Vehicle
MQ-9 Reaper, v8.0 or v10.0 of 3CB BAF Vehicles (the readme in the main folder says 8.0, the bisign key attached to the Reaper PBO says 10_0)
Slot
Pilot / UAV Terminal
Bug
In flight, the Reaper's responsiveness in pitch seems extremely low when compared to roll and yaw. Although this can be accounted for when flying manually, the programming of the UAV terminal seems to assume a much higher pitch rate is available, presumably based on the Greyhawk's flight characteristics.
As a result, the Reaper takes much longer to level off from a climb or descent, but initiates the level-off at the same point that the Greyhawk might. This tends to result in it busting through its target altitudes - not a problem in the climb, but in a descent this has on numerous occasions resulted in the Reaper crashing into terrain as it very slowly pulls the nose up to capture the target altitude.
As mentioned, hand-flying and bearing in mind the slow pitch rate means that CFIT can be avoided. For automatic flight, another method has been to use step descent - from 1500 down to 750, 750 to 500, 500 to 200, and then initiating the landing autopilot, at which point the Reaper can generally be trusted not to smash into anything.
However, this negates the whole point of the "LAND" function in the UAV terminal - having the Reaper RTB and land itself automatically becomes more labour-intensive than just flying it yourself.
This behaviour occurs both with a custom list of mods I use when playing KP Liberation, and with 3CB's Public Modset from the Arma3Sync download. Over water, in a descent from 2000m to 500m, the Reaper barely manages to level off above the surface, at around 60m, before climbing back to 500m. From 800m down to 200m, the Reaper crashes into the ocean.
Would it be possible to increase the Reaper's responsiveness in pitch, or increase how far in advance it anticipates the target altitude and begins to level off? Or possibly reduce its target rate of descent when under autopilot?
Many thanks!
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