How to Fly the Kodiak 100 | Part 11: Approach and landing

[@zuuplaai]

I love these videos! Missionary bush pilot and this channel are the way to go, to learn about the kodiak! Keep it up!

[@alpinebravo7090]

Ryan and MBP are very much an inspiration. He does an excellent tutorial series for the Kodiak with lots of great information. I'd recommend checking it out.

[@J0NJONSON]

I tried to watch it to learn the landing but I have very sensitive ears when it comes to certain sounds. I couldn’t hear what you were trying to convey here. Thanks for trying though. I’m having trouble landing this thing.

[@alpinebravo7090]

What part of the landing are you struggling with? Make sure your controls are well calibrated as per part 1. Don't chop the power at threshold - maintain at least 1000 torque on approach and make a power-on landing at 60KIAS.

[@J0NJONSON]

@@alpinebravo7090 I get very close to the runway and drop out of the sky. She is very touchy coming in. I’ve tried a few flaps variations but always drop. I’ll try your tips above and also rewatch the said video on calibration. I feel like the day I smoothly land this is going to be worth a celebration haha.

[@alpinebravo7090]

@@J0NJONSON Always make a normal landing with full flaps (you can land with less, but you are even more likely to stall out too high in the flare). If you are dropping that means you are cutting the power too much too soon - the key is to smoothly reduce (but not cut) power whilst flaring at the same time in a single co-ordinated action. The nose will want to drop all the time as you reduce power, so really work the elevators to keep the nose up. It takes practice and you need to be in the habit of landing with one hand on the yoke and the other on the throttle lever. With the video audio, try watching the other 2 landings (and one crash) I do on 20L after the first main pattern entry and landing on 20R. The audio balance is better on these segments and my voice easier to hear over the engine noise.

[@J0NJONSON]

@@alpinebravo7090 I feel like I need to come back and update you. The 1000 tip along with the lowered but not completely cut throttle while flaring is what pulled me out of the bad landings. I’m not used to landing so slow and being able to stop so fast once down. I find, depending on wind anywhere between 900-1000 works every time. My problems were lowering power way too much/too soon and cutting completely when close to the ground. I have been successfully completing smooth landings now on all types of runways. Thank you for the tips. I appreciate you.

[@alpinebravo7090]

That's great news! I went through the same learning process...

[@chucksadler4029]

Excellent video! If you don’t maintain 1000 ft lb torque with full flaps, you will literally fall out of the sky. This is not realistically modeled. It is also impossible to maintain slow level flight(70ish knots) with flaps extended.

[@alpinebravo7090]

Glad you liked it. I'm planning on doing a slow flight/stall tutorial as part of the series. I can't say if the values currently used are realistic. I do know that the prop when full forward and at low power settings, pitches in such a manner to act like a massive airbrake. Not quite like the PC-6 and it's famous air-beta. But the same thing. Kodiak pilots describe it like 'hitting a wall'. So plenty of torque required. The aircraft is very weight sensitive - in the segment where I crash it, it was 6800lbs and I was getting the stall warning at about 56kias. Whereas in the 'balked landing' segment it was just 5000lbs and no stall warning at 54kias. But I was getting poor aileron response. The 'yaw of death' though is often made worse by poor balked landing recovery procedure - sudden application of power leads to both more torque and an uncorrected pitch up, leading to increased P-factor. And the confused pilot wonders why their go-around is turning into a yaw, stall and sudden spin....

[@chucksadler4029]

@@alpinebravo7090 In the attached video, you can see Ryan fly a fully flapped, 65Kt approach and he’s under 500 ft lbs of torque. That’s impossible currently in the sim. kzbin.info/www/bejne/mXzaZ5p_hJ2inqc

[@alpinebravo7090]

Thanks, I'll have a watch - I'm trying to do more research on slow flight behaviour and power settings. One thing I don't like about the Kodiak is that you cant seem to pitch/trim it to hold a constant speed. It's either always climbing out or nosing down, gaining speed or, more typically, steadily bleeding it off on the approach. I think this aspect needs work.

[@chucksadler4029]

@@alpinebravo7090 I totally agree. I actually did some testing with slow flight in the Kodiak but can’t find where I wrote it down😢. Try this: Using autopilot, try to fly level with a sustained speed of 70kts with 2 notched of flaps. If I remember correctly, it was impossible. In the MBP video I attached, he turns base about the 18 minute mark and you can clearly see his controls and instrumentation.

[@ianwilliams7740]

This is definitely the weakest part of the flight model.. approaches are such a pain in this aircraft.. August 2024 and still no fixes for this. so unfortunate... the amount of hype this aircraft got by reviewers on KZbin I think they were basically paid for it.

[@floatinflyinandfishing]

As much as I love the kodiak, i dont fly it anymore. SMS NEVER had the approach dialed in...on your first approach take a look at the ball...as soon as you were under 90 you were totally uncoordinated and skidding...this comes from their left turn tendency fetish. the p factor for this model has never been right, add to that the weird autopilot trimming that is in the entire game and you have a cluster fuck every time you try and land the kodiak. they wanted so bad to capture the left turn of the pt-6 that they screwed the entire model up...and now they have abandoned it and made no improvements in about a year

[@alpinebravo7090]

Well, it's certainly harder to land than most, but I can't agree with what you say. With over 800 hours in the Kodiak now, I really have no difficulty maintaining an approach even in a strong crosswind. Like the PC-12 SWS took a lot of input from the manufacturer when designing the flight model and they are just not as much of a compromise as many other types. Harder to fly, sure. But then that's part of the appeal of SWS aircraft. They certainly haven't abandoned the Kodiak, but they have been busy with the PC-12 and getting the Kodiak 900 ready. One thing all the Devs are looking at currently is how to implement the new ground physics that came with SU15 which is likely to prompt some updates to be released. Other than the flight model which I get you would like to see changed, what else would you like to see updated in the Kodiak? Personally Id like a proper systems failure module for it like the FSR500 has. But those are a lot of work for a Dev so it would probably need to be a payware bolt on.

