The A2A Simulations Community

Dear captains

After some trips around the world in my DC-6 from PMDG on KLM 1954 routes, I am now doing an KLM flight to Australia, Sydney in the Connie.
I have noticed that the handling of the yoke is almost to easy on the Connie. I am wondering if I am doing things wrong. When landing the plane do you need to turn of the boosters? The Connie is reacting so fast on my Saitek yoke that I am compensating all the time because the movement of the aileron en elevator is to quick and easy in my opinion. The DC-6 feels more correct I think.

Do you need to turn of the boosters? or do I need to change my settings? or is the connie just that smooth!?

Regards
Ronald van Ingen

Nope, that's what you get when flying a plane with hydraulically boosted controls. The DC-6 is an all-manual airplane, it makes it much more robust, but it also makes it much harder to fly. The Connie requires fingertip flying to be done right. Over controlling is definitely a possibility and getting into a PIO can and will happen if you aren't careful, but that's the plane. If anything, I would suggest you consider re-calibrating your Saitek stick to be less sensitive because it sounds like you may have increased the sensitivity to make the DC-6 more responsive or require smaller inputs to prevent fatigue. If you watch a DC-6 cockpit video, there's a lot of work going on and that's why.

Have to admit that after all this time, I still don't completely have the feel of the Connie - the hair-trigger response, especially in the pitch axis, is hard to get used to. The other day I told myself that it's a Kelly Johnson design, which means it's performance-tuned, so it might make sense to start thinking of it as a very large fighter aircraft that needs a very light touch. Sounds from this like I might be on the right track. I'm away from it at the moment but when I get back to it, I'll give my theory a try and see if I can get a better handle on it.

How A2A has confidence about realistic behaviour if whole Connie package was done based on not flyable static plane ?

Because aerodynamics are a well known area of science and there's pretty extensive aerodynamic performance data on the L049 available. Also, there's the handing notes and pilot interviews at the time that speak about the handling characteristics in details. Additionally, while I don't know if they've specifically interviewed pilots with L-049 experience, they did interview pilots who had Connie experience. The L-649/749 had models flying as recently as 20 years ago so there are guys with relatively recent experience in an airframe with very similar performance and handling to help inform them.

Thanks for answer, was just wondering why A2A choose model that practically do not exist, if they could take Super variant and have easy access to breathing and living plane ? ( at least few planes were fully restored ).

Because it is a technically interesting and significant aircraft on its own. The Super was an "evolution" of the groundbreaking design that was the L-049.

Artur wrote:Thanks for answer, was just wondering why A2A choose model that practically do not exist, if they could take Super variant and have easy access to breathing and living plane ? ( at least few planes were fully restored ).

You have a good point there. An interesting answer to your doubt you may find is in Connie's manual where they describe upon their decision to choose this particular model.

Edit: Read manual Developer's Notes page 76-77.

Sent from my XT1068 using Tapatalk

What's surprised me most is not only the fairly sensitive pitch axis (which I would attribute in part to the lack of any feel or resistance on simulator controls) - the Connie also exhibits extreme trim sensitivity and almost neutral pitch stability at times. You need to be very careful in the descent. At high speeds if it's not perfectly trimmed, it seems as if it will happily drift into a steep dive and blast through Vne. I made the mistake of alt-tabbing to a chart for 15 seconds or so and came back to 280 knots, 40 degrees nose down, and a lot of (rightful) screaming in the cabin. This is an especially perilous characteristic when descending through IMC because without the lack of any tactile feedback on the yoke, and the small primitive gauges, it is very difficult to tell how much you're pitching until suddenly the VSI is pegged. You really can't take your eyes off this plane which makes juggling three crew roles all the more daunting if you find yourself needing to fly into the soup.

Had a difficult time myself controlling pitch at first, very sensitive, pitch up is severe when making turns . Have to stay ahead of Her. Have been flying Domestic, minimum fuel, full loads, IFR, night, low altitude airways, with lots of stops, similar to the routes flown by Capital, Mohawk, Lake Central Airlines in the 50's, although the Connie was only used by Capital. Just finished SEA-PDX-SFO, night, IFR.