As a person that only has experience with fly by wire aircraft, the concept of proper rudder control really started to make sense once the concept of a balanced turn was brought up. It's just one of those thing that are simply taken for granted in a modern aircraft.

Rudder can be used to push mechanics off of aircraft without warning

I remember being wowed on my first glider lesson that the slip indicator is normally a piece of wool or thread taped onto the outside of the canopy. Note when crabbing on approach applying the rudder will also generate roll, so to maintain level yawed flight BOTH rudder and aileron must be used. You also need to 'kick' the plane rudder immediately before touchdown to align the yaw angle to the runway heading otherwise your wheels will take you off the runway when they touchdown. And don't forget that final kick straight will still generate roll..so you have to correct that too! Great video

Sideslip landing with glider was always my favourite rudder use, for some reason it just feels great :D

Ripped them off the Flanker while trying to show a friend what the basic controls were so he could try it out :D

I appreciate your videos and instruction of DCS. Very entertaining and informative and well done. Thanks The correct term for cross controlling is using a side slip or forward slip. Side slip is for alignment with the runway landing and a forward slip is for creating drag and loosing energy. Coordinated use of the rudder is to counter adverse yaw. The ailerons create different amounts of drag and the rudder counters this adverse yaw. The modern planes use yaw damping and this is done automatically. Mostly you understand the aerodynamics of the rudder but are using incorrect terms as you said in the introduction. The horizontal tail is not called an elevator on most all supersonic fighter jets. It is called a stabilator or full flying tail, just like a rudder a elevator will not work on most all aircraft going supersonic or just under supersonic. Most everyone still calls it an elevator, even most everyone who flies these aircraft. Much like a lot of terms held over from the old prop days. We still call the thrust leavers in a 767 throttles. The full flying tail was discovered to fix the problems just after the first supersonic test flights and the full flying tail was top secret until the rest of the world figured it out. Many pilots lost their life in WWII do to going too fast and losing control of the elevator and not being able to pull up. To make matters worse, when the low speed wing gets near supersonic you get a shock wave forming on the top of the wing and this causes the nose to go down. Modern Airliners can also experience this and it is called Mach tuck. Most fighters get just about an equal shock wave on the top and bottom at the same time so they do not tend to tuck. My expertise is 45 years of being a flight instructor in single and multi engine aircraft and gliders. 30 years of flying large heavy jets and an aviation degree.

excellent video! Thank you so much for making these interesting insightful little turorials.

Prop plane drivers use the rudder much more than what is explained in this video. In a prop you use the rudder to compensate for torque, slipstream, and something called P-Factor. Most notably on a takeoff roll you will need significant rudder input to maintain a straight path down the runway due to the torque effects of the engine. Overall good information, albeit slightly misinformed.

Nice video, helps many people who do not know when to use the rudder.

This was quite helpful, I wondered why the prop plane were so much harder to take off. It says in the tutorial to use 5 degrees of rudder to take off, but it doesn't explain why.

Thank you for the fly correction, in the top left coner. Much appreciated.

Turn coordination only needs to be dealt with when ailerons are displaced. The force being counteracted by the rudder is called adverse yaw. This yaw force is caused by induced drag (when an airfoil makes more lift it makes more drag). During a roll, the upward moving (downward displaced aileron) makes more lift and more drag, and the downward moving wing makes less lift/drag. This lateral difference in drag causes a yaw which can be offset by using rudder. This is what's happening when the tail "is falling downward" (11:10 in the video). Once the desired bank is established, the ailerons are neutralized, the yaw goes away and rudder displacement is no longer required, unless it is correcting some other perturbation. This effect is magnified in planes with long wingspans. It is quite dramatic in gliders. The "uncoordination" induced by roll is usually insignificant in short wingspan airplanes at low alpha. Airplanes with powerful engines driving big propellers need lots of rudder input to counteract the torque of the engine, and the aerodynamic effects of spiraling airflow behind the prop. To little rudder is why the warbirds usually slide to the left on the mass takeoffs during birds and bees. The rudder can generate very powerful roll forces in swept wing planes. In a yawed swept wing aircraft one wing is more perpendicular to airflow and makes more lift than the wing on the other side of the fuselage that is less perpendicular to the airflow. This effect is magnified with increasing angle of attack. Yaw generated roll force is present in straight wing airplanes also, but is not as powerful as swept wing planes. When a straight wing airplane is rolled the fuselage blanks off some of the airflow on one side, causing that wing to make less lift while the opposite wing has better airflow and makes more lift thus generating a roll force. More dihedral can magnify the effect because the angle of attack is increased slightly on the "leading" wing in a yawed situation. Rudder rolling at high alpha is tricky though because you are close to inducing a stall. The ingredients for a stall being yaw and stall at the same time.

