Terry Dactil

Found this on learning to do wheel landings... Note The stick is moved forward after touchdown; you don't need to stuff the aircraft down onto the runway as some people suggest. Extra speed on the approach for better control of gusts, wind shear, crosswinds, and better visibility in single engine types

The problem we have is that the pitch-up moment should be proportional to the sink rate on touchdown. Take the extreme limit case where you are such an ace pilot that you have reduced the sink rate to zero just as the wheels touch. The aircraft is still flying with the lift supporting all the weight, As there is no weight on the wheels there can be no vertical reaction force from the ground, so there cannot be any pitch up moment. . In fact, there should even be a slight pitch down moment from the drag on the wheels required to overcome the inertia of the wheels spinning up. As the the aircraft slows weight settles onto the wheels the pitch up moment should increase gradually in response to the oleo compression parameter. It appears that we are getting the full pitch up moment as soon as the wheels touch. 3 point landings are no problem at all, but wheelers are bloody difficult and they shouldn't be.

No it's not! In real life doing that will kill you. You fly the aircraft smoothly onto the runway; you don't just dump it there. (I have 1000+ hours in taildraggerrs from Pawnees to DC-3s so I do know a bit about how it is done). This is supposed to be an accurate simulation, not a cheap arcade game.

The preferred method for landing tail wheel aircraft is often tail up, main wheels only. Like this ... Mosquito landing.mp4 However, this is impossible to do with the DCS Mosquito at present as no matter how little the vertical velocity is on touchdown there is a huge nose up pitch moment that cannot be counteracted. It seems that the full aircraft weight is being applied immediately at touchdown instead of ramping up slowly as weight is gradually transferred onto the wheels. I have flown many tailwheel aircraft in real life and all that is required is a minimum sink rate and to nudge the stick forward a bit when you feel the wheels touch. I would love to be able to do the same here.

That's a pity. Missions in VR are pretty much unplayable until until it is fixed.

Any idea when this patch might be available?

Just use "Active Pause" (LSHFT + LWIN + Pause). The aircraft remains fixed in space, but all controls work normally. Perfect for learning how things work. Not so good in a mission, as all other aircraft keep moving while you are stuck in position.

Anyone know where these settings are in the .lua files now? We used to be able to amend the chase view to look back.

Thanks for that info. I tried some exercises at Manston as it looked to be the most level surface available with plenty of clear space. I was never able to successfully taxy on one engine from a standing start. The best result I had was when I had a 15 kt crosswind. This almost worked, and I managed some progress down the runway. However, each brake release/apply cycle cost a few degrees of heading that could not be recovered, so I eventually ran off the side of the runway. ED have got this right and it matches what I have experienced in real life.

Sorry. I should have cut the quote from the original post a few posts higher. I thought that quoting a quote would be tagger with the original and did not bother to check . Anyway, I think most people can work out what I was referring to, just as most people also know the difference between going back and going backwards.

I would be interested to know if you could confirm that you had no assistance from any external turning force helping you like not being on a level surface or with any crosswind. If you could repeat the exercise in the opposite direction that would be significant.

Yep. And they are very awkward to see and operate, so I have mapped them to the Warthog throttle Idle/cutoff switches. It ties in nicely with the way I was trained to handle engine failures on multi-engined aircraft: First thing to do is to close the throttle or thrust lever. If the aircraft yaws you picked the wrong one !

The fuel cut-offs work now. They were fixed in the latest update. For me it is now just: Throttle back into cut-off Press feather button Engine feathered. That's it!

