Spitfire stick aft -> tail wheel lock

[Emacs]

Hi there,

 

I'm pushing myself through the rather humbling experience of landing the Spit in DCS...

I'm okay with taxiing. 

I can take-off pretty consistently now. Not pretty, but ok.

I can fly here just fine. I'm not too bad with the constant rudder trim changes and keep her trimmed quite well.

 

Still, each and every landing so far resulted in one wing or the other touching the ground and some pirouettes.

 

Yes, I have watched several youtube videos about landing the spit and I have read chucks guide and the very well written essays about taildraggers here.

 

Two questions so far:

1.) During final approach and flare, do you move the rpm lever at all? Does it matter? 

2.) Pulling the stick back to lock the tail wheel -> when do you do that? Right after touchdown? Or - if you're really good - it is already there at the end of your flare manouvre?

 

Phil Style mentioned in one of his old videos, that setting the wheelbrakes to about 30% gives more stability after touchdown. And yes, it seems to me it does. Is that something real-world pilots would have considered? Or is that just asking for a prop strike in the real world?

 

Cheers,

 

Emacs

[grafspee]

1. You set rpm before landing approach, i set 2850 for landing, then you don't touch rpm lever at all, doing power adjustment only with throttle.

2. Pulling stick back in spitfire does nothing, tail wheel is free all time and you cant lock it.

To keep it straight on landing roll out, you need to use rudder, once plane slows down you will have to use differential braking.

Setting constant braking force is something you will never do in RL, first it i almost impossible to do it in spitfire, second you would burn brakes at every landing, they lets say weren't reliable designs. RL pilots reduce use of brakes to minimum, not talking about airliners jest which has brakes designed to to do full blown braking.

Edited May 2, 2021 by grafspee

[Emacs]

> Pulling stick back in spitfire does nothing, tail wheel is free all time and you cant lock it.

 

Ah... 

now that explain a lot of the strange stuff I was experiencing 

Thank you, Graf Spee ! 

 

 

P.S.:

That reminds me of the old joke, where the pilot leaves a note to the maintenance crew "Auto pilot a bit rough occasionally, please check."

And the maintenance crew replies with a message "No autopilot installed in this plane."

 

Cheers,

 

Robin

Edited May 2, 2021 by Emacs

[john4pap]

The only thing you'll get from pulling back the stick is getting the tailwheel to sit firmly on the ground, and this is recommended for takeoffs and, I believe, for landings too.

Now, for landings, the trick is to start dancing on the pedals (as is for takeoffs). Subsequently, you should employ your brakes too. You can check a video I posted a while ago in the pinned thread about landing the Spitfire. It is from a real life landing and shows how the pilot employs the brakes.

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[Emacs]

Yup. That dance…

It works for me, or rather I‘m able to dance right, during take off.

Took maybe six to ten attempts to get the muscle memory to get reasonably good results.

 

But during the landing, even if I start dancing, there is always one moment where she surprises me with a sudden veer to one side I didn‘t expect.

Even when we’ve slowed down quite a bit already I often find myself full depressing rudder on one side and a sudden swing to the other side happens. 

And more often then not the „inner“ wing, the one into the sudden turn, moves down and scrapes the ground. I find this particularly odd. I would expect the outer wing of the turn to go down, but it is usually the one inside the swing.

 

Anyhow, I‘ll keep trying and learning.

Love learning the Spit !

During the first flights I could hardly fly her straight and level and was fighting the controls all the time.

After some hours now I have zero problems with her in the air.

In fact I find the Spit in many regards easer then the P-51 - in the air. 

On the ground no so much, but I‘ll get there.

 

Cheers,

 

Robin

[john4pap]

Well dancing takes a lot of effort and time, even on the pedals

And making that dance on landings is harder.

Learnt how to fly it properly when I got my first rudder pedals a year ago. I neglected flying it for a few months and now I'm learning it again, including landings. Just keep in mind that when she's misbehaving, it's because you missed a step. Be proactive, keep a good, continuous and smooth (rather than abrupt) oscillation on the pedals. I would advise against the use of brakes at high speeds, unless necessary. As for the rpm in your original question, I believe the appropriate setting for both takeoffs and landings is full rpm.

 

[ZeroReady]

The most important thing to do on landing is stay ahead of the aircraft. You need to fix problems before they happen, it isn't easy to do at all. But if you feel the wing starting to dip then you're already too late. You just have to examine what went wrong, practice practice practice. If you're reacting to the problems you aren't moving fast enough. It's a very dynamic aircraft, and landings are constant small and large corrections. Making sure your rudder is trimmed so you have no side slip will help a lot. Raise the flaps as soon as you touch down if you can, that helped me a lot. Then you have more weight on the wheels and less bounce. Try to touch down at less than 100, even 90 is fine. The slower you are at touchdown the less time you have to spend in Spitfire's least favorite configuration, which is rolling fast down the runway. RPM should be full when you are on final. The low throttle setting will prevent RPMS from being at full anyway.

