G550flyer

Since I flew aircraft with flight engineers, I prefer to use the virtual one in sim. For the starting engines check, the virtual engineer should open the bleed shutoff valve if they haven't done so before this time.

With trim set, the aircraft tends to rotate quickly with little input. The DC10 and other aircraft I flew took some input initially and then nose down trim as you approach V2 +10. The trim is set for V2, so as you pass V2 the nose start to rise on you requiring you to trim nose down. In the DC10, when it was heavy/near max takeoff weight, you did a two step rotation. You do an initial pump to start the rotation and then the second pump to pull it towards 10 degrees. Passing 10 degrees, she is lifting off and you are pushing sightly forward while trimming down to catch V2+10. I would assume in the real L1011, if it rotated so quickly, you would be tail strike prone. Should be easy to get a smooth 3 degrees per second rotation rate.

The approach pitch appears to be low. It should be around 7 degrees on a 3 degree slope with flaps 33. This is from the manual and landing geometry.

After flying it few times, I noticed that the IAS and Mach pitch modes can be a little slow and not consistent. For the era of the L1011, this should be solid. I flew DC1030s and planes of the era were solid. The only issues I would see, which still impacts current aircraft, is temperature inversions. This causes the speed to change and leads to the aircraft pitching to attain speed. The aircraft can easily get into porpoising, which gets worst over time. The trick is to hit vert speed and lock into a climb rate. Once the aircraft settles, you can go back to IAS or Mach pitch modes. Once you get into Mach change over in the climb, aircraft can become a little pitchy as there is some variance along the Mach scale leading to the aircraft making large pitch changes. The heavier the aircraft, the better it performs in this regard. Again, the vert speed technique is used to settle the aircraft. Other than that, these pitch modes are very stable and quick to respond. So much so that you start in vert speed and increase it until the engines reach climb power and then engage IAS or Mach pitch modes. This makes the transition to these pitch modes smooth.