A320neo Weight and Balance

Ok...here's what I learned. In my effort to increase the pax/cargo load to make a profit, I neglected to note the weight distribution of the plane and it threw it out of allowable range - resulting in an uncontrollable aircraft. Don't make changes to the aircraft fuel/cargo settings in the window available after you've loaded your flight plan and the sim has started. You must use the fuel/cargo settings at the time you set up your flight plan in the Free-flight window of the sim. In the upper left corner it shows a picture of the plane you're flying and, if you click on that picture, it will open the fuel/payload window that shows the center of gravity for those settings and when they're out of whack. Additionally, even if you leave them within proper parameters, I've found that an almost fully loaded aircraft is still unable to maintain altitude without a higher than usual speed settings. In this case, the preset managed speeds the sim sets up may be insufficient to hold the altitude. Using selected speed mode will allow you to increase this to a point where the plane can maintain the set altitude, but it dances in and out of overspeed at times because the margin is so close. I guess I'm best off bumping the planes weight back a bit to try and get a reasonable profit without overstressing the aircraft.

Landing this is also a challenge - perhaps due to the full weight of my payload, but I still tend to either land heavy or have my passengers scream on touchdown because it trips the g-force settings in SPAACARS. This happened on my last flight, where I had a reasonable landing rate of under 500 fpm but still had passengers scream due to gforce. I'm guessing that should not be the case I wouldn't think, but I'm still quite a novice at setting this plane down on final.

Also learned from the video of the real-world pilot is that the throttle must be brought back to idle before touchdown to keep the engines spooling back up and you need to turn off autopilot prior to touchdown to hold the now up during the flare until touchdown. I've been using the open source addon to the A320neo that is still improved over the default with more simulated cockpit settings and less bugs I think.

John

jer029 wrote:

Also learned from the video of the real-world pilot is that the throttle must be brought back to idle before touchdown to keep the engines spooling back up and you need to turn off autopilot prior to touchdown to hold the now up during the flare until touchdown.

Yep, this is how I land the aircraft every time. At the 100 foot callout by the GPWS, I pull the throttles back to idle and switch off the autopilot. Then it's just a matter of keeping my reference focused at the end of the runway and keeping the nose elevated during flare and voila! For the most part anyway. Some landings are still rougher than others.

Thanks Eric,

I like the A320, and the short commuter flights are my favorite next to bush flying, so the A320 will fit the bill very nicely. It appears from a bit of Internet search on the A320neo in MSFS that the flight model has issues when you start messing with payload and balance. I tried again with a heavily weighted plane, but with the center of gravity exactly in the middle of the acceptable zone as shown on the diagram in MSFS fuel/payload settings. The plane still dropped from the sky when set at 250 kts. This should not happen I don't think, as this is the limit for flying under 10,000.

I'm thinking that the plane still needs work unless I'm still doing something wrong here.

John

Yeah, it definitely still needs a lot of work. I've tried three flights today and couldn't complete a single one. Tried first with the 787 and couldn't get the parking brakes to release no matter what I tried. Second flight with the A320 and an hour out from landing the sim crashed to desktop with no error. Third flight in the A320 and the autopilot flew the plane into the ocean even though I turned off the autopilot at about 1,800 feet above the water. None of my control inputs worked, the throttle inputs didn't work, trim inputs didn't work...

I'm exhausted from it. No more FS2020 for me today.

Hah Eric,

Yep, I've been there a lot with this simulator, yet I return like a moth to the flame. If you haven't tried the A320nx project (open source) improvements to the A320, you might want to give it a try. I think it's better than the default version. Note, it doesn't give you another plane, just updates the default one. If you don't like it, just delete the folder from your Community folder. Also, stay away from the payload settings if possible, and if not...try to keep the center of gravity as close to the default as possible.





Good luck,

John