The A2A Simulations Community

D,



D2

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...Some say he never blinks, and that he roams around the woods at night foraging for Merlin parts...

I think in FSX our flying is a little more 'riskful'. If I were flying a P-40 in real life, I certianly wouldn't be trying to plop it down into airstrips fit for a Cessna 185, nor would I be treating it like such an airplane. The C-185 is designed for and excels in the rigors of bush flying, the P-40 wasn't designed for such flying, tho it handles those types of fields much better than the P-47 As has been stated the P-40 is a warbird, that even in it's prime probably wouldn't have been flown into such conditions. Tho history indicates that these birds were routinely flown out of jungle and desert strips. In FSX we don't pay for damages or answer to FAA agents, so pushing the limits of the P-40...within reason, is prefectly fine. If you fly these birds within tolerances, everything wears down accordingly at a slow pace. If you fly at the edges of tolerances such as in bush flying, you wear things out faster. Thankfully with accusim you can try these things out without destroying priceless aviation history.

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"The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." - Douglas Adams

I've had no gear damage from landing, but on one takeoff my left gear collapsed... at first I thought it was a strong crosswind, my wingtip scraped the runway, but I had enough speed to get airborne and assess the situation- it was then I realized the wheel had raised. Left gear 80% up, and frozen- even hydraulic backup system didn't work. The eventual crash landing would've been as great as possible if I'd slowed down quicker once on the ground: as it was I tore through a chainlink fence and down an embankment, bursting into flames. My only P-40 crash thus far.

Anyhow, all my procedures were correct, and I have no clue what caused the collapse. In the same aircraft (P-40B specifically) I had the right gear retract a little during taxiiing, just two flights later, after all repairs. Gear selector was neutral (and never touched), and hydraulic fluid was checked before startup.

My only guess was that I had used "slew" to pick a point on the apron to start from, and when "slewing" I moved the joystick too much and the aircraft moved over varying terrain before I got it back to where I wanted it. Maybe that action registered somehow as damage in Accusim? Almost all of my landings have been very good, and those few which were iffy were not the sort I'd've thought would cause any damage!

I love this P-40, it is so hard now to choose anything else to fly instead!

Joe

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You have already read my comprehensive response to this mean-spirited, condescending post, and now that you've read it and we mutually understand each other, I'm going to take the high ground here and remove it from the A2A forums. I'm real sorry you feel that way, but I guess its pretty much mutual, so we'll leave it at that.
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To OP, rc flyer: Killratio's observation of the limits of landing a tail dragger in a 2d environment lacking depth perception, peripheral vision, or seat-of-the-pant is something I very much agree with. Ideally you want to arrest your flare about 6 inches off the ground, and then ease it down so that the tail doesn't snap down, right, but that can be difficult to do within the confines of a computer monitor. In order to not bounce you need your vertical speed around 50 fpm, and you definitely need to stick your mains. That is the ideal.
When landing on the mains, because I'm rather mediocre, my landings are typically a bit harder than that, ranging from 100 to 200 fpm (I've kept track), and that obviously will cause a baby bounce. Not exactly the world's best landing, but not something that I would think would damage the gear even over many iterations, yet its my experience that those kind of numbers are causing a pretty high failure rate. Seems pretty fragile to me when all is said and done. So I think the question here is not whether you can do 100 greaser landings at 50 fpm, and get no damage, but whether or not the plane is correctly robust when doing "firm" or even "hard" landings in the vicinity of the numbers we are talking about. I don't know how they went about certifying airplanes back in the old days, but it would be interesting if somebody had some firm data on just how weak or strong the P-40s gear really was. Anybody have any data like that???

For what little its worth, and I don't know what other people's experience it with it, but I've taken to just doing 3 point landings now. For whatever reason, unlike the Wheel landings we are talking about above, I find it much easier to get a nice, really gentle, picturesque touchdown when going 3 point. It seems like it would be the other way around, but I guess that is just related to style. As I think the discussion indicates, if you are under about 100 fpm consistently I don't think you will have gear damage problems, or at least I don't. It is what is happening above that threshold that really raises the questions for me though, and I can't say that I share some of the other posters' conviction that all is well.

