Unable to land the Spitfire; any tips?

A person with actual real world Spitfire experience has approved also A2A's plane FM, and it behaves way different..

Yeah, these ED PFMs are second to none. Always a pleasure to fly one of Yo-Yo's masterpieces and learn it fully. :thumbup:

Look at this video:

There is a finnish GA-pilot flying a mustang, and with no experience, lands a 2-pointer. That would NEVER be possible with DCS P-51D!

That would NEVER be possible with DCS P-51D!

Bollocks. I've done several myself.

This Mustang had wrong FM, too...

This! Plus, it isn't hard to perform wheeler landings in the P51d and Tf51 in DCS World. There are many videos of players doing it in YouTube. It's just a question of practice.

Mine often ended like the P51 in that movie though, until I started learning how to do it :-)

In the Spitfire I don't think they're recommended though, in the sim and irl...

From my experience, the hardest part about learning to do a 2-point landing was recognizing exactly how close to the ground I was in anticipation of nudging the stick forward to 'glue' the wheels to the ground.

When I started flying with an Oculus CV1, it became much easier to recognize how close to touchdown I was and 2-pointers became that much easier too.

And, it could be me, but just bought Normandy, installed it, went testing the Spitfire on landing and takeoff, and I can even perform a wheeler landing on it now!

Also noticed some fine tuning of the rudder authority - might be lacebo effect though ...

Everyone seems to have covered pretty much everything in the answers here but the two "tricks" if you want to call it that I use is this.

After learning to land the Stang by gliding in and flairing hard at 90 Mph and the bird stalling onto the runway in a perfect light touch down I tried the same in the spit and it would jump back into the air. So what I have done is when setting up for landing I leave the spit trimmed more nose heavey so that I need to hold the stick back some to keep it in level flight. For me, this extra forward trim has allowed me to flar harder in the spit right at stall speed and still land without just rizing into the air due to all the lift in those big eliptical wings. This also allows me to keep back pressure on the stick as I'm use to without causing the spit to rise back up after landing as well as during the flar. The only other thing I due for the wing tipping on landing is to make sure that during the landing I'm manually putting in right rudder with the pedals and not the trim tab when the engine is throttled back right as I land. This way when I touch down I can just tap the break and it only applies right brake becuase I already have the pedals putting in the right rudder. This has worked a treat for me.

Alphazulu

Thanks so much for the trimming insight. I could land the Spit but not reliably without wing scraping.

The nose heavy trimming has improved my landing success rate by some margin.

Like you I was flaring and then ballooning due to all that lift, the nose heavy trim kills the tendency for the rise on flare.

Simple but great tip.

@alphazulu: if you touch down wih the 3 wheels at the same time, it can not bounce. The touchdown won't increase the AoA, so no extra lift will be generated.

1) check the horizon's situation compared to the canopy rails before takeoff. That's what you want to see when you flare.

2) trim your plane to 100-110 mph.

3) hold the plane off the ground until you achieve a 3 point situation. It's better to have the tail wheel touch first than the main wheels. Go for a 3 pointer though.

4) All this isn't worth anything if you flare too high and slam onto the ground. PRactice practice practice.

5) once down, hold the stick all the way back, and as soon as the plane starts to veer in one direction - or even sooner - correct it with very quick full kicks on the rudder pedal. I mean full, deflect those rudders all the way, but only for a split second. Then do it again if needed, but don't hold it there. It's as if you were using double kickdrum pedals.

I still scrape a wing 9 times out of 10. I know in my heart that I should have gone around 9 times out of 10. It is hard to believe it was quite that crazy on landing even though most people get it eventually.

Regardless, I'll take it. It is such a wonderful plane to fly.

You think, I'm not going to make it, I'm not going to make it. Then you think, it's a Spitfire, it might make it. Then you make it. Amazing plane.

I think I finally have a decent flying day ahead of me.

I am going to land that sucka. (trying all these suggestions). Thanks guys.

Alphazulu

 

Thanks so much for the trimming insight. I could land the Spit but not reliably without wing scraping.

 

The nose heavy trimming has improved my landing success rate by some margin.

 

Like you I was flaring and then ballooning due to all that lift, the nose heavy trim kills the tendency for the rise on flare.

 

Simple but great tip.

