Tail Draggers and landing

[facthunter]

No argument with that at all Maj. I'm suitably impressed. Just thought it might warrant a separate thread. The last thing i want is an argument. It was just a suggestion.. Nev

 

 

[M61A1]

No argument with that at all Maj. I'm suitably impressed. Just thought it might warrant a separate thread. The last thing i want is an argument. It was just a suggestion.. Nev

Well, we still haven't reached a consensus on whether he was wheeling in or three pointing. ;)

 

 

[Guest turk182]

Maybe it was a belly landing, if it was me I'd certainly want to have the gear up!

 

 

[poteroo]

OK back on trackOriginal Thrusters single seat. They had a longer tail boom before Belton hacked them down so they could fit in a cargo pod for export to NZ. These could be 3 pointed easily. The later types with the short booms including the two seaters where a lot harder if not impossible to three point with a conventional approach and flare but i did find that if you got them on the back side of the curve you could hold them off with a high angle of attack and power stall them on but it is hard to do without putting the tail on first. usually resulted in a thump and bit of a bounce.

I used to have a little display trick where i would place one main on the ground and hold the other off and roll along for a bit then change wheels for a bit, then lift off raise the nose and power up untill the tail wheel made contact, run along for a bit then try and this was the really hard part, lift the tail off without letting the main wheels touch again. It took a lot of practise to get the right power and AoA combination. You need to be really familiar with the aircraft.

 

ozzie

A good point about the difference in the ability to do 3-pointers or wheelers in different aircraft.

 

If a taildragger 'sits' with a low 'deck angle', it's my experience that it will be a risky wheeler type, and it will require very precise hold-off to get it to 3-point acceptably. Aircraft which sit this way have shorter main undercarriage legs, which gives an uncomfortably close propellor clearance during a tail high wheeler. They need to be tail low wheeled on for safety. When it comes to 3-pointers, it's common for the aircraft to never reach stalling at the deck angle which results in a 3-point touchdown. This causes it to skip along and become a little skittish in directional control. If you held off just a little too long, it would touch on the tailwheel first, and it then banged down onto the mains quite sharply. The C150/152 'Texas Taildragger' was a regular sod in this respect - which was probably the reason they were in the workshop quite often. I've also found the Taylorcraft, and the Stinson 108 behave similarly.

 

Supercubs fit between all of these. They are fantastic 3-pointers using full flap as you can use absolutely full back stick and fully stall them on. Have never felt the Cubs are happy when being wheeled on - they tend to be a little twitchy in direction when tail high wheeled, and I avoid doing this. Tail low is quite OK. It may also be associated with the relatively narrow track of the Cub undercarriage which doesn't convey the same stability of that in the larger Cessnas. Decathalons and older Cubs don't need flap to be useful in any type of landing, but my preference is 3 point and get them slowed - especially on bitumin surfaces.

 

Following the replacement of older low 'sittting' tailwheels with 'high' Scott 3200 models, (Maules and C170's), the deck angle of the aircraft is decreased - making them more prone to the behaviour described above. My C170 was always too 'flat' after a new t/w was fitted, so we simply re-set the main gear legs, and fitted 8.00 mainwheel tyres. The result was an aircraft with identical door sill height to a C180/185 - and it flew beautifully in 3-pointers or any type of wheeler. The C180/185 series are the ultimate t/w unit - you can do anything with them! The RV-6, 7, 8 and 9 t/w series all have very good behaviour, regardless of which landing you decide on.

 

Have to finish this right now as I'm out of battery power. happy days,

 

 

[facthunter]

Most undercarriages are just a leaf spring or rubber bungies. Any energy that is "stored" by compressing the leg is available to launch it back into the air. Since the line of action of this force is in front of the Cof G in a T/W plane the bounce is accompanied by a pitch up of the plane as well. Only by having the tailwheel contacting the ground will this pitch up be reduced. Austers can bounce so bad on rough ground on take-off that the T/O has to be abandoned in some situations.

 

Bigger aircraft have undercarriages that have hydraulic damping and are less sensitive to these problems. Nev

 

 

[kiwicrusader]

Correct Nev.

 

Dromaders have olieo suspension on all three wheels and are very forgiving. You can land them anyway you like, in a ploughed paddock if neccessary. Unless it has a delta conversion Garrett on the front, then 3 pointers are mandatory.