Bouncing needles

[mattag08]

Originally Posted by svanen

This happens when your engine starts running rough, it is very nice feature. The needle does not bounce when engine running smooth in a stable flight.

Good to hear, I'm glad they've refined it.

[White Owl]

Granted I've never been in the cockpit of a Hurricane, Bf-109, or Spitfire...

I used to fix airplanes for a living. Some of them were old airplanes. Many many times, I have been in the cockpit of a plane with an engine "running rough" because I was figuring out what was wrong with it. I have never seen a tachometer needle spaz out, twitch and shake like I'm seeing in some of these videos. It doesn't happen like that.

[bongodriver]

My first post......I am also a professional pilot and flight instructor, I fly a Learjet 45 for my day job but I have about 270 hours in Tiger Moths and another 200 in The Stearman, and I have never seen the needles bounce quite this much on those aircraft.

[SAFMoby]

ATPL holder here on airbus types.

The airspeed can jiggle a bit but the altimeter and vert speed should not.

the alt and v/s are measured by static pressure so less susceptible to gusts whereas speed measured by combo of static and pitot pressure.

RPM obviously the prop is a big flywheel so should not be big fluctuations and the connection from prop to gauge is mechanical

But i never flew spits........sigh

[II./JG1_Krupinski]

I've been playing with this and have found a few things.

First, I don't have a lot of CoD cockpit time so take this with a grain of salt. I use full real settings as the starting point. and using the German France freeflight quick mission/

I first noticed the shaking on my first flight, which happened to start about 10 seconds before I lubricated my wind screen for a total of 10 seconds flight time. Okay, bad engine management.

Determining the best manner to manage my engine I still noticed the shake, even with oil temp maintaining between 40 and 60 C and water a little above 80C. Tooling around I am setting the engine up @ 1.2 ATA and about 2100-2200 RPM.

I was able to fly to England and back. Over England, I was able to see no shake for about 30 seconds. What I had done was dove to about 800 meters ASL. So a couple things were at play here, lower altitude and faster airspeed. The shaking returned as i climbed and slowed. I thought it was speed at this point.

Starting another quick mission, I tried to tool around at a minimum 450kph. Still, shaking happened. Try this at lower altitude, its shaking.

All manner of tests using full real, I came up empty handed.

Finally giving up and not being able to take the shake, I turn of turbulence in the settings as a last ditch hope of finding what's going on. BINGO! no more shake.

So this shake that I thought was my bad engine management, seems to be caused by turbulence. I am going to test this more tonight.

[Space Communist]

Well I have only been in the cockpit of an aircraft once, a 60 year old Piper. Every instrument in that thing bounced around constantly, just as I have seen happen in many of the videos.

Sounds like this isn't the case with more modern aircraft?

[RAF74_Winger]

I've flown aircraft of similar vintage, but never seen the needles shake around like that, not even during aerobatics or heavy turbulence. There are restrictors in the inlet lines to all of these pressure driven (bourdon tube) gauges for precisely this purpose - besides which the accumulated fatigue damage to the bourdon tube would soon result in a broken instrument if it weren't present.

W.

[Winger]

I think it feels just right how it is. My needles dont jump around like mad. Only when i damage or blow my engine. But i am no real pilot...

Winger

[JG52Uther]

Originally Posted by Winger

I think it feels just right how it is. My needles dont jump around like mad. Only when i damage or blow my engine. But i am no real pilot...

Winger

Same here! Flying around in a 109,monitoring the engine,the needles are steady.