New to the Fishbed: So many questions:

[Nealius]

I got the Fishbed in the sale and just took it up for a spin for about an hour. So many questions:

 

1. Does the Nosewheel brake lever actually do anything? I can taxi just as well with it OFF as I can ON.

 

2. Is the mechanical lock for the gear lever necessary? I find it frequently gets in the way when I want to retract the gear after takeoff. I assume in real life it's to prevent the lever from vibrating out of position, but would that be modeled in the sim?

 

3. My debrief log shows about a hundred "engine stop" "engine start" entries. Compressor stalls?

 

4. Why does my gun sight/background "net" disappear when probe heat is off?

 

5. My landing parameters don't seem to match Chuck's guide. IIRC it says to maintain 340-380kmh with landing flaps, 5° AoA, with RPM somewhere in the 80s. On my landing attempt I had to keep RPM at 92% or so to maintain 350kmh, and had a whopping 13° AoA. Descent rate was 5m/s. AoA as low as 5° would have me diving straight into the ground.

Edited February 3, 2019 by Nealius

[KilledAlive]

1: I just leave it on Taxi all of the time.

 

2: The mechanical lock is just there so you don't jam the gear lever upward while on the ground. I'd recommend setting the lock upward once you make it to the runway after taxiing, so that when you want to retract the gears, you actually can do so.

 

3: I would say that's due to just maneuvering. You can tell your engine is beginning to fail when your RPMs shunt back and forth. Putting it in that state is not a good idea for a long time.

 

4: I have never turned Probe Heat on and off, but your ASP is tied to the Gyro systems, so that fact may help.

 

5: You don't want to be contacting the runway at no more than 3m/s if you don't want to smash your gears apart. keep your throttle high, and afterburn if you need to to maintain your speed.

 

Hope that helps!

[Buzzles]

Re 3)

As above and were you shooting? Missiles (any maybe guns) result in the starter kicking in which might result in the event, I'd have to check.

 

 

Also avoid 0g at all costs. If you need to nose over, do it very gently and maintain >0.5g, or invert, pull and adjust attitude, then roll back.

[Dr_Arrow]

Ad 3) It is afterburner engagement/disengagement. Mig-21BIS models afterburner as a separate engine, therefore its engagement creates engine startup/shutdown event.

[some1]

2) You can unlock it once at mission start and leave it there, it won't hurt anything. But you HAVE to return the lever to centre after gear operation, or you'll run out of compressed air.

 

4) Haven't noticed that. Which switch you're flipping?

 

5) The FM has changed significantly, maybe Chuck's guide is not updated.

[zcrazyx]

For the landings i would read the actual manual, specifically relating to the SPS system, this is a lift system that activates at a certain weight, if i recall its 850lt fuel with no stores and 450ltr fuel with some stores.

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

5: You don't want to be contacting the runway at no more than 3m/s if you don't want to smash your gears apart. keep your throttle high, and afterburn if you need to to maintain your speed.

 

Hope that helps!

 

This. Chuck makes some of the best guides, but it's always good to use them as supplement to the actual manual. That said, his might be out of date.

 

At any rate, don't worry too much about getting all of the numbers dead on for landing. What you need to really pay attention to is your airspeed indicator and your vertical speed indicator. Look at it this way:

 

With flaps down, gear down, and at the correct speed? You're going to have an appropriate AoA. It matters little whether or not that AoA is 5 degrees, or 6. Or 4. Either way, avoiding a tail strike while also letting the nose down gently is the end goal.

 

The end goal is always a solid landing, so by that token? Treat Chuck's throttle figure as an observation he made. You're going to be flying with different conditions and weights compared to what he was doing. There's always going to be deviance between situations give how dynamic flying is. So for throttle setting? Don't go with an expected figure. Adjust it as much as you need.

 

Your end goal is touching down at 3m/s or less. Everything else is accessory to that. Adjust them as needed.

