Me 109 had some real quirks on landing and losses to the necessary maneuver nearly riveled combat losses for the plane. The German post-war Luftwaffe also demonstrated that the overloaded G model of the Starfighter was also a handful on landing with losses reported in the news almost monthly in the 1960s. As a young aviation enthusiast in the 60s, I always wondered why that was the case. Flying the F-104 in FS9 promptly cleared that question up for me.

[Tom Clayton]

I was thinking of the Mustang to, but because of the landing characteristics - especially the Wozza-Stang. It really has to flown all the way to the ground unless you're an expert at nailing three-pointers. If you let the plane just settle onto the front wheels, the tail will dip and the sudden increase in AOA will put you right back into the air, and with precious little airspeed to avoid stalling.

[expat]

If you have never done it, try landing the AS RA-5C Vigilante on a moving carrier, at night, in weather and with crash detection on.

[Sunny9850]

I was thinking of the Mustang to, but because of the landing characteristics - especially the Wozza-Stang. It really has to flown all the way to the ground unless you're an expert at nailing three-pointers. If you let the plane just settle onto the front wheels, the tail will dip and the sudden increase in AOA will put you right back into the air, and with precious little airspeed to avoid stalling.

Based on what I am told the best option is to leave the prop in the cruise pitch setting and manage power accordingly to arrive over the fence at Vref which should put you slightly nose high but not quite in the three point attitude. Let the aircraft slow and settle moving you closer yet to the three point and hold it off.
If you have to go around the cruise pitch setting prevents the massive torque from immediately rolling you on your back if you are a little too ham fisted on the throttle.
This same technique works for all the fighters of the era.

I think it is important to remember that these airplanes were the ultimate flying machines of their day and came after new pilots cut their teeth in much more benign trainers.

Stefan

[Blackbird686]

The German post-war Luftwaffe also demonstrated that the overloaded G model of the Starfighter was also a handful on landing with losses reported in the news almost monthly in the 1960s. As a young aviation enthusiast in the 60s, I always wondered why that was the case. Flying the F-104 in FS9 promptly cleared that question up for me.

I have to agree with you on that note. I have both the Capt' Sim and the freeware "Skunkworks" Zipper. I was eventually able to get the CS F-104 to terra firma in one piece with lots of practise. The Skunkworks model was another story altogether. Getting the gear up before damaging it on take-off was a real chore... especially if you get too eager and punch it... Lighting that can up can really increase your TOS and leave you with little time to pull up the rollers. Getting into a respectable approach for landing, and then slowing down enough as to not damage the flaps and or loose hydraulics... practise, practise, practise. Oh, BTW.... if you don't "Keep Your Airspeed Up", as so eloquently stated... the Starfighter has another little surprise in store for you. :isadizzy:


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[Matt Wynn]

i find the 'snake sez' a brilliant way of remembering key things in the 'one-oh-four'.... just a few of the many below (My favourites)

Attachment 69048 Attachment 69049 Attachment 69050 Attachment 69051 Attachment 69052 Attachment 69053 Attachment 69054

more -104 goodness at : http://www.916-starfighter.de/

[Blackbird686]

Those were pretty good, Matt. I don't think anyone has ever been able to recover from a flat spin in the F-104.... maybe Chuck Yeager did, but only by punching out just before the Starfighter turned him into another statistic.

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[Ferry_vO]

One that comes to mind is the Warbirdsim P-51B/C series for FS2004. The prop torque on takeoff can really pull you over if you are not on top of it. Landings can be bouncy. Wonderful model but a handfull to fly properly.

Yep! The Flight Replicas Avia S-199 is almost as bad as the real thing was too. That big paddle prop combined with an engine that rotates the opposite direction the plane was designed for...
Once in the air it's OK, but on the ground brakes and rudder are barely sufficient to keep it on the runway.

One-oh-fours are difficult too, especially on landing. The real thing had a problem with sudden loss of lift on approach, as the engine didn't produce enough air to keep the blown flaps functional once it got below a certain rpm (88% IIRC?)

The Alphasim/Virtavia Tu-22 is quite hard too, with very high take-off and landing speeds and the turning radius of the QE2. No speedbrakes either..

Of course that was all before I got FsX, and the A2A Stratocruiser where you need to fly the aircraft, navigate and keep four R-4360 engines running smoothly at the same time..!

[falcon409]

I'd have to vote for both the B-58 and the F-104 as the most difficult to fly, even with realism setting rather low. On the F-104, consider that the total wing area of the 104 is less than one wing of an F-16, lol. It stands to reason that on approach, unless you maintain a speed of at least 200kias over the numbers, it's gonna drop like a rock. You can't fly that airplane like a conventional fighter because it isn't one. You take off fast, fly fast and land fast. Pure aerodynamics, which the F-104 has very little of. . .it's a rocket with wings. The only Sim-104 I've flown is the Cloud9 version many moons ago. I was constantly putting it into the dirt on approach because I wanted it to fly the way I was used to, 150kts approach speed, 1 notch of flaps, gears down and about a 5deg nose up attitude. . . .squeak the tires on the numbers. Until I learned two things. . . .it has very little wing/lift area. . . . .and you cannot "float" the airplane onto the rwy, you must "fly" it onto the rwy, I had a heck of a time with landings. After I got those two things into my head, as weird as it felt to be heading towards the rwy at over 200kts. . .I was sqeakin' those tires and enjoying the F-104.

As for the "Hustler", don't even talk to me about the "Hustler", lol. . .I bought it, flew it twice and put it away. I don't even think I have the files for it any more, lol.:isadizzy:

[Blackbird686]

As for the "Hustler", don't even talk to me about the "Hustler", lol. . .I bought it, flew it twice and put it away. I don't even think I have the files for it any more, lol.:isadizzy:

The B-58 is a heavy bird, but what it's shortfalls are in that category, it makes up for in sheer power. As a kid, I always fancied the Hustler, thought it was a beautiful aircraft the very first time I laid me eyes on her. I bought the Alphasim model and found out real quick that, like the F-104, the Hustler needs to come in hot, about 210 KIAS. Then use all that weight to your advantage, back off the throttles and with a 5 or 6 degree nose up angle, cross the fence and let her settle on the mains... "SCREEECH!!" Like the F-16, keeping the nose wheel off the ground and allowing that massive delta wing to help you slow down saves on the brakes. Bear in mind that the B-58 needs a long runway for landings, even with a drogue chute.
Taking off is pretty much basic. Get her pointed straight and true, and punch it. Feel your body start to sink back in that seat. At 180 KIAS, pull back on the stick, lift off, retract the rollers. She will accellerate aggerssively in a 55 degree climb and reach 40,000 feet fairly quick. Flying the B-58 is a joy.

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