No. No tail wheel lock. So once you have stopped the game is over. This explanation might help ... While you are moving any braking action gives you a force forward through the center of gravity due to inertia. Take the remaining engine thrust into account then the resultant forward force will be shifted over a bit toward the operating engine but will still be pretty close to the aircraft center line This means you can apply a braking force on either side of this forward force to produce a turning effect and steer the aircraft. However, once stopper there is no inertia to use and resultant forward force is now on the engine thrust line. Since this is over the wheel and brake there is no way to apply any braking force outboard of the engine to turn in that direction. The only chance you have is if the tail wheel is locked straight and you can get moving again to get some inertia or momentum to use again as above. To really over analyze this you can take into account the P-factor offsetting the thrust line to the side of the descending prop blade. If it is the left engine operating this will be slightly inboard of the engine, so it should be theoretically possible with the left brake to generate a very small left turning force, but I don't expect ED to get down to this level of detail. (Just tried that and it is true. I could only go in circles to the right). PS. This thread has brought back memories as I've been telling this from first hand experience with tailwheels. Many years ago I was flying DC-3s in New Guinea and we had an engine failure and landed on a small remote airstrip. The landing was not a problem, but we needed to get clear of the strip to allow another aircraft to land with the maintenance crew and spare parts for the repairs. Turning around 180° at the end of the strip was easy, but now that the tail wheel was unlocked we could only go in circles. Fortunately the local police had working gang nearby, so with them pushing on the rear fuselage and tail for steering and us using the good engine for moving, we "taxied" back along the strip to the parking bay. That was great fun and entertainment for everyone. Thanks for bring back the memory.

If you map the fuel cutoff thingies to the unused Warthog throttle idle/cutoff switches you can operate them from the comfort of the pilot's seat. Avoids the hassle of changing seats and the contortions normally required.

Since you can't lock or steer the tail wheel, what else can you expect? On the ground, there is no way you can turn towards the good engine unless you are already moving and can use differential brakes. However to get moving, you can only start move in a circle into the dead engine. There is absolutely no way to turn towards the good engine as the thrust and braking are in the same line. I flew DC-3s many years ago and soon learned that when you land with only one engine the flight ends where you stop if the tail wheel is unlocked.

I agreee that having a lock on the gear and flaps can be a good idea. However, what I was moaning about is that the cockpit layout is a dog's breakfast. You have the gun sight obscuring flight instruments, fuel controls behind the pilot's seat and everything else scattered around in no particular order. As well as all that, like the Spitfire, you have to change hands on the joystick to operate major controls. Definitely not HOTAS! Compare this with the FW-190 and the modern jets we have and it is in a different world. Still - it's lots of fun to fly though.

You're wrong I use the DCS Updater utility to start things going and I have no problems entering VR or non-VR.

Yes. The British cockpit ergonomics can be a pain. However, from another thread close by ...

Voice Attack is perfect for this sort of problem. Not widely known, but VA can do things without being spoken to as it can also respond to key or button presses or positions. I have a Warthog setup and my Voice Attack sees my normal bindings for gear, flaps or whatever and inserts the extra keystrokes to operate the locks. I also have it set so if I hold the brakes (joystick lever) continuously on for more than 10 seconds it sets the park brake lock for me. For anyone interested here is the VA profile I use for the Mosquito Mosquito-Profile.vap

Yes. Very disappointed here too. (All the rest is very good though.) I have flown multi-ginned prop aircraft in the real world, and synchronizing the RPMs is done mainly by listening to the audio beat. Here is what a real mosquito sounds like on final approach when small power adjustments de-synchronize the engines mozzieonfinal.mp3. The only thing better than the sound of a Merlin is ... the sound of two or more of them!

I think it is probably disabled for VR. Just lean over a bit to the right as you would in real life. That works for me. I 'm guessing it is just a feature to save a lot of view-shifting keystrokes for the poor buggers still using keyboards and screen.

No. With me and Rift S it is too far left and too high. Easily fixed though. I have a Voice Attack routine to shift my position up/down, left/right and forward/back as required.

Yes. I totally agree with you. I should have added that it seems that ED have the engine limitations correct, but not the aircraft performance that goes with them. Update: Also note that the Ram Air function is not working now, so you would be missing several inches of manifold pressure. The discussion about this bug was recently closed for some reason.

There is probably a clue in the name of the setting called "Max Continuous"