I spent my adult, active décades with flying (later designing) anything that could be even just suspected of being able to fly. And instruct a lot on fixed wing creatures. But after all those times-Now this video managed to scramble my brain irrepairably...

I’m glad someone has explained this because it was never ever made clear by ANYONE in any how to fly video for any Sim. Everyone just says “rudder is important” and “don’t forget rudder” and “rudder pedals make flying so much easier” But in my head for all this time, and I was even in Civil Air Patrol as a kid(like a civilian Air Force ROTC) I had ALWAYS thought that rudder turned your plane left or right horizontally… it always made me so mad when I would use rudder to turn and struggle correcting it with aileron and turn soooo slowly just to let it go when I got the direction I wanted and the aircraft would just jump back to its original direction…

I’m no expert, but I feel like rudders are only useful when in a near-stall speed, since I feel like it gives out as much control as possible and doesn’t wobble the plane around, I’ve flown grinnelli’s F22A and the rudder in a near stall velocity really swings the nose around and let’s you get that nice sweet rudder turn that gets you on target

Wow! right at 12 o'clock! Have a good day everyone :)

Last remark (end of video), moving rudder oscillating, applies to any control. When steering one way, you introduce gravitational forces. Steering the other way immediately, all control faces are heavily forced upon. You may sheer off a wing or your horizontal tail by using your stick in some rythm violently.

You boys did a GREAT job on this video. I have had flight knowledge for a long time..... from way LONG time ago. For what ever reason I am now flying again with DCS (well not yet). I remember why I did not continue flying.... MONEY! This is a costly hobby and after many years I have a bit of saving that I can commit back to the hobby. I have really been appreciating your videos. Being prepared is a key element of knowing where to spend, and where to not.

omg thank you Cap.. the rudder on these jets are so different from the war birds... I've wondered the same thing... how to best utilize the rudder.

Just a slight correction to the discussion about crossed controls (rudder opposite to ailerons). It is not aerodynamically unstable, but it stresses the airplane in all three axes. Therefore, it is discouraged in many general aviation planes. It is perfectly acceptable in fighters and aerobatic GA planes. You just need to know how to use it to either slow down or drop altitude without speeding up. My cousin was showing off and used the maneuver to drop altitude on a landing. You could hear the wind flow getting louder and creaking of the airframe. It gets your heart racing.

hey so if stability tends to neutralize rudder, how does a hammerhead turn/stall work? i've tried to perform hammerheads in sim and it's REALLY hard to pull off because of the tendency for planes to want to straighten out.

I always use rudder when I want to affect the yaw axis, never when I want to fly straight. 🙄 I hope that clears things up a bit. Also handy for knife-edge flying and fixing bad parking jobs. I imagine a high speed jet has a lot less need to coordinate its turns than a slower prop plane. Just Bank it and Yank it most of the time. If the wing has Dihedral angle, you can also cause the plane to Roll on the Rudder, without any Aileron input. Also known as Dutch-Roll, not to be confused with Dutch-Rudder! 😋

another thing I've learned: at least one other reason, if not the main reason, for a turn to be not coordinated is the fact that the ailerons are producing asymmetric draft. I think the one that goes down produces more draft than the one going up which leads to a rotation around the yaw axis. That's why the rudder input is only necessairy while using ailerons / chaing roll, not during the complete turn. Talking about 90° roll turns might be different then, but I think at a 30-40° bank angle of a normal plane, the fact that the tail "goes down" to me seems not realistic.

It was an Airbus A300-605R, that crashed in NY, although Boeing also had it's issues with the rudder as well...

Thank you.

WOOT Fellow Cheesehead on Wisconsin!

this is a super good question coool

Excellent topic... just scored a Warthog HOTAS and was wondering if I really need rudder pedals..👍

F/A-18c Coordinated turns. I noticed when I bank and turn the aircraft the ball is not completely centered, the ball is in between the lines just not perfectly centered. I noticed I can get the ball “perfectly” centered with small rudder inputs. Is there a reason the Fly-by-wire doesn’t “perfectly” center the aircraft? I understand the FCS is not perfect. I know that’s a tricky question, curious to get your thoughts. Thanks

isn'T there another effect of the rudder? I've read somewhere that when rudder is applied, as the one wing is moving slighty faster and the other slighty slower, there's another roll input, for example right rudder would result in a roll right then (left wing goes faster, creating more lift). Also, this ex-F18 pilot here on youtube who was also trying out the F18 in DCS said, he didn't know why so many people in DCS say, the NWS has to be disabled during takeoff (>80 knots), he said that in the real thing he wouldn't disable it.

