Airbus 320 armed spoilers

1st Official Post

    Does the Airbus 320 armed ground spoilers function work? I have the lever pulled up with the light gray band showing, anti skid & N W steering is selected on and full flaps are set, 'Armed ground spoilers' is displayed on the centre screen. I never get the spoilers to operate on touch-down. It works fine on the B-737. I have tried to check the real life operation and have read that manual selection of spoilers only gives 1/2 spoiler function. I have spoiler up and down buttons assigned to my joystick in Aerofly settings (not a slider).

    They work on my install. BTW, 'spoilers' always deflect full. Half extension is available only when using them in flight as 'speedbrakes' and this 1/2 deflection happens only on the A320 and only if the AP is engaged. (really weird and akward).
    Haven't tested but on the real A320 (and most Boeings as well) the spoilers also extend without being armed as soon as reverse thrust is selected.

    Funny thing that you are saying that the groundspoilers work on the 737 as I've observed that they don't extend at all if you make a smooth touchdown and keep the nose up.
    They should deploy with wheel spin up but the only extend once I start lowering the nose after touchdown or if the touchdown is hard enough to trigger the WOW switch. On the A320 and the 747 they work correct.
    Tested the A320 and the spoilers deploy correctly with application of reverse thrust if the they haven't been armed before.

    Besides that, I hope the FD issue gets solved soon on the 737 because it's really distracting to have it displayed on the ADI despite it's being switched off.

    • Official Post

    If you have the spoilers armed for landing, you shouldn't need to touch the spoiler lever at all during landing. If you look on the ECAM wheel page that is brought up automatically during landing you should see the spoiler arrows after touch down even without reverse thrust. That has worked for quite some time now and I can't really imagine that it is an issue with your control assignments... Just make sure that if "B" also control the spoilers (or any other key) that you don't press it before or during the landing. That will extend the spoilers (inhibited for full flaps) and move the spoiler lever back to retracted (not armed) when the button/key is released.

    Regarding half spoiler defleciton on the A320: With the speedbrake lever at 50% you will always get 50% speedbrakes. But if you have the autopilot engaged on the A320 moving the lever further aft will not increase the speedbrake deflecition. As mentioned with full flaps the speedbrake is also inhibited. Also with only one gear compressed the real world A320 only partly deflects the ground spoilers. I don't remember if I also implemented that detail... I think so but I would have to look into the code to be sure :D

    Regarding the 737 weight on wheels: you can easily adjust that yourself in the tmd file... just search for OnGroundSensor. I've taken note of that as well as the flight director issue.

    Cheers,
    Jan

    Quote from Jet-Pack

    Regarding the 737 weight on wheels: you can easily adjust that yourself in the tmd file... just search for OnGroundSensor. I've taken note of that as well as the flight director issue.


    Do the spoilers extend due to wheel spin up as well or only due to WOW?

    • Official Post

    Currently only due to weigth on wheels but there is a ground sensor class implemented in all of the aircraft that use it and we could easily extend that class to not only trigger when weight on wheel is detected but also when the wheel speed reaches a certain threshold.

    The auto-spoiler and auto-brake already only trigger above a certain speed, so that is that :)

    That sounds great as this wheel speed (>72kts in case of the A320) is what ruins a greaser IRL ;)
    You touchdown very smooth, both struts are still fully extended but the wheel speed on left and right is >72kts and suddenly the spoilers extend and the A320 drops into the shockabsorbers.
    BTW, this effect is even worse on the 767.

    Thanks a bunch for the help, they do go up !!! I was expecting the spoiler lever to move like in a good old clockwork airplane! Checked the ECAM and the outside view!! At least I got to revise my control settings ... again. I like the autotrim in the 320, the button or key controlled trim in the 737 is so slow that I'm tempted to assign my blue levers slider to trim but then as Jan says I loose all the pre-sets and auto. Great forum and thanks again.