Contact points issue?? Maybe not . .

[expat]

I would like a freeware FS9 aircraft to sit a little nose high on the runway.

I do not want to change the in-flight cruise attitude - which is perfect - nor do I have the usual issue of wheels/tires floating above or sinking below the runway. The latter problem I know is address by changing the vertical height in the contact points.

What I want to do is visually change the landing gear length, e.g. make the nose gear longer, or preferably here make the two main struts a little shorter. I know changing the "static_pitch" in the contact points will not fix this as that only effects the a/c in the display (or eg in slew) before entering the sim. I am not sure however if this could be addressed by playing with the static compression and damping parameters in the contact points or if those won't make any difference visually or possibly mess up the landing dynamics which are fine as is.

Is this possible or is it something that is fixed in the visual model?

[Lionheart]

Hey Expat,


You can do this to a small degree with the 'aircraft.cfg' contact points section for the landing gear and its settings.

First off, if you are serious about doing this, make a copy of your config file first before setting out to change all your settings on the landing gear.

The first thing you can do is to change the height of the gear from the ground, so you can sink the main gear tires into the pavement an inch or three, then bring up the nose gear a bit high from the ground to where the bottom contact patch of the tire is just touching tarmac.


The second thing is more drastic and involves messing with the gear 'compression' ration (total movement by static compression). Its so difficult that I dont even know how to explain it and I have been in this stuff for many years. I mostly just mess with the settings until I get the results I need. Sometimes they are easy to do, and some planes fight you by hopping into the air from the tarmac, etc. Its a science... But it can produce some awesome landing gear animations and can definately change the stance of your bird on the tarmac.

Sorry I cant be of more help then that. When I need help, I usually go running to the great aircraft guru Milton Shupe for help. He is really good at adjusting landing gear. (I believe he did a tutorial on this if I remember correctly. Maybe he'll see this post and chime in).




Bill

[expat]

Many thanks Bill. I will experiment as you suggest . . . but only after first backing up the original air.cfg.