Quick question about the landing gear

[John Hargreaves]

Question for some of our more experienced members;

 

In any footage I've seen of real Spitfires taking off, the landing gear retracts in a fairly symmetrical way, not exactly, but more or less coming up together. Whenever I replay my take offs and landings for the DCS version, the port side always seems to take longer to retract and deploy, and you can feel this on take off as uneven drag, pulling the plane to one side. So, my question is, is it just me, does it happen every time, and is there a game design reason for it happening.?

 

I'm guessing it's to do with how the hydraulics are modelled, and I did a forum search to try and find an answer, without much coming up, but I wondered if anyone can explain?

[MiloMorai]

Diagrams of the hydraulic system can be found here, http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?98588-Supermarine-Spitfire-Hydraulic-System-(U-C)-Drawings

[SCHOOL]

My guess (only a guess) is the gear retract animation was keyed with the left coming up later than the right. Not an actual pressure differential in the "virtual" system. As for increased drag on the left side, P factor is probably giving you most of that dynamic.....As a pilot with a good amount of tail-dragger time, the Spitfire is a bit foreign feeling to me at takeoff. Still, my favorite module.

[John Hargreaves]

Yeah, it's probably just as simple as 'that's how the animation was done'. Just curious really, thanks.

My favourite too, love it.

[MiloMorai]

John, as you can see from the diagrams, the jacks are fed from a single source. Any resistance in one of the legs will cause the other leg to extend first. Same for retraction.

 

Depending how much resistance there is in the leg will determine how much it lags behind the other leg.

[Weta43]

"Yeah, it's probably just as simple as 'that's how the animation was done'. Just curious really"

 

I doubt it's an 'animation', it will be an interaction of the hydraulic model and other modelled forces.

 

I can't remember which aircraft it was, but from memory in one of them before the modelling was complete, if you pulled enough G you could overcome the hydraulic pressure and the gear would sag till you reduced the G at which point it would move back up.

[rrohde]

I can't remember which aircraft it was, but from memory in one of them before the modelling was complete, if you pulled enough G you could overcome the hydraulic pressure and the gear would sag till you reduced the G at which point it would move back up.

 

I believe that can be seen in the Su-27. :thumbup:

[John Hargreaves]

Fascinating stuff guys, cheers