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1)i7 980x 4.35 ghz, gtx 470s SLI, Matrox th2go, Creative x-fi
2)i7 2600k, Gigabyte z68x, gtx 285s sli

Hi rcflyer,
I would just like to add that after many hours of flying the P-40 I havn't damaged anything on it yet, and most off my flights are short ones which means I have taken off and landed possibly hundreds of times. I learned my mistakes on the Spitfire where I damaged the landing gear a couple of times , then I watched how airshow pilots bring these birds down and read as much as I could to improve my landings.
When I'm in the correct angle for a three point landing and just above the runway I use the throttle to drop me slowly and lightly on the tarmac, don't go into idle! (If I'm doing that wrong maybe Dudley can put me right, I don't want to give any wrong advice!).
We have too little information here to help but I think it is a bad landing technique causing the damage.
What speed do you touch down with?
What speed did you put the landing gear down?
are all your fuel tanks full? (the heavier you are the harder it is to touch down lightly)
do you land on a runway or grass?
do you land on one wheel first?
was your hydraulic system set correctly? (were your wheels down properly?).
I often find it helps to watch my landing in the video from outside the cockpit afterwards, sometimes what you think was a good landing actually wasn't.

Good Landings

M.Jordan.

I agree, good, gentle landings make the gear last through many many cycles. In my mind it really isn't a question of whether or not "bad technique" is causing the damage...Of course it is! But what I still don't see how goosing it on to the pavement at less than -50 fpm with no side forces answers the burning question about whether or not the P-40's landing gear has the correct durability built into it. I had enough practice landing now, that the vast majority of landings are pretty darned gentle, and I honestly can't cite the last time I had to overhaul the gear, but while going through the learning process, like RC Flyer, my landings were "mediocre" and 6 to 8 of those were enough to cause my gear to go from good to "totally shot, upper and lower locks broken" in one iteration. When I say mediocre, I mean a bit harder than what you had hoped for, not some kind of bone crusher, or anything even close to a carrier style landing, and with very minimal side forces. We aren't talking bad landings at all, just a series of landings that were on the firm side. I really would like to get a better feel for what "fragile" means, because it seems like that word might mean different things to different posters...Numbers would be even better! For instance, does anybody actually know what kind of side forces the struts were designed to withstand over and over again? What vertical forces? There is no question in my mind that there are many many very good Virtual P-40 pilots out there who are getting amazing lives out of their Main Gear. A bunch of really good pilots saying I've never had any problem and then going on to describe their skillful technique is helpful, but it doesn't address the engineering question imho.

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1)i7 980x 4.35 ghz, gtx 470s SLI, Matrox th2go, Creative x-fi
2)i7 2600k, Gigabyte z68x, gtx 285s sli

Hi bigjuicyspider,

You wrote: but it doesn't address the engineering question imho.

I don't think there is an engineering problem overwise all A2A P-40 pilots would encounter the same problem.
I guess the hardest part for A2A is that nobody wants to land a real priceless and historic P-40 hard enough to find out how much the real landing gear can take
I'm happy with the landing gear as it is, every time I land an A2A plane, I imagine that I'm landing a priceless and historic plane and if I touch down to hard it'll get damaged.
We've all learned from damaging our fair share of landing gears It's just as well they don't set us on the real things!!!

p.s. I had what was for me a heavy landing before writing this, but still no damage!

Happy Landings,

M. Jordan

Thanks for keeping it lighthearted and polite, M. Jordan! For a while thought this thread was going south really really fast. To answer you, I didn't say that there was an engineering "problem", only a "question". RC Flyer raised the question, and having observed similar behavior, I added my 2 cents. As to how many think that the landing gear is too fragile, that I can't answer. The posters on this thread are mainly good pilots who are doing things very gently. I can only recount my own personal experiences with the gear, as I navigated the learning process all the way from "crappy" to "can land okay without porking the gear too soon", and then try to come to a better understanding of their historical durability through open discussion. Sometimes these kinds of discussion lead to everybody learning something, and sometimes they go straight to the Abyss. Regardless of what some may think, I'm not the crappiest Flight Sim Pilot that ever walked the face of the earth, and I truly do believe that there may be something going on here beyond what can be attributed to pilot error. And I'm NOT saying that I'm right about it, I simply think that it is possible, and that it is worth having a forum discussion about. Some people think these discussions are about being "right" or "wrong" and if you are wrong, you must go eat a humble pie as you ritually disembowel yourself. I don't view it that way For me it is just a matter of attempting to ascertain how much abuse the gear of the real P-40 could typically take, by calling upon the expertise of the people on these forums, and then being reasonably certain that what is simulated is in line with that, good landings or crappy landings. Having confidence that something is correct is the biggest provider of immersion there is for me, while having a vague feeling that "something doesn't seem quite right here" founded or unfounded is the biggest subtractor, so getting to the bottom of issues like these is worth at least a good try I think.

