Simviation Forums

Some of you may remember I posted about my aircraft drifting/sliding sideways along the runway as I sped up for take-off. The problem persists. I thought I'd corrected after uninstalling, deleting all files, and reinstalling. Yesterday I flew for the first time in a couple months and saw the sliding/drifting continue to happen. So I started playing with different settings to see if anything solved the problem.

I finally noticed a pattern. When I have weather set to fair conditions everything works fine, but any other weather setting and the drifting/sliding occurs. It's due to the wind speeds. I've found that even when the wind is at 2 knots this drifting/sliding is a problem. It's like the wind effect is over-exagerated. This causes the plane to be almost uncontrollable during take-off.

I have double checked my realism settings and turned off wind effects, gyro effects, etc. The problem still persists, but only when there is wind. Is there something I should be looking at in the config file? Any other suggestions? Again, this only happens when there is wind. I know wind will cause stuff like this to occur, but again it's definitely over-exagerated when 2 knots makes the aircraft uncontrollable.

Thanks for any input.

PS: Right now the sim only has default aircraft in it. I have not added any of my old add-on a/c. The only add-on I'm running currently is Ground Environment Pro.

Are you using rudder pedals ?

Thanks for responding Brett. At first I suspected it was something to do with my joystick calibration (rudder is controlled on my stick) so I checked all that before. Also of note, this only occurs in FS9. It doesn't happen in FSX, nor does it happen in the other 3 flight sims I've been flying now. So I'm 99.99%sure it's not the stick. I wish it was that easy

As I said above, the drifting/sliding just seems ridiulously over-exagerated for the wind speed being displayed in the sim (shift+z). Also, I know that when I first started flying FS9 this didn't happen like it does now. The sim reported winds at 2 knots when I was experimenting yesterday. By the time my little cessna skylane got up to 60 kias I had rudder full right (to compensate for the left sliding I was experiencing due to the wind) and I still couldn't keep the a/c going straight down the runway. It would still drift slowly to the left, the nose of the a/c pointing to the right. It's actually a bit of a funny sight.

Again, this was a 2 knot wind. It seemed like I was trying to take off in a hurricane and not the nice spring day FS9 would have me believe it was

This is interesting

How about firing up the "Joystick Calibration Program" and check that all the movements are being correctly carried out smoothly, as expected, on the display screen?... ...!

Potentiometers in the joystick getting a bit worn-out, resulting in erratic behavior?.... ...!

Paul...G-BPLF... 8-)...!

Are you waiting past rotation speed ? Holding an airplane on the ground past when it wants to fly, will cause drifting. You gotta lift the nose at  ~ 65kias in a 182.. no faster.. and then immediately establish a crab angle.

It's possible that I've waited beyond ~65 kias; however, I notice the plane start to slide as soon as I'm doing 15-20kias (that's when the sliding first becomes noticeable). It gets worse as speed increases.

That fact that it  did NOT happen to you earlier, is what's puzzling. Does it happen, even when 'Auto Rudder' is checked ?

I have not tried the Auto Rudder option yet, I'll see if it persists even with the assist and report back.