Edited February 4, 2019 by MiG21bisFishbedL

[Charly_Owl]

2)

5) The FM has changed significantly, maybe Chuck's guide is not updated.

 

It's quite possible. Last time I touched it was 2016, so things may very well have changed since then. I'll look into it in a few weeks when I come back home.

[LuSi_6]

+1

 

you actually can land the MiG now at slower speeds, super easy in VR to land now. In most conditions, I land purely visual, not checking the instruments. For non-VR users: just check your decent rate, you need to treat her like a girl, very gentle.

[Basco1]

It's quite possible. Last time I touched it was 2016, so things may very well have changed since then. I'll look into it in a few weeks when I come back home.

 

 

 

Fantastic Chuck,this will be really appreciated,your guides are so thorough and really straight forward to follow

[Nealius]

My landings are still a bit hard, especially the nose coming down. Even with a clean airframe and less than 1000L of gas (I did 200L last night) it's impossible for me to get less than 10° AoA on approach or landing without going 450+ kmh.

 

The nose wheel brake lock is still a major point of confusion for me. Vertical or horizontal, the lever position does not appear to show any practical affect. I also noticed the nose wants to yaw right whenever I start my taxi or takeoff run. One very peculiar thing I've noticed is that I have a lot of rudder authority when stationary. If I hold the brakes and run up the engines, I can yaw the nose left and right despite there not being any airflow over the rudder. The nosewheel is just a castor, right? No powered steering?

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

My landings are still a bit hard, especially the nose coming down. Even with a clean airframe and less than 1000L of gas (I did 200L last night) it's impossible for me to get less than 10° AoA on approach or landing without going 450+ kmh.

Post a track.

 

 

One very peculiar thing I've noticed is that I have a lot of rudder authority when stationary. If I hold the brakes and run up the engines, I can yaw the nose left and right despite there not being any airflow over the rudder. The nosewheel is just a castor, right? No powered steering?

 

This is to be expected. The nosewheel is, indeed, free castering. However, the MiG-21 uses compressed air actuated differential braking. When you squeeze the brakes and put in pedal input, it releases the braking force on the opposite wheel. This is how it turns. So, when you're putting in the pedal input, you're actually releasing the brakes on one wheel.

[Swordfish]

Be like Russian and you have not problems. Real men fly mig21.

[Pikey]

FM definitely changed over the years. I doubt any docs are up to date, it's very mature.

[McShetty]

350 is way too fast and almost certainly result in bouncing back into the air. I've had very good success landing at 300 kph, very shallow decent as usual. Bad part is that you can't see over the nose. Looking around the side works a little. What I've done is to initially come in at a little steeper angle and 10-20 kph faster to keep the runway in sight and then bleed off the speed, increase the AOA, and shallow out the glide slope at the end. But just make sure the glide slope is stable before touchdown. This has prevented all bouncing.

 

 

 

95-100% throttle is normal.

 

 

It can fly level at ~220 kph and 30 deg AOA so landing slower than 300 is likely possible but maybe a tail-strike.

[Nealius]

Working on getting some tracks/videos, but I've still been coming in around 350kph, 10 units AoA, nearly full MIL power, touching down as gently as I can. The nose still comes down immediately (I'd have to give near full aft stick to keep it up), but it doesn't bounce as violently any more. This is with a small center tank and somewhere around 600-700L of fuel left.

[McShetty]

Another trick I use that seems to help a lot is to keep it trimmed perfect so I'm not fighting any pressure at all. It seems to make it easier to lock-in the speed and decent rate. Too low or too high can be adjusted with very small speed changes. It should be almost hands off on final.

 

 

Also, you're setting up a mission where you're already in flight and just turn something like 90 deg onto final and land. So you can just do it quickly over and over.

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

Working on getting some tracks/videos, but I've still been coming in around 350kph, 10 units AoA, nearly full MIL power, touching down as gently as I can. The nose still comes down immediately (I'd have to give near full aft stick to keep it up), but it doesn't bounce as violently any more. This is with a small center tank and somewhere around 600-700L of fuel left.

