Landing the Mosquito?
 

Hello

I'm having a problem landing the Mosquito.

Everytime I get near to the ground, i.e. within 500ft one of the wings dips and I end up ploughing into the ground.

I read on wikipedia this is a peculiarity of the plane and it catches out novices (which I am I guess, despite being just about able to land Hurricanes and F4U Corsairs) but it didn't say how to overcome it.

Please could someone offer up some tips on how to land the Mosquito properly?

Thanks in advance.

Never found the Mossie particularly difficult to land.

If the wing is dipping then it means you reached the stall speed and one of the wings stalled before the other one.

Watch the speed on landing and aim to have the last few kilometers of speed above the stall speed drop off as you are wheels down. Full landing flaps, throttle back to 20-30%, let the speed bleed gradually.

Land it at a higher speed.

Hmm, OK so I'm probably coming in too slow.

I think was at about 100-120 mph when I tried this last night - I thought that was about right, how much faster do I have to be?

I seem to be generally having problems with landing anything but a F4U, Dauntless or PBN (PBN's are easy, you can even cut the engines mid flight and just let it fall out of the sky!) because I tried a BF109 last night also and got it to the ground but dug the nose or something in.

I wish I could find some way of easily identifying the airfields (especially one's without proper runways) and the distance I am from them, then I suppose I could work out how far I need to be away to drop 1000ft in a proper glide path before I'm too low or I've overshot the runway (although a method of actually working that out eludes me at this time).

I tend to drop quite quickly in what I guess is a steep short "glide path" and end up either being too slow (and things like with the Mosquito happen) or I overshoot, either way it results in a crash.

I've got carrier landings down so that about two thirds of the time I get it right with the Dauntless/F4U and on land based airstrips/airfields I'm about the same with those planes also, so I seem to be much better at landing the PF aircraft.

I tend to land WWII fighter aircraft in a much steeper descent then say, a Cessna 172 or the like. After looking over the airfield to determine where I would like to land (some fields are just that, fields, and you can land anywhere inside the base area) and position myself on the downwind leg. My pattern is short and steep, allowing me to have throttle to zero for the most part until I drop gear and a notch of flaps on base, then get my power up to around 30% and another notch of flaps on final. By then I am just 30 seconds or so from 'crossing the fence' and can lower full landing flaps and touch down.

http://www.zenoswarbirdvideos.com/Im...oFB6Manual.pdf

There is a section on stalling (pg33).

Most of the carrier aircraft have much lower stall speeds. Land based aircraft tend to have higher stall speeds and fewer compromises in other performance as a result.

Definitely increase your approach speed. It's relatively alright to touch down at slightly above the stall speed with a land based aircraft. Not too fast obviously but my speed is usually just under 200kph which is 110kts(ish).

Kittle is right that a steeper approach and a quick finish can work fairly well. My approaches tend to be too fast so I will sometimes use a rudder skid to kill off some excess energy but once I do that then I keep the throttle between 20-40% and slowly go to landing flaps just as I approach the field. Maybe 10 seconds before.

I tend to eyeball it these days and it works fairly well for me. I'd be a by the numbers guy if it was my own life in my hands but by now I instinctively know whats required no matter what plane. The odd time I still nose it over and blow it up :)

Simple trick to land at just over stall without rolling over.

Don't use ailerons to keep yourself level below 210kph. Use the rudder, which is what you would do IRL. If a wing starts to drop, rudder away from it just a bit.

What goes on is when a wing is close to stall with no side-stick, you push the stick to the side to get one wing to lift and the outer wing on that side will get a higher Angle Of Attack that might take it right into stall, force it to drop and go back at the same time which puts the plane into slip and stall at the same time which is the formula for spin.

Ruddering away from the dropping wing makes that wing move just a bit faster. Don't just watch The Ball because it's too slow. Watch the wings and the horizon.

I told a pilot friend about sidestick on takeoff and landing in EAW and he told me that would get me killed IRL. In IL2 that practice doesn't work.

Any time you're slow, sidestick is a good way to get in a spin.

OK I've tried putting into practice some of what you guys have said and I still can't get the Mosquito to land.

Here's a short vid of what I'm doing and what's happening, starts in the cockpit, then there's an outside view of it all.

Map is the Korean war map (the runway west of Seoul is nice and visible).

Vid -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvWsD-Dn52E


Basically I seem to get to about 100ft and the plane just drops out of the sky and crashes!! I appear to be descending far too quickly. The plane is very unresponsive at this point however, as soon as I slow down it becomes rather unresponsive and keeping it at any sort of level at around 120mph so I'm not dropping like a brick is almost impossible?!



So what am I doing wrong?


I would try coming in from further away at 1000-2000ft but I'm afraid of ending up too short and not reaching the runway!

I would also try trimming the plane but my trim controls are limited to either the hat switch on my flight stick (Thrustmaster T Flight Hotas X), the keys on my keyboard numerical keypad or my mouse wheel - and none of those are ideal as by the time I've got the plane trimmed to any decent fashion I've spent 5 minutes doing so due to constantly having to correct the trim up or down and then conditions change so I have re-trim!!

Still too slow, and losing altitude too fast. You're basically falling out of the sky, not gliding in. Even if the ground was 20 feet higher and you touched it before your wing dipped, you would still likely break your gear on impact.

Your speed at touchdown was just over 160km/h; I land single-engine fighters at about 170-180. It can be done even at 200 km/h, though you will bounce.

Also, your angle is too steep; if you can see the runway as clearly in front and above your nose as in that video, then you're coming in too steep unless you drop more flaps/add some throttle and pull the nose up at the last second.