Military AI Works

Using the toe Brake settings, on Default aircraft in AI plus, some military aircraft, you can change the landing roll out to a longer roll out.
How do you change the Takeoff roll distance?

A simple answer is that you can in quite a few ways however you will have a knock on effect in flying characteristics. There is not a simple parm, like braking, that does not change some other aspect of it's flight.

Was this a general question or something specific?

This for FS9
The specific aircraft I’m interesting is the KC-135, The MAIW version roll a little over 5000’.Which isn’t bad.

Having spent many years working on the KC-135, a more realistic distance for a fully loaded aircraft, would be around 8500’ to 9000’

Of course I have to take into consideration that was 35 years ago. I know things have changed, in 35 years back then we were taking gross about 250,000 pounds, sometimes more but, that was the exception rather than the rule, which was about max for the time.

Today they have engines that put out a lot more than 12,000 to 14,000 pounds of thrust, With Water, but they are probably loading them to their max, around 300,000 which would in my opinion, require a lot more distance then 5000’

Also I noticed in FSX that the default Boeing 747-400 rolls about ¾ of the way down the runway for takeoff, when landing roll a little more than half way down the runway.

I say this for info only, feel free to try this for you own amusement but we can't get you out of any situations that you get yourself in so make sure you back up.

Three basic things can easily alter take off roll. Lift, weight and thrust. I will say this again though a properly put together FDE is a balancing act, alter one thing and it will affect another aspect of the flight.
Alter thrust, it may not reach the speed you want in flight. Alter the lift and you may stall on approach, alter the weight and your approach speed will rise. You get the general drift.

The only way to learn how to manage the FDE is to play around with it. It's not something that most enjoy.

Oh, and one final thing. If you succeed in your quest you had better make sure that you have none doing 'rollers' else there will be a fair few overruns.

One thing - as far as weight - the empty_weight is what FS uses for AI aircraft. That is the number you have to alter, not the max_gross_weight

The numbers for my MAIW_PAI_KC-135R are:

max_gross_weight = 333600.0
empty_weight = 148800.0

Changing the empty weight to 200000.0 lbs will lengthen the takeoff roll, but it will also cause the aircraft to land about 1.5nm short of the runway.

One alternate to consider are Jan Martin's FDE sets -

http://janswebsites.110mb.com/flightsim/

Scroll toward the bottom of the list

His takeoff roll for the PAI B707 is 6,700 ft.

At my own peril, I will play and see what happens, Thanks for the cautions. This sounds interesting.

As far as the aircraft landing 1.5nm from the end of the runway, I was testing B-52s not AI, the first one made an approach zig zaging back and forth finely landing somewhere in a field headed away from the runway. It turned around towards the runway, went to the center, of the runway, turn onto the first taxiway, called the tower for clearance to a parking spot.

so what's wrong with that ...........that's the way i alway's land

wbunnell wrote:At my own peril, I will play and see what happens, Thanks for the cautions. This sounds interesting.

As far as the aircraft landing 1.5nm from the end of the runway, I was testing B-52s not AI, the first one made an approach zig zaging back and forth finely landing somewhere in a field headed away from the runway. It turned around towards the runway, went to the center, of the runway, turn onto the first taxiway, called the tower for clearance to a parking spot.

OK, this is quite simple the aircraft is going into pre-stall on approach. It is too slow for the lift/weight parms. It tries to correct itself with varying degrees of success occurring. I would advise not using flyable aircraft for AI, until you have worked out how to convert a flyable a/c to use an AI FDE. The AI engine flight rules are not the same as for flyable planes.

C-17 Landing Roll.
C-17 landing Roll outs are longer, using the literature, below the last [fltsim.X] file in the “aircraft” folder for the KC-135R. Both aircraft, the C-17 and the KC-135R are in the MAIW inventory.
Placing it in the C-17A aircraft folder, give a much better takeoff and landing roll, about,4000 to 5000 feet .