 

If you want a "cheat" try this: if you need to make minute pitch adjustments, just use your elevator trim. Also, it sounds like you might be dragging it in at low altitude. What altitude AGL do you start your pattern/approach? Also, don't worry too much if the nose comes down. It's inavoidable if you're performing STOL operations with the Fishbed. As long as the nose comes down gently and doesn't slam down, you'll be fine. The main gear can take quite a bit of force and you, ideally, want to use them to transfer that energy into the ground so that when the nose wheel drops, it doesn't have as much.

 

Edited February 10, 2019 by MiG21bisFishbedL

[Nealius]

That GIF is basically how I come down without the chute. The other day I nearly had a perfect landing; my touchdown speed was 330km/h, descent rate around 2-3m/s. My AoA was still around 10-12 and I floated quite a bit over the runway before touchdown.

 

Unfortunately my tires had been blown on takeoff without me realizing, so I landed on my rims.

 

In the pattern I'm usually around 400-500m AGL. Can't say how high I am when commencing final, but I aim for a 3° glideslope.

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

That GIF is basically how I come down without the chute. The other day I nearly had a perfect landing; my touchdown speed was 330km/h, descent rate around 2-3m/s. My AoA was still around 10-12 and I floated quite a bit over the runway before touchdown.

 

Unfortunately my tires had been blown on takeoff without me realizing, so I landed on my rims.

 

In the pattern I'm usually around 400-500m AGL. Can't say how high I am when commencing final, but I aim for a 3° glideslope.

 

That's a perfectly acceptable landing, so don't sweat it.

 

Also, 400-500m AGL seems a little low, at least for me. I'd bump it up to ~600m and extend your downwind leg a little farther. You may appreciate the increased space to set up your approach.

[Dr_Arrow]

That GIF is basically how I come down without the chute. The other day I nearly had a perfect landing; my touchdown speed was 330km/h, descent rate around 2-3m/s. My AoA was still around 10-12 and I floated quite a bit over the runway before touchdown.

 

Unfortunately my tires had been blown on takeoff without me realizing, so I landed on my rims.

 

In the pattern I'm usually around 400-500m AGL. Can't say how high I am when commencing final, but I aim for a 3° glideslope.

 

Touchdown speed 330 km/h and descent rate 2-3 m/s is an acceptable landing in the sim. As per my discussion with real pilots from our airforce, correct parameters would be touchdown speed 260-280 km/h, descent rate lower than 1 m/s, touchdown only on main gears without slamming the front wheel on the runway, aerobrake afterwards. Landings at 3 m/s per second (600 FPM) would more often than not lead to highly increased air-frame fatigue/bending. I've recorded a track which goes mostly by real world numbers/advice when landing the BIS, touchdown at slightly higher speed of 290 km/h to keep AoA below 15 on main wheels and aerobraking.

mig-21land_aerobrake.trk

[Nealius]

With real world parameters, how do they see the runway over the nose?

[Dr_Arrow]

With real world parameters, how do they see the runway over the nose?

 

Well, I hope you can see the runway during the whole approach in my track using the default cockpit view :) During flare you are supposed to shift your viewpoint to the left and in the distance of 30-50 meters, level out the aircraft at 1 meter above the ground, slightly decrease power (but not below the SPS position) and let the aircraft gently touch the runway on its main wheels. It has a tendency to lower the nose, this should be countered by pulling the stick back and then aerobrake, after that lower the nose wheel and release brake chute if needed.

[River]

Perfect landing means your nosewheel doesn't drop imediately on touchdown. This is quite tricky and I just mastered it a few times. If you float over the runway and your wingtips wobble left and right because you try to touchdown very gentle thats a good indicator that you try it the right way.

 

Everybody says for example the F 5 is a breeze to land. Very easy to land yes, not dropping the nose on touchdown is a whole different story.

[Nealius]

Yeah, my MiG-21 landings and F-5 landings are roughly on the same level at this point.