A note regarding elevator trim

[Molly - A2A]

I came across something recently that was helpful for me and I thought it might be helpful for others so I'm passing it on here.

Like many of us I use FSUIPC for configuring almost all of my controls within FSX, including elevator trim on my CH yoke. What I found was that setting the trim for both the 172 and the Cherokee was taking a long time. The trim would move steadily but took too long if immediate adjustments were needed (like right after take off with the Cessna as it starts to gain airspeed and nose up.)

I tried clearing my elevator trim controls from FSUIPC and resetting them via FSX and voila, I can set the acceleration ("repeat" rate in the options dialog of FSX) to max and I get plenty fast trim now from both the 172 and Cherokee. Just hold your elevator trim for a moment and it will accelerate to quite fast, where it will be plenty of speed for almost any situation.

There may be a way to set acceleration in FSUIPC but I haven't looked into that yet.

Hope that helps some of you that might be struggling with a slow trimming airplane.

[hangar]

the problem with doing it this way is that all our other aircraft would have trim that adjusts much too fast

[b2vulcan]

If you've assigned an axis to the trim just go to the joystick calibration tab, move to 'page' 6 "Trim, spoilers and flaps", click on the 'slope' button in the elevator trim section and play with the slope until the trim responds as you want.

That way the speed increase only affects the Cherokee.

HTH

[kapjadi]

If you've assigned an axis to the trim just go to the joystick calibration tab, move to 'page' 6 "Trim, spoilers and flaps", click on the 'slope' button in the elevator trim section and play with the slope until the trim responds as you want.

That way the speed increase only affects the Cherokee.

HTH

That's what I did on my setting too, I set the slope to 5 for my trim,(Cessna trim wheel)

[lonewulf47]

Just a note or two: Using FSUIPC to assign trim to an analogue axis can pose problems when using the autopilot as it might be disconnected as soon as the autopilot is ON. Trim should be assigned to an analogue axis through A2A's Input Configurator Tool, to be found at: <Microsoft Flight Simulator X>\A2A\Cherokee180\Tools. If you use this tool the Trim Movement is automatically de-linearized. If you take 100% for the whole trim range, the mid part - 25-75% - is stretched compared to the first and last 25% of trim range. This is done on pupose to facilitate trimming in mid-range.

[ThePlasticMax]

The best way to get button'ed trim working with FSUIPC and the cherokee is to use the Offset Increment/Decrement feature of FSUIPC,

Search for "Offset Increment" in the FSUIPC user guide, and the section on it has an example of settting trim up/down to use 256 steps of trim - which I found adequate for the cherokee and all aircraft in general.

[Alan_A]

Thanks, ThePlasticMax - I use button trim in FSUIPC and had no idea that feature existed. Will check it out.

[ThePlasticMax]

Thanks, ThePlasticMax - I use button trim in FSUIPC and had no idea that feature existed. Will check it out.

TBH neither did I til yesterday when I realised that the cherokee's trim was unusable with the normal trim rate and started looking for options

[AdmiralV]

Thanks, ThePlasticMax - I use button trim in FSUIPC and had no idea that feature existed. Will check it out.

Thank you as well! I was having to trim it realistically by cranking with the mouse just to get it move at a reasonable pace.

[Alan_A]

OK, question about this - does the setting get made in the FSUIPC menu or in the .ini? I'm guessing the latter but, if it's not asking too much, a step-by-step might be helpful. The FSUIPC documentation is, as per normal, exhaustive but a little hard to decipher. Thanks in advance!

[ThePlasticMax]

OK, question about this - does the setting get made in the FSUIPC menu or in the .ini? I'm guessing the latter but, if it's not asking too much, a step-by-step might be helpful. The FSUIPC documentation is, as per normal, exhaustive but a little hard to decipher. Thanks in advance!

You can do it either, but in the UI is easier, if you select the Offset SWORD Increment or Decrement control then it adds the extra text box fields mentioned in the user guide

edit:

basically, your 'trim up' control should look like this:




and 'trim down' like this:

[maubrenta]

Thank you so much ThePlasticMax! I was looking for this for ages.

[Alan_A]

Fantastic! (to quote the Ninth Doctor)... thank you! At some point late last night it finally dawned on me that Offset SWORD Increment/Decrement were separate controls in the pull-down menu, not modifications to "elevator trim up" and "elevator trim down." But then I was going to come back and ask about the parameter settings. Am grateful to you for making it so clear. Off to tweak now...

EDIT: Works beautifully. A major improvement. Just one detail - I think you may have your screenshots reversed. On my system, for trim up, it's "increment" and a positive value, for trim down, it's "decrement" and a negative value. Might be a system-specific thing, not sure, but wanted to flag it just in case. Thanks again for the guidance!

[Bjarne Horsboel]

Just one detail - I think you may have your screenshots reversed. On my system, for trim up, it's "increment" and a positive value, for trim down, it's "decrement" and a negative value.

You are right !

It works fantastic !

I think this topic should be pinned !

Tip. You can tick "Profile specific" in C172 and Piber180 if you do not want this modification in other aircrafts.

Best regards
Bjarne

[gavink42]

Thanks so much for sharing the FSUIPC screen shots! It works great!

- Gavin