That rudder incident was an airbus: American Airlines Flight 587 Airbus A300B4-605R Separation of the vertical stabilizer following excessive rudder input

Not gunna lie sounds like he discussed a air plane crash in Canada because of a failed fuel conversion back in the day and the truth is it saved lives by doing a crab slip

A cross controlled slip if what you do if your flaps are stuck and won’t come down.

When on your final approach for a carrier landing, if you are lined up a little too far left or right, what’s the best control input to use to get on center line? Should I use a little rudder or a little stick or a little of stick and rudder?

I've been flying Remote Control planes since I was 12 Y/O so I learned coordinated turning early on. I use coordinated turns in DCS when I want a flatter turn at lower speeds. (ever mindful of the possibilty for causing a flat spin) I still do it with my RC Jets as needed, sometimes just to help keep my wings a bit more level on slow approaches. I feel like it reduces the possiblity of a "tip stall" when there is very little altitude left for a recovery. With the modern radios and gyro stabilization that we have now, we can pretty much set up an "automatic rudder" too. It will fight crosswinds for you allowing you to maintain your heading. Also aids in takeoffs fighting engine/prop torque. (heading hold gyro) Having said all that there are a great many RC planes that simply have no rudder at all. They have a vertical stab but no rudder. Found mostly on smaller planes. This type of flying is often referred to as "Bank and Yank"

A couple of notes about increasing roll rate with rudder. As you said in the section about cross controlling, rudder inputs increase drag. That means that if you roll with large amounts of rudder input you will lose more speed than you would by using ailerons only.

#GREATvideo mate #Question I am trying to learn to shake BnZ German planes, ME109 off my tail, so I apply right rudder while turning left aileron, and reduce throttle. They over shoot, which I am then sorted for a kill. **How can I apply these maneuvers to a Spitfire, Hurricane, and other WW2 planes, from BnZ to TnB? Ta mate.

I'd like to ask why some aircraft have down-swept horizontal stabilisers (commonly UK fighter jets: Harrier, Hawk, Tornado, Jaguar etc.,) and others have straight (commonly US: F14, F15, F18, F22, F35 etc.) Is it just that they mirror the wings? I've noticed UK aircraft tend to favour a more arced wing shape rather than flat and straight. It's just something I always wondered when building my Airfix models as a kid.

Of course an exception to changing direction with the rudder is in a sailplane. You don't want wing droop while gaining lift/altitude but obviously doesn't apply to DCS until they start using armed sailplanes in war lol !

Okay but when should we use rudder in a modern jet fighter? Just correcting and taking off/landing? Not during combat maneuvers? I'm coming to this game from IL2 and all my experience is flying ww2 and ww1 aircraft, so this is sort of mindblowing news to me.

They didn't really explain turn coordination enough. When you bank the wings of an airplane the wing thats higher incurs more drag which then pushes the nose of the plane against the turn. The rudder is used then to push the nose straight again.

I still don't know if it's a case of pushing left or right pedal to make the rudder yaw left or right. I have searched about 6 videos so far on rudder pedals, but none have yet explained which pedal you should use to yaw a specific direction. I'd like to set up my rudder pedals to function the same as they do in a real aircraft, but it's frustratingly difficult to find that information. I might have my pedals set up backwards for all I know.

Excellent video but.. Should we buy rudder pedals?

I really don't like the axplanation of "wing is faster" because if you do the math, it doesn't ever check out. For example, flying knife-edge implies both wings are travelling at the same speed. Rather the other wing is just partially going thrroughdirtier air flow works better. Also I've got a question if he really is an aerodynamicist: Where do you actually do your study? Such study and research fields don't exist in my state it seems and likely my entire country because there aren't any major manufacturing here for aircraft and therefore not many jobs. in the field.

I also live in Wisconsin? USA

How do you force a spin on a modern jet? Is it even possible?

All I heard is rudder drifts your plane

What is your job??

Why would a guy choose the name Taint??

A ships rudder actually does operate very much like the rudder of an aircraft. Aircraft have a three extra degrees of freedom though, so it's effect on movement is going to be different. The point is that the rudder will cause a yaw. Ships also don't always go in the direction they point either. There is course and heading and they don't always align. In fact it's probably much more common in a ship to have them misaligned than in an aircraft. The principle is the same as well - Bernoulli's Equation at work.

Flight sims are not for learning to fly . Flight sims are to learn procedures and the flight machine

fly* 🤣

explain what you understand would be more interesting

Man.. I've seen you fly.. You shouldn't be explaining this to people..