The plane doesn't fly right, just as the 727 didn't fly right before it had the community flight model tweak pack. I've noticed that it seems longitudinally unstable, like the rudder has minimal effectiveness. Also to maintain a -3500fpm descent at 250 knots you have to keep the throttles up at 50% N1. The elevator trim is too sensitive, needlessly complicating flying, and confusing the autopilot under time compression.

The elevator trip I know how to fix, set the elevator trim effectiveness to 0.3, but the other stuff I don't know. Ideas, anyone?

Well hopefully, with the triple 7 is completed, now we can get a service pack for the 737. I guess we will have to wait and see.

It's the way that the plane loses altitude when banking at even relatively shallow angles that annoys me. Does anyone have a fix for that, or is it actually realistic?

marvic wrote on Feb 19^th, 2013 at 7:07pm:

I'm not happy with the first statement, Mark. You are gaining a horizontal component due to banking the wings, that's what actually leads to turning your plane. By this, the vertical component is reduced while the total amount of lift generated doesn't get altered. So you are losing altitude because some of the generated lift now turns your plane and doesn't support it vertically as much as before banking. Result of a tilted lift vector. You are pointing it somewhere else.

'Wings that are not level will lose lift' may therefore be 'wings that are not level will lose on the vertical lift component and gain on the horizontal one'. Well, as long as they generate lift.   The vector of gravity isn't changed and now wins over the reduced vertical lift component. You are losing altitude.

To compensate, one would increase the angle of attack, which would increase the total amount of lift generated. This causes more drag which roughly explains why you need some more power in a turn which doesn't descend. Yaw tendencies and corrections not included. The autopilot does take care of the aoa increase, but since it also shots some bank angles of up the 30°, it seems to lag behind and then ends up in over-correcting at times.

A while ago, I've posted a very rough fix for those sort of turns. It's about altering the max allowed bank angle for the AP to only 25°. One could try if this fixes the problems Christopher mentions. http://captainsim.org/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1335134700/46#46 Since he spoke about shallow angles, it may fail though.  

From hand flying her, I'm ok with the current behaviour though. Maybe I just got used to it.

'Out of context quoting doesn't help. Never'
International handbook of Internet posting.  

Sorry, just pointing out that I don't know to what you are referring to. I was answering to your sentence 'Wings that are not level will lose lift.' As quoted   By the way, your quote comes from these paragraphs, right?
Quote:
Highlighting by me. So, banked wings still don't lose lift, even when using 'your' book.

A good book that is of course, it explains the forces in turns in chapter 4-19. Great read and a free download! http://www.faa.gov/library/manuals/aviation/pilot_handbook/

Mmm, still trying to understand why, on the Internet, the worst thing to do seems to be the statement 'I disagree.'  

I didn't criticize your flying or anything else, I was just pointing out that 'wings that are not level will lose lift' isn't a valid statement in the above context. Shame on me, I guess.   I even offered some alternatives in case you did mean the one thing and wrote the other. As it happens among humans. Well, fly save and please take no offence from the explanations given.  

marvic wrote on Feb 20^th, 2013 at 6:13pm:

I absolutely agree and there's no need to apologize, Mark.

And here's my course on understanding Australian.

The best part is after 02:45 I think.