PC Flt Sims - Experimenting with flight dynamics

[Wind Up Turn]

Looking for a bit of advice here.
As a learning/re-learning exercise, I'd like to be able to demonstrate the effects of changes to various S&C dervatives on the flight dynamics of models within MS Flight Sim 2002. FS2002 does have an Aircraft Editor facility within which flight dynamics characteristics can be varied at a very top level, i.e. changes to so-called pitch, roll and yaw stability, and then 'tested'. However, what I'd like to be able to do is experiment with changes to individual derivatives and then see what the effect is. I don't know if its possible to fiddle with FS2002 in this way - I'm expecting the answer to be 'no'. Alternatively, I'd like to know whether or not there are any other PC-based simulator packages or add-ons that I could use to do this sort of task - I'm no boffin, so it would have to have a fairly high-level interface. I guess the other option is to have my very own ASTRA Hawk or Calspan Learjet in the back yard......I wish!
Can anyone offer any suggestions?

WUT

[Spaced]

Try Xplane by laminar research.
It uses BET to actually calculate the way the plane would fly. While not 100% accurate, its pretty good. You can down load a free demo where you can fly it for 7 min at a time.

[Vee One...Rotate]

www.x-plane.com

I second that :ok:

V1R

[Genghis the Engineer]

This might be useful (http://www.flightgear.org/)

G

[Shawn Coyle]

You might also try High Plains Engineerings' sim. An academic version of it is available pretty cheaply.
Sorry, no website details readily available.

[Wind Up Turn]

Thanks very much for your suggestions. Looks like there are some opportunites along the lines I was thinking.

WUT

[grob103]

Having spent all too much of my (supposedly free) time playing with such things, a quick comparison of x-plane and flightgear would be:

X-plane allows you to "draw" the aircraft, and works out the dynamics from it.

flightgear has a couple of main flight-models - one which is table driven (called JSBsim), and one which works out aerodynamic characteristics, given performance figures (yasim).

If you want to demonstrate flying qualities by being able to vary the stability in a particular axis, I'd go for flightgear, and tweak an existing JSBsim aircraft in it.

As a specific example, the c172r model in flightgear has pitch co-efficients called things like:

pitch_moment_due_to_alpha = -1.8
pitch_moment_due_to_pitch_rate = -12.4
pitch_moment_due_to_alpha_rate = -5.2

Bringing these co-efficients closer to zero would (I think!!) reduce pitch stability, which you could then see in the simulator.

I'm not an aerodynamicist, but I hope I've helped!

Cheers,

grob103

[Wind Up Turn]

Thanks Grob 103,
What you've described looks very much like what I had in mind. I'm now off to check their web-site.
Cheers
WUT