TAXI SPEED CONTROL FOR SMALL PLANES

[gsedge]

I have difficulity controling the taxi speed for small planes. It seems that no matter what I set the sliders at, the planes with the throttle all the way back will taxi at 40+ knots. I can slow dow some by constantly pumping the brakes. The only way to stop the plane during taxi is to apply the parking brake. Adjusting the prop speed doesn't seem to help.

[ronzie]

First insure your throttle control is properly calibrated in Win gaming options. If your control has dedicated software for doing this check it out also. Calibrate your prop control as well.

Open up a turboprop aircraft in FS engine off. The King Air would be a good choice. Pop up the throttle quadrant window and operate the throttle control on your stick, yoke, etc. Do you see the throttle control lever go through its full range from the idle point to max (excluding reverse thrust unless you have set that up with your throttle control)? While you are there check out your prop control range if you have that assigned.

If these are OK, you should be set for non-turbo prop aircraft.

Note that for jets and turbo-props there is an additional control called a condition lever, usually to the right of the others. For the King-Air there are three positions to be used as follows:

Fuel Cut-Off all the way down is to starve the engines to a shut down.
Ground Idle, about a third of the way up, is for taxiing.
Flight Idle, full up, is for flight ops from take-off through cruise and landing. Turbine engines require a spool up time so in flight idle is kept higher to reduce the delay in power adjustments. Taxiing in flight idle will result in high taxi speeds.

Some aircraft even at minimum power and condition at ground idle will taxi fast. For some jets and multi-engine props, single engine taxi might be used. For props with reverse thrust pitch available if you calibrate your throttle control to use it (available with FSUIPC and some stick control driver managers) you can apply a bit of reverse as you taxi to slow the aircraft to avoid brake use. You don't use this method with jets.

Last, if you are using a registered FSUIPC, run its axis calibration as well.

I went into this long explanation because "small aircraft" means different things to different people.

Hope this helps.

Also, a non-realistic cheat is to keep your throttle lever at minimum rpm (max pitch - not feathered).