My TBM issues

[tswigg]

Hello everyone, 

I just bought into XP11 a couple days ago for the sole purpose of flying this aircraft. I operate TBMs on a near daily basis. I work with and fly them for a living, from the original 700A, B and C models, all the way to the nice and fancy 930s. So I’ve got a lot of time operating 900s. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, which helps when working in aviation maintenance and I’ve put this sim through its paces. As a result, I’ve got a lot to offer, I suppose, in trying to help make this great aircraft, greater. To preface all of this, I have no knowlege of creating and modeling and programming anything like what these people have created, I’m not at all saying any of this maliciously. Nothing is in any particular order of seriousness.

 

• ITT on start is both too high and too fast. ITT will always peak between 30-37 percent NG. After peak ITT, the temp will always decrease to your normal Low Idle temps. When the secondary fuel nozzles start spitting fuel in, approaching 50% NG, there is not another ITT surge. For example, my average start at 5600 msl, thin air, on a 30 degree day will never hit 800 ITT unless we are out doing a prop balance and starting up repeatedly.
• Power on red flashing lights should not flash when either or both the nav or strobe lights are on. Talking about the red LEDs on either wingtip that are on when power is applied to the aircraft. Once either strobe or nav lights are on, both of those will no longer flash until both are off.
• FMS LFE should always automatically input LFE of destination airport, so long as a flight plan is entered in the G1000. Having to go to the system page and pressing “FMS LFE” should not be necessary.
• Manual override in flight is completely broken. Per the Daher Maint. Manual, the in flight test of the manual override lever is to bring the power lever to 40% Trq, then slowly bring in the manual override until but NOT EXCEEDING 100% Trq. There is initial transparency with the override, essentially catching up to where the power is set already. I did this and nothing happened until about the last inch of travel, and the engine essentially exploded the very instant the override introduced fuel.
• Power lever limitations past FL260, full power lever travel is not providing proper power. It how has enough to make the climb and cruise bugs only. Realisticly, you should never actually be able to use full travel without overtorqueing or overtemping. 
• Cruise ITT is too high, example, flew from CO to CA today in sim, FL280 OAT of -44. With trq set to the bug, 98 percent, the sim ITT was sitting at 812. I just had a flight a couple days ago at the same altitude but at -43 oat. ITT in that profile will consistently sit at 780. In this instance the NG was also too high. Showing 101.7 if I remember right. Whereas Normally, you should be around 100.2 NG
• No “Overspeed, Overspeed” warning at VMO. Warning always comes on at exactly 269 IAS and always extinguishes at 268 IAS.
• Right Gear inner door seems to be clipping when gear is up and locked. Exposing tire.
• **HEAVILY OPINIONATED**  I dont like the AOA indicator. In actual TBMs it is aesthetically displeasing. In the sim, there is no external modeling showing of having this type of AOA. There is a mod from Daher that replaces the boot and lift transducer, stall flapper, which will then provide an AOA round gauge in the lower right quadrant of the PFDs. This is installed on all TBM 910s and 930s.
• Never seen NP (prop speed) lower than 2010 in cruise. 2020 is okay, if 2030 is hit the prop governor will be adjusted.
• Reverse numbers and performance are off. Should be

• 27-35 trq

  1800-1900 np. 1850 nominal

  Ng usually about 85

  FF closer to 45-50

• Emer. Gear extension, pump count should be 53-65 pumps. Order of locks should be left first 12-25 pumps.Right second 30-45 pumps and nose is last from 50 to 65 pumps. In sim nose locked first at 28 and left/right locked at same time on the 43rd pump.

• ESI-2000 occasionally showing a different IAS than the PFDs. In some cases over 15 knot difference, always higher than PFD.

Last one which is a bug, seemingly, is what I beleive to be the hypoxia simulation, pulsating red encompassing from the outside of the screen in. In my sim test flight, set LFE at 10,000 feet, descended to 10,000, turned off bleed and hit the dump switch. Started a 1,000 fpm climb to 15,000 to see if the PAX mask drop is simulated. Didnt put the mask on during this as I dont do it IRL. Nothing happened so I made my descent and landed, 5600 msl airport. And it wasnt until exiting the runway that this started appearing. Donned the mask just to confirm to myself that its the hypoxia sim, but even leaving the mask on didnt make this go away..

 

Anyway, thats all I’ve got. By all means, if anyone from the dev team wants to do any of these or anything else for that matter, feel free to PM.I can provide anything from more specific part pricing, to filled out forms from my test flights and ground runs, which encompass every operating value of the engine, timing for various moving parts and anything else you could want. You have all created an outstanding simulation of the TBM and my hat is off to all of you for what you’ve created. Like I said I bought xplane specifically to fly this aircraft and y’all have delivered. I thank you all in advance for the hours upon hours of fun that I will be having flying this sim. Dont know why text got small and on an iPad and dont care to fix it.

[Goran_M]

First, thank you for your observations. 

