Landing gear failure

[n421nj]

I know the fixed gear planes do not have gear structural failure simulated. So there is no real consequence to side loading the gear or hard landings. I'm not really sure how coding works but I was thinking what if the computer thought for example that the landing gear on a Cessna 172 was the same as a retractable landing gear minus the gear extension speeds. So if you touch down too hard the gear buckles? Is it that simple?

[AKar]

Well..I don't know what it would take to seriously damage the spring steel landing gear in fixed-gear Cessnas, but I'd guess something else gets broken before the landing gear. It is seriously sturdy structure. On the other hand, I am not sure if the landing gear can be damaged by mishandling in the Comanche either, at least hard landing does no harm to it.

-Esa

[CAPFlyer]

I've a seen Cessna post "full flat" landing (i.e. hit so hard the belly hit the ground) and the gear was fine. The prop, engine, and engine mounts however were a different story. I have seen firewalls buckled by slamming down the nosewheel too, but the nosewheel assembly itself was fine.

[AKar]

I've a seen Cessna post "full flat" landing (i.e. hit so hard the belly hit the ground) and the gear was fine. The prop, engine, and engine mounts however were a different story. I have seen firewalls buckled by slamming down the nosewheel too, but the nosewheel assembly itself was fine.

Oh my.

I've myself done some "carrier landings" with a 150, and a positive ground without any tendency to bounce or run off the side. And I thought these felt bad in my back.

An excellent landing gear in all aspects indeed.

-Esa

[CAPFlyer]

Oh, the first was a crash in every aspect of the word. The occupants were lucky enough to only have temporary back problems (seats crushing during the impact helped a lot with that). The wings folded too, but it was the struts that failed so they were able to fix that as well. The gear didn't spring back fully to it's normal position, but it came a lot of the way back.

The second was a somewhat funnier one because it was a student pilot who managed to "slap" the plane onto the ground by hitting the tail first in an over-rotated flare and then the rotation continued until the nose gear strut bottomed out, wrinkled the firewall, and just barely scraped the prop on the runway. Led to a full tear down of the engine of course, but it was about the closest to a crash you could get without actually crashing.

[AKar]

The second was a somewhat funnier one because it was a student pilot who managed to "slap" the plane onto the ground by hitting the tail first in an over-rotated flare and then the rotation continued until the nose gear strut bottomed out, wrinkled the firewall, and just barely scraped the prop on the runway. Led to a full tear down of the engine of course, but it was about the closest to a crash you could get without actually crashing.

Something similar happened here as well once: it was on those precision landing competitions, where you must land as close to a line drawn on the runway as possible, but landing short of it disqualifies you. The airplane (I think it was Reims-built F150) took a good tailstrike, which was enough to damage the empennage structures, but landing gear had no damage IIRC, nor did the prop hit the pavement. The airplane was promptly repaired. I bought various bulkheads, ribs, spars and stuff from the States, while not supposed to ask too detailed questions nor to mention where these were going if possible. Sometimes getting these sheet metal parts with 8130-3's and in new condition is not exactly easy. Luckily there was this Finnish guy living in Wichita, KS, who was especially good in hunting down and delivering all kinds of airplane and engine parts straight from the manufacturers if needed. The airplane, missing its entire tail, and I think remembering the wings as well for hangar space saving, was mysteriously covered with blankets whenever there were visitors in the shop, to not provoke any questions. It went into the books as minor repair.

-Esa