Landing the Mosquito?

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by Raven Morpheus

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.

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