Now I’ll go into a few specifics. 

Whereas we tried to deliver a “realistic” representation of the TBM, it is by no means meant to be used for real world practise. This is actually stated in the manual. 

Regarding the G1000...we were limited to what we can do by the X-Plane G1000. It will have some things missing or incorrect. 

Weve noticed a few things go awry with the latest update of X-Plane, particularly with the engine.  

In saying all that, we welcome critiques and observations, but there is always limitations when it comes to desktop simulations.  By all means, join the discord and feel free to share all this.  

https://discord.gg/HzVF9f

 

Just one more thing.  We did have Jason Miller, co owner of Foreflight, help us with this aircraft.  Not saying you’re wrong.  Just saying it’ll be hard to determine who’s right or wrong.

 

Edited January 20, 2019 by Goran_M

[tswigg]

Completely understand. Been flight-simming for many many years. Unfortunately nothing in simming will ever be 1:1. Just figured since I’ve got so much experience with this aircraft, I felt I could throw out there what I could. I meant to out in the original post that I understand there are significant restrictions that keep devs from doing quite a bit. Either way it is all appreciated and everything listed is quite insignificant. 

[skiselkov]

10 hours ago, tswigg said:

ITT on start is both too high and too fast.

This is a known messup in the X-Plane 11.30 engine model. They changed some constants and that messes up how the engine behaves during start. We've got a completely custom engine model on the chopping block and that'll resolve all of the startup, peak ITT, cruise power and NG issues. If you wouldn't mind sending me some of your ETM data from the G1000 data card, that'd help me get a more complete picture of the fleet. So far, all the data we have is sourced from one airplane, and a set of one can have various biases or quirks existing in only that one unit.

11 hours ago, tswigg said:

Manual override in flight is completely broken.

As part of the new engine model, I'll be reimplementing the manual override lever. If you could forward me some scans of the testing procedure, that'd help figuring out the exact behavioral model.

11 hours ago, tswigg said:

No “Overspeed, Overspeed” warning at VMO

We don't have the audio samples for the warning. If you could record those, that'd help a lot.

11 hours ago, tswigg said:

Never seen NP (prop speed) lower than 2010 in cruise.

Interesting, staring at ETM data I have I can confirm that the NP seems to climb with TAS. Never noticed this trend. Will implement.

11 hours ago, tswigg said:

I dont like the AOA indicator.

Could you send us pictures of the modified stall flapper & boot for the built-in AoA indicator? It's easy to make it a toggle in a settings menu, so you'll be able to switch between the G1000-integrated AoA and the addon unit. The more info you give us, the more accurately we can model it.

11 hours ago, tswigg said:

Reverse numbers and performance are off.

Thanks for the data, I'll use it to retune the reverse power settings. I didn't have ETM data for the reserve mode, so I just kinda eyeballed it until the testers stopped complaining. Having hard data on this will help a lot.

[tswigg]

Absolutely, I cant make promises that I can get ECTM data. Our engine maint. manager handles all the downloading and distribution of this data. As its something thats ever been sent to me, I cant say for sure that he’ll shoot any off to me. As for everything else I will gather everything I can for you guys, pictures, recordings, video, all the fun stuff.

Quick note on the AOA mod, the lift transducer is not appearance wise, any different than the normal transducer. Neither is the boot, its just how Daher sends the mod kit to us, with a new boot and the transducer installed on that boot. Other than that its a bunch of wiring that needs to be done by our avionics guys. We have a 700 in our shop right now that has the AOA kit represented in your sim, that I will get some pictures of. There is a separate installed item on the right wing that provides the info for the AOA. In my 4 years of working with just TBMs and the hundreds of TBMs in our maint. rotation I have only seen 2 aircraft with that type of AOA installed. On a 700 and 850 legacy respectively. 

Where should I be sending all of this info, if there is a specific email address you could PM me I’m more than happy to help with anything you guys could want. Thanks for the feedback and intrest in all of this.

[N602AC]

It's definitely exciting to see this exchange of information, and to know that such an incredible product now has the potential to be made even more perfect!!

[StevePHL]

Indeed.  This due to a developer as dedicated to excellence as we are happy to "fly" it.  

[robder]

Amen

[tswigg]

Here is a few pictures of the AOA transducer that would be installed in association with what shown in the sim

[skiselkov]

1 hour ago, tswigg said:

Here is a few pictures of the AOA transducer that would be installed in association with what shown in the sim

Thank you, great pictures! I'll get in touch for the rest of the stuff. Just kinda tied up in other work right now.

[tswigg]

Here is the AOA gauge on a PFD. This is on a G1000 NXI, hence why some things looka bit different. Also included a couple extra pictures of the maintenance aftermath of a prop strike. Engine has to go to Pratt for evaluation. Prop is done, this one hit a taxiway light while taxiing out. Still took off and flew for some reason. Vibration would be awful. Pictures will keep rolling in as I take them. All of these are from today.