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1)i7 980x 4.35 ghz, gtx 470s SLI, Matrox th2go, Creative x-fi
2)i7 2600k, Gigabyte z68x, gtx 285s sli

Hi bigjuicyspider,

You wrote: I'm not the crappiest Flight Sim Pilot that ever walked the face of the earth,

I don't think anyone is trying to say that! and I'm certainly not the best either!
Landing these old beauties is very different to landing for instance the BAe Jetstream or concord (you probably land them better than me!).
I noticed this thread was going "offside" and decided to put it back in a positive direction and help rc flyer as much as I can.

more happy landings

M. Jordan

And thank you for doing that.

now that you mention airliners, as far as I'm concerned, the big design flaw of the P-40 was that it didn't have a drooping nose like the Concorde Being able to see the runway in front of you goes a long way towards making up for the limitations of depth perception and peripheral vision in FSX, especially if hovering the aircraft a foot above the runway is mandatory technique. I've grown comfortable enough with tail draggers I guess, but the possibility of less than optimal landings due to some of the cue limitations of FSX, really make issues such as that being discussed all the more important I think. In any case, I'll never feel totally at home with tail draggers, especially with the ground friction model in FSX.

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1)i7 980x 4.35 ghz, gtx 470s SLI, Matrox th2go, Creative x-fi
2)i7 2600k, Gigabyte z68x, gtx 285s sli

Hi bigjuicyspider,

You wrote: Being able to see the runway in front of you goes a long way,

Sorry technique again!! If your approach is correct than you can see the runway until you are "hovering" about a foot or two above the runway with the nose up, I sit further back than the standard vision point and that allows me to see both sides of the runway during the (hopefully!)three point touchdown.
I only struggle with this in the P-47.

even more happy landings

M. Jordan

No, no problem with my technique for a 3 point landing, from what you describe; I think we're still on the same page btw, I have a 3 24 inch monitors, so lots of "fake" peripheral vision that still doesn't provide the depth cues that you would get in real life. In the absence of depth cues, my next choice would be a clear view of the runway at the moment of flare and touchdown, so for that reason I'll always think Flight Sim is better suited for planes with tricycle gear Just a personal preference.

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1)i7 980x 4.35 ghz, gtx 470s SLI, Matrox th2go, Creative x-fi
2)i7 2600k, Gigabyte z68x, gtx 285s sli

Thanks everyone, things got a little heated there but looks like we're back on track now. First off, didn't mean to offend anyone with the "crappy pilot" thing, just a failed attempt at humor I guess. I actually consider myself a pretty good pilot and that's why I was surprised when I kept getting all the damaged gear reports. I have flown ALL the A2A warbirds with Accusim and have rarely seen damaged gear reports (unless I expected them on a poor landing). The point brought up on the side loading might be relevant, let me explain. I always try to do a 3-point and as others have mentioned when in this attitude the ground references are little to none. One thing I have noticed in FSX (all aircraft) is when you are slow in a flair you tend to get scewed to left and have to use rudder to stay on the center line. This shouldn't be a P-factor thing since you are at a very low power setting. Sooooo......I sometimes end up with a lot of rudder almost like a cross-wind landing and maybe that's the case here. What I'll try is not so much of a flair and keep the speed up and try and keep her straight. Someone ask about fuel and I usually have no fuel in the fuselage tank, about a quarter full on the wing, and reserve tank is full. I find the CoG best with this arrangement. Again thanks for all the info and hopefully Scott or Lewis will add some insight.

Steve

You didn't offend anyone. My post about not being the 'crappiest flight sim pilot' on the face of the earth wasn't in any way related to your earlier use of it! Sorry for the misunderstanding.

As far as the exchange between me and Dudley, it shouldn't have happened. We have some dislike of each other that shouldn't have been aired here on these forums, and for my part of it, I'm going to apologize to the A2A community. In fact, at Dudley, while I think you know I'm not about to accept full responsibility for that exchange or others we've had, I am going to apologize to you, for my role in it, because my words simply didn't need to be said.

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1)i7 980x 4.35 ghz, gtx 470s SLI, Matrox th2go, Creative x-fi
2)i7 2600k, Gigabyte z68x, gtx 285s sli

OK, good then. Sometimes the comes out of us all. Don't sweat it. This will make ya feel better.....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiLvbMuFlCE&feature=player_embedded I know it did me

Steve