Ya, no problem, glad to help.

@alphazulu: if you touch down wih the 3 wheels at the same time, it can not bounce. The touchdown won't increase the AoA, so no extra lift will be generated.

 

1) check the horizon's situation compared to the canopy rails before takeoff. That's what you want to see when you flare.

 

2) trim your plane to 100-110 mph.

 

3) hold the plane off the ground until you achieve a 3 point situation. It's better to have the tail wheel touch first than the main wheels. Go for a 3 pointer though.

 

4) All this isn't worth anything if you flare too high and slam onto the ground. PRactice practice practice.

 

5) once down, hold the stick all the way back, and as soon as the plane starts to veer in one direction - or even sooner - correct it with very quick full kicks on the rudder pedal. I mean full, deflect those rudders all the way, but only for a split second. Then do it again if needed, but don't hold it there. It's as if you were using double kickdrum pedals.

Reflected,

While I can appreciate your input, I'm not really sure why your addressing this to me.

I have absolutely no problem doing perfect landings in the Spitfire. I do pretty much everything you mention but that is all standard landing directions that you could find in a manual.

The guy that posted this seemed to be looking for tips on landing this specific bird from experience....remember, practice, practice, practice.

As, I said in my post, all of the standard landing directions have been covered by everyone else on here. I was simply adding in my personal little tricks that I have learned for landing Spitfires in IL2 1946, CLoD and now DCS. I'm not trying to repeat the same procedure as everyone else just add my two cents to the procedure. Also, I never even mentioned having any issues with bouncing. I was speaking about the increased lift of the Spit when flaring in comparison to other war birds on DCS as I know this is an issue for most people trying to learn to land a Spit.

@alphazulu: if you touch down wih the 3 wheels at the same time, it can not bounce. The touchdown won't increase the AoA, so no extra lift will be generated.

 

1) check the horizon's situation compared to the canopy rails before takeoff. That's what you want to see when you flare.

 

2) trim your plane to 100-110 mph.

 

3) hold the plane off the ground until you achieve a 3 point situation. It's better to have the tail wheel touch first than the main wheels. Go for a 3 pointer though.

 

4) All this isn't worth anything if you flare too high and slam onto the ground. PRactice practice practice.

 

5) once down, hold the stick all the way back, and as soon as the plane starts to veer in one direction - or even sooner - correct it with very quick full kicks on the rudder pedal. I mean full, deflect those rudders all the way, but only for a split second. Then do it again if needed, but don't hold it there. It's as if you were using double kickdrum pedals.

All excellent hints, specially the 1st - that's what I do every time I fly a new glider irl... I memorize the relative position of the glareshield / other reference to the horizon, and use that as a guiding cue when landing.

In the DCS Spitfire it was basilar to get good landings.

Then I started increasing the window ( x-wind ) near ground, and setting a more & more pronounced crosswind component, and practicing landings under x-wind up to 9 m/s ( aprox 18 knot )

Strangely the Spitfire is actually easier to land, in the Normandy map which is the one I mainly use now, in a strong x-wind than I expected. If you uncrab just before touching down, it stays very well, without much vices. But! if you touch down in only one wheel ( left or right ), or at more than 100 mph you're up to a big bounce, and from there on ... you're up for trouble...

Another surprise was to find out that, again in the Normandi airfields, the Spitfires is actually a lot easier for me to land in a wheeler than either the Bf 109 K-4 or the TF 51...

An experiment:

For those that find the Spit a bit too lively on its gear, have a go with these FMOptions.lua settings. They adjust the springiness & so on of the gear. Modified sections are commented "--Original "and are set to represent the Maximum / Easiest settings - try them, then adjust them one at a time back towards the original settings as shown, to see which one has the most effect. With these initial settings, you will find that the thing is fairly docile on the ground, and tracks pretty straight, and will not bounce too high on touchdown.

Personally (and it is just an opinion), I believe the tail strut has too much bounce.. and to some extent, the main struts too. Note, RL A/C that are not perfect modern restored examples, unless fresh out of the factory, would not be as lively as I suspect this one is trying to represent. This is the opinion of Groundcrew rather than pilot btw. As a comparison, you might want to compare this lua to the other tail draggeers, and note the differences. For best results create a folder in Generic Mod Enabler or similar, so you can more easily undo any changes prior to any updates.