[-0303-]

Having the ball centered on touchdown helps.

Something I found immensely helpful learning Spitfire takeoff was fixing on a cloud to keep straight.

I've recently taken to raising the seat for takeoff / landings too see better. Used to do that only for CV landings.

 

Edited May 4, 2021 by -0303-

[-0303-]

About this "dancing on the pedals".

 

Maybe depending on definition of "dancing". This is not something you do in real life. When I learned to fly gliders I brought with me very bad habits from an arcadish "flight simulator". I did rapid movements (maybe twitchy pots contributed) and you don't, ever. It's only ever minute smooth corrections. The only exception on the takeoff run, the first ~5 seconds before having airspeed over rudder, one might rapidly slam it fully to one side to keep straight.

 

Maybe the lack of real life physical feedback makes rapid pedal dancing a thing in DCS.

I've seen videos of aerobatic flying, punctuated "pumping" the stick through roll manouvers is something different.

 

Learning to land the Spitfire smoothly is quite satisfying and worth it.

Edited May 4, 2021 by -0303-

[grafspee]

@-0303-agree. I don't dance on rudder, i use only small rudder inputs after touch down.

 

[Art-J]

... and that's what most of us here refer to as "dancing" I'd say. Nobody mentioned this vague term means full inputs.

[Mogster]

I take it to mean rapid inputs then returning to centre.

[-0303-]

I never meant "full inputs", I meant rapid small movements. Tapdancing like.

In real life (gliders) full input is a rare (rudder) exception only within the first few seconds (single digits) of the takeoff run.

 

Edited May 4, 2021 by -0303-

[grafspee]

Ok, then, i though about something different then. I was thinking about chaotic constant left and right rudder apply during take off or landing rolls.

This rapid small inputs are only because crap rudder pedals, with very strong centering index and high initial force to over come static friction, this is no way "technique".

It is impossible to not over control plane with my rudder hardware, i have to do it this way. And proper trimmed plane makes it a lot easier, a lot easier.

 

Edited May 4, 2021 by grafspee

[john4pap]

About this "dancing on the pedals".
 
Maybe depending on definition of "dancing". This is not something you do in real life.

I believe this matter is covered extensively in the first essay by Chief Instructor pinned in this forum. Furthermore, what he describes pertaining to "dancing" is consistent with what we see in real life Spitfire takeoff and landing videos from the movement of the rudder. So, I'm not sure what your point is. Perhaps you're referring to something different, but for the sake of clarity it should be noted that what most of us refer to as "dancing on the rudder pedals" is not a "sim habit" but a real thing.



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[-0303-]

I regret causing confusion. I, took for myself only one possible meaning of DCS "dancing": Rapid back and forth medium inputs unrelated to anything except when seeing a trend favoring the opposition direction. In a real plane you'd have difficulty moving it this fast.

 

The idea, maybe mostly my idea, to avoid prolonged inputs in any direction, this was discussed I remember. Prolonged input caused by lack of real world feedbacks that otherwise prevents this.

 

This, ugly and unrealistic tactic kind of worked. But so does doing it more realistically.

 

What works best of all is to find a cloud as reference to keep straight.

 

Edited May 5, 2021 by -0303-

[john4pap]

57 minutes ago, -0303- said:

I regret causing confusion. I, took for myself only one possible meaning of DCS "dancing": Rapid back and forth medium inputs unrelated to anything except when seeing a trend favoring the opposition direction. In a real plane you'd have difficulty moving it this fast.

 

The idea, maybe mostly my idea, to avoid prolonged inputs in any direction, this was discussed I remember. Prolonged input caused by lack of real world feedbacks that otherwise prevents this.

 

This, ugly and unrealistic tactic kind of worked. But so does doing it more realistically.

 

What works best of all is to find a cloud as reference to keep straight.

 

 

 

Ah, I understand. Perhaps these dampers that are being introduced in some sim pedals will make the movement a little more realistic (MFG has released one that I may be getting in the future). But indeed sadly no feedback from the airplane as yet.

Now, I'm no real life pilot, but I think that if one is proactive rather than responding to what the airplane is doing (that is waiting for visual cues in DCS), then the movement is almost inherently closer to real life--no need for abrupt movements. But this is just my perception of how things stand; like I said, I have no real life experience.

[grafspee]

What we need is FFB rudder pedals, sometime i think it is more crucial when flying warbirds than FFB Stick.

 

Edited May 5, 2021 by grafspee

[Emacs]

Oh yes. FFB - in rudder pedals and the stick -that would be something.

Really good FFB that is.

 

I have my few dozen (solo) hours in gliders myself too. Many years (decades, actually) ago. But I still remember vividly how you could very much feel the airflow over the control surfaces.

Yes, during take-off run one knows exactly when rudders and ailerons become effective because they become „live“ in your hand and feet.

And in flight you can feel exactly when you are close to pulling so hard, that the airflow over the control surface is about to depart. And you feel it before it does.

It was easy to tell where a thermal uplift is, because you know from the movement of the stick in your hand if your left wing or right wing got into that thermal.

