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FlightGear landing drill script - landing score edition

script itself

Discussion

Upon WOW (weight on wheels) and throttles idle (same condition as auto-speedbrake deployment), the landing score edition pops up the maximum z-acceleration of your flight (in feet per second / second). (The conditions of the popup are a little more complicated, but I'll save details for later.) This is essentially a landing score. 32 is the lowest possible score / best score because that's gravity itself. I get 34 occasionally, 35 - 36 much more commonly. If you hit 60, in the real world, your plane would need to be inspected for damage due to a "hard landing," according to this table from this page.

Some might object that I'm using pilot's acceleration rather than center of gravity (cg). One reason is that pilot's keeps updating upon replay, and, for some reason, the other does not. Also, I've been running both "internally" (unreleased version), and it doesn't seem to make a difference. My quick thought on the matter is that you'd have to slam the nose down to make much difference. If you slam the nose down, I trust you'll notice the problem without my script having to scold you.

limitation

The current version is your max accel for the whole flight. If you're not doing just a landing drill, this is problematic. I'll probably work on that eventually, but feel free to change this and post it, or send it back to me.

result of my using this edition

As of mid-August, 2013, my landings are getting much better. I often "score" under 40 fps/s (where 60 requires an inspection for damage). On August 19, 2013, perhaps for the first time, I came home after being away from FG for 3 - 4 days and made a near-perfect score. So, the muscle memory is getting better. Previously it would take several landings to get my score down.

I suppose I'm bragging to a degree, but I make that point as an argument for why you might want to run my scripts / this script--I now have "metrics" for a landing.

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