[@HunSnakestyle]

Its a good video, but you should use the "headphone mode" when you recording, so the engine noise would be not that strong which is very disturbing, as english is not my first language I had to turn on subtitles :D ...but still, its a very good video :)

[@CheeseyCHV]

Thank you for your videos, they are very helpful! If I may make one request, your voice is way too quiet, in comparison to the aircraft sounds. You have basically to inverse the loudness relations. There is so much important information in your videos, it would be a shame to miss something, because of the loud aircraft sounds.

[@alpinebravo7090]

Thanks for the feedback. Glad you are finding the tutorials helpful. A few others have made the same observation already. Recording levels have proven tricky to get right and I adjusted it in some of the later segments. Best thing to do is rewatch the bits you find quiet or try close captions (no idea if they are any good though). Failing that, if there is still something you are missing, ask me with a comment!

[@randallrocke1151]

@@alpinebravo7090 First of all, excellent video series. Also, overall, video quality is good, but, as has been mentioned, you have severe audio problems in balance btwn your voice and sim sounds. I will recommend the following procedures (34 years professional TV broadcaster, producer and editor). You may do many of these things already but I'll list them to be sure: - Use headset for voicing - Do not have any exterior speakers running (sim sounds will be recorded by whatever recording app being used and you don't want any exterior sound feeding into the headset Mic) - BEST: record audio tracks separately. I highly recommend OBS to do this (as another mentioned). - Edit with a decent video editor, such as Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve so as to maintain high quality and good audio-mixing capability. Thanks for what you do - keep up the good work!

[@clarencesmith66]

Wa y to much cockpit noise vs voice.

[@Choff8492]

Loving this series of videos, hands down the best and most complete Kodiak Tutorial on KZbin. I've learned to fly the Kodiak on FS with you. I was waiting anxiously for the landing part 😂 Maybe you could turn up the volume a bit on your voice, in this video specifically it kind of blended in with the engine sound. Keep up the good work!

[@alpinebravo7090]

Thanks and hope you found it worth the wait! Sadly I don't think I can do anything about the sound levels without re-recording as the voice and SIM noises are on a single track - if I up the volume I just up the engine noise too. Easier just to ask me what bits you couldn't hear and I'll explain in a comment!

[@Choff8492]

@@alpinebravo7090 No worries! I've managed to understand as I've payed back some parts. I also appreciate the input viewer, is another good differential on your videos. Thank you mate!

[@alpinebravo7090]

@@Choff8492 I think the input viewer is essential to let people see just what you are doing with your controllers, although it depends on the curves you have in - with the curves I have set in part 1 and the HC Alpha with its strong pitch axis springs and the general sensitivity of the Kodiak in the pitch axis. can make it look like there is not much input, but to me it feels like I'm pushing open a stiff door!

[@alecclapperton834]

@@alpinebravo7090 Do you use OBS to record your videos? If so, you can have the audio on different tracks

[@khrdina]

I'm glad you put up that brief text about not landing on 20R, as I was momentarily very confused! Thank you for the detailed descriptions and the multiple examples.

[@alpinebravo7090]

Haha, yes I meant to to all the landings on 20L, but I'd been practicing circuits on 20R before recording the first full pattern entry and habit took over - easy to get distracted when other things are on your mind like making KZbin videos!

[@khrdina]

@@alpinebravo7090 Totally understandable. Tonight I made my first flight in the Kodiak, which was *mostly* successful. After watching your tutorial series (for the first time), I managed to take off from SPGL (Chagual, Peru), peak at 15K feet to clear the mountains, and land at SPRU (Trujillo, Peru, elevation 78). Despite having some difficulty controlling my airspeed on final, I made a pretty good landing, vacated the runway at the first opportunity, then managed to stall the engine while talking with ATC. I think I somehow put the Condition to Cutoff. Now that I've got one flight under my belt I'll have some context when re-watching the tutorials. I also have to tidy up my Alpha/Bravo configs. Thanks again!

[@alpinebravo7090]

Great stuff! Flying in the Andes is great fun and a real challenge. If the engine quit on you on the ground it's probably because -as you suspect- you brought the condition lever back too far into the 'cut off' position. I have the Condition Lever as an Axis on my Bravo TQ controlled using SPAD.next and the way I have it set up is that the Cut Off position is the button below the detent. This pretty much eliminates the risk of cutting off the fuel supply accidentally, particularly when vacating the runway and moving from HI to LOW/IDLE.

[@khrdina]

@@alpinebravo7090 I have the Condition Lever configured within MSFS rather than SPAD. I followed the advice in a video from Mark at Simhanger to set the Extremity Dead Zone for that axis to 20% and assign the Cutoff command to the button press that happens when you move the level below the detent. Maybe I need to adjust that dead zone, or maybe I just inadvertently pushed it below the detent in my post-landing excitement. I was a little surprised to be on the ground. :D

[@user_16309]

Very much enjoying this series!

[@alpinebravo7090]

Glad you are enjoying them!

[@jeeps7er]

Really enjoying this series, the Kodiak is well done in MSFS. The only comment I would make, which is intended to be helpful not critical, is that your voice is a little quiet compare to the engine for me and it's hard to hear you in places. Thanks for the videos.

[@alpinebravo7090]

Thanks, and glad you are enjoying them! And thanks for the feedback. Audio levels are a constant issue when trying to record in flight - you might notice that my voice gets louder in the balked landing section onwards as I tweaked the levels (again)