A hopefully simple question: make the nosewheel/tailwheel swivel with the rudder

[Sid2008]

Hi Milton and Hairyspin and others,
I have been trying to get the nosewheel of my Cessna 337 and my Northrop Delta to swivel with the rudder. I use FSDS and Makemdel and in FSDS there is a turotial on how to do it and even an example. Well I followed both and it does not work.

So I was wondering if one of you could do a step 1, step 2, .. brief tutorial on this, please.

Thank you,

Sid

[Milton Shupe]

With FS9, the steering gear started using c_wheel to turn only when the aircraft was moving.

Prior to that capability, you could simply name the object that you setup to turn the wheel the same as your rudder, l_rudder or r_rudder. Align the proper pivot just as you do the rudder. The wheel will then turn the same degrees as the rudder as specitified in teh aircraft.cfg airplane geometry section.

If you prefer it work more realistically, then use c_wheel.

Generally the hierarchy would look like this:
c_gear_upper (animated on keyframes 0-100 to retract and deploy if retractable)
... c_wheel (animated between keyframes 100 and 200 and rotated 360* in animation)
...... c_gear_lower (animated suspension between keyframes 100 and 200)
........... c_tire animated by FS

With this animation, you must specify the degrees of deflection in the contact point for the center gear.

If you want castoring, use 180.
point.0 = 1, 10.85, 0, -8.033, 1600, 0, 1.504, 180, 0.248, 2.5, 0.9, 3, 3, 0, 140.8, 235.84

If you want steerable, use around 45
point.0 = 1, 10.85, 0, -8.033, 1600, 0, 1.504, 40, 0.248, 2.5, 0.9, 3, 3, 0, 140.8, 235.84

Let me know if this doesn't answer the question. There may be small implementation differences in FSDS.

[Sid2008]

Ok Milton, i got it to work. This is how.
Step 1) Make an upper strut and a lower strut to the swivel landing gear. The lower strut's parent is the upper strut.

Step 2) Make a swivel arm/bracket the holds the nosewheel or tailwheel and name it rudder_percent_key and animate it just as you would the rudder. Make it part parent the lower strut.

Step 3) Make a wheel (c_tire) and make its part parent the rudder_percent_key and copy and paste c_tire onto itself, call the copy c_tire_blurred.

Then animate the upper strut to rotate in and out of the gear bay and the lower strut for gear compression and the whole system works fine with the center wheel swiveling with the rudder.

Thanks, Milton.
Sid