The file is DCS World\Mods\aircraft\SpitfireLFMkIX\FMOptions.lua <<<< Note Release version only.

tailWheelStaticFricK = 0.6

tailWheelSideFricK = 0.5

tailWheelRollFricK = 0.025

tailWheelGlideFricK = 0.54

tailWheelMOI = 0.5

mainWheelStaticFricK = 0.71

mainWheelSideFricK = 0.73*.8

mainWheelRollFricK = 0.022

mainWheelGlideFricK = 0.69

mainWheelBrakeMomentMax = 0.33 * 8000.0

mainWheelMOI = 3.6

tailGearYawDamperK = 36.0

tailGearAxleFricM0s = 80.0

tailGearAxleFricM0f = 35.0 -- Original 11.0

tailGearAxleFricVs = 0.2

tailGearAxleFricVf = 4.0

tailGearStockLength = 0.1

tailGearSpringForceFactor = 11000000 .-- Original 17000000

tailGearSpringForceFactorRate = 3

tailGearStaticForce = 30000 -- Original 3000

tailGearReduceLength = 0.08

tailGearDirectDamperForceFactor = 3000.0

tailGearBackDamperForceFactor = 84000.0

tailGearDamageLengthLim = 0.15

mainGearSpringForceFactor = 3.2 * 1000000 -- Original 6.2 * 1000000

mainGearSpringForceFactorRate = 3.3

mainGearStaticForce = 3300.0

mainGearReduceLength = 0.14

mainGearDirectDamperForceFactor = 2000.0

mainGearBackDamperForceFactor = 100000 -- Original 10000.0

mainGearDamageLengthLim = 0.17

skew_w_wingK = 0.7

skew_w_tailK = 1

governorRegK = 0.0003

governorVelK = 0.0035

governorDamperK = 0.00002

governorNscale = 0.0

governorNc1 = 160.0

governorNc2 = 320.0

governorNc3 = 0.003

transversalK = 1.0

fuselageMyDampK = 0.6*0.0

fuselageMzDampK = 0.19*0.7

wingMzDampK = 0.43*0.7

stabSkewK = 0.9

aileronTrimTab = -0.045

elevatorTrimTab = 0.0

rudderTrimTab = 0.0

contactPosShiftK = 0.0

tailShadowPower = 10

tailShadowK = 0.75

tailShadowSpread = 23

damperShadowK = 0.6

wingShakeFilterK = 0.7

wingShakeFilterLim = 0.01

autoRudderK = 16.0*2.0

autoRudderWyK = 8.5*3.0

autoRudderWyLowTauInv = 0.5

autoRudderDampK = 0

autoRudderOutTauInv = 1.2

takeoffHelperK = 100.0

takeoffHelperWyTauInv = 0.7

propBodyShakeK = 60.0

propBodyShakeHor = 1.0

propBodyShakeVer = 0.2

propBodyShakeLim = 900.0

detonationShakeK = 0.223

automationFlags = 0

A definite improvement! Thanks.

A definite improvement! Thanks.

Indeed!

Thx mkiii :thumbup:

Now, if you can temper that ridiculous 'wings tipping over' at the end of a perfectly reasonably landing/rollout I'd, and I suspect many others, would be thrilled to bits. :thumbup:

I can take off, it flies beautifully, loops, rolls, Immelmanns and stall recovery all good. Approach, both straight in and military overhead breaks=good. Flare and touchdown=good(loads of pedal action) She rolls out OK (still pedalling)then Boom! Over goes a wing! Another respray. :music_whistling:

i feel like an abused wife that keeps going back for more :lol: Love this thing!

W0W! Just WOW!

So, it wasn't the goofy rudder, it was the goofy springs in the landing gear.

What a HUGE improvement! Thank you, mkiii!!!!

THIS SHOULD BE A STICKY!

Now, if you can temper that ridiculous 'wings tipping over' at the end of a perfectly reasonably landing/rollout I'd, and I suspect many others, would be thrilled to bits. !

Did you already try with brakes (partially) on before landing: I put the brakes at a bit lower as 4 before landing: I do that with a slider on my Hotas: because the brakes are on, direct after landing you have the possibility to stear with the rudderpedals and the plane comes fast to a stop.