 

Well, that was some 30 years ago. No VR glasses or 4k video is going to bring that experience back.

 

Anyhow, learning to fly and land the DCS Spit is still a super satisfying experience if you‘re willing to put in the hours and the effort.

And if you‘re willing to accept that you will fail - a lot - before you master it.

Reading all those posts about how twitchy the Spit is and how the nose dances around… After a few hours, I don‘t feel that at all anymore. I think she is more responsive than most WWII planes in DCS.  But in regards to stalls and flipping over when pulling too hard, I think she is much more forgiving than i.e. the Mustang.

The DCS Spit is a real joy to steer around, once one gets used to her (and has an extension on the hotas stick). 

If only I would have the time to practice landings more. Or a flight instructor.

 

In the real-world the learning curve of gliders was hard too. More so, as failing badly will kill or hurt you. You can only dare to fail a little bit every time you go up.

But then again most of the time you have a real instructor with you in the cockpit behind you who wants to have dinner with his wife too (or with your wife if you‘re out of luck). He lets you know exactly what you did wrong, even if you didn‘t notice. Particularly, when you didn‘t notice and were pretty satisfied with your performance yourself. That always seemed to give them the most satisfaction. 

He would lecture me for hours if he felt that I did the flare during touch down a foot (one single foot!) above the perfect altitude for flaring. 

When he said „With todays weather you fly the final at 95 kts!“, it was clear he meant 95 kts. Not 94 kts and not 96 kts. He said 95 kts during final and that was exactly what he demanded.

And on those flights when he wasn‘t in the cockpit behind me, you can be sure, he was right in the back of my head still nagging and bitching at my every move. Rightly so.

 

All those parts are missing from PC flight sim and will be missing for quite some more time.

 

Cheers,

Emacs

Edited May 6, 2021 by Emacs

[ZeroReady]

If you're having issues with pedal stiction then, depending on your pedals, I would recommend a tear down and cleaning, and applying some nyogel to the moving parts. I use the thrustmaster pedals, and TM warthog HOTAS, and I always hated how sticky everything was until I regreased everything with nyogel. It's magic. Everything feels so much better with nyogel.

[Emacs]

16 hours ago, ZeroReady said:

If you're having issues with pedal stiction then, depending on your pedals, I would recommend a tear down and cleaning, and applying some nyogel to the moving parts. I use the thrustmaster pedals, and TM warthog HOTAS, and I always hated how sticky everything was until I regreased everything with nyogel. It's magic. Everything feels so much better with nyogel.

 

I have a Thrustmater setup. Warthog with an 7 inch extension on the stick. Due to the extension that stick moves very easily. The spring is just about strong enough to center it.

Rudders are the TM pendular rudder which allows a lot of personalization. I have set it up pretty loose with very relaxed tension on the springs.

But for me it is not about the force I have to apply. It is about the force the aerodynamics put on the control surfaces and how these forces transmit feedback back to the pilot by changing the tension constantly. Or by moving the stick or rudder actually by their own force.

I remember one or two unexpected sudden gusts of wind, that were close to blowing the stick out of my hand.

 

Thinking about it, „force feedback“ is actually describing it rather well.

 

Too bad none of the high end manufacturers has a product like this in their offerings.

 

> Everything feels so much better with nyogel.

 

 I‘ll try to remember that ! 

 

 

 

On 5/5/2021 at 12:19 PM, grafspee said:

What we need is FFB rudder pedals, sometime i think it is more crucial when flying warbirds than FFB Stick.

 

 

So true !

 

Cheers,

 

Emacs

Edited May 7, 2021 by Emacs

[ZeroReady]

Yeah I have a 20 CM extension for my WH stick as well and it makes everything so much easier. 

[-0303-]

On 5/6/2021 at 10:47 PM, Emacs said:

Oh yes. FFB - in rudder pedals and the stick -that would be something.

Really good FFB that is.

 

I have my few dozen (solo) hours in gliders myself too. Many years (decades, actually) ago. But I still remember vividly how you could very much feel the airflow over the control surfaces.

Force feedbacks pedals. Would love that but ... Given how powerful both legs are compared to a joystick hand these would need to be powerful and very robust. Which equals expensive.

 

Anyway when diving at good speed a powerful experience I recall is how the minutest stick movement translates to instant changes in G forces. Smooth and minute movements or get very uncomfortable.

 

Edited May 8, 2021 by -0303-

[Rosebud47]

To touchdown the Spitfire, breaks input is more important than the rudder input IMO. The landing performance changed completely for me after mapping the breaks on to another switch, which could do small and fast inputs.  I´m using the Thrustmaster F/A-18 Grip and had the breaks usually mapped on to the button for nosewheel steering on most modern jets. After mapping the breaks of the Spitfire on to the small wheel on top of the stick, which is springloaded and flips back, the inputs for the breaks could be made much more sensitive and more frequently, that rudder input is only needed to correct the direction a bit after touching down on the runway.