Landing the F4U?

[opus]

Well I found if you're in a hurry to land (like no more gas and a mission is comming into the base), landing gear up is the way to go. You still flip around, but stop a whole lot faster!

[Hap]

ty rtr worked like a charm

[Cobra412]

I'm not sure if I'm doing what you all are saying but here's how I land with all the tail draggers.  

On approach gear down, 1 to 2 notches of flaps and a slight bit of nose down trim.  Bring my rate of decent down to approximately .5 speed approximately 120 or lower.  With my stick held in one specific point for proper nose up attitude use my throttles to keep my rate of decent in check.  By the time it's ready to touch down my stall horn is coming in at a slowly then to a higher hz rate until the plane squats down.  Once I hear the wheels touch I'm immediately off the throttle and quickly increasing toe brakes.  If for any reason the nose starts to swing off I just back off on that sides brake and bring it back on when it corrects itself.

I guess if your not using rudder pedals with brakes it'd be kinda difficult for the last part of it.  Before I got mine I just used the space bar to stop and it seemed to work just fine by itself.  I wanna say with the F4U I had to use them like pulser brakes to keep from ground looping.

[mars01]

Cobra it sounds like you are still 2 pointing your landings.  With the hog especially you want to 3 point the landing getting the tail down the same time the mains hit.  Then you can apply the brakes immediately and steadily

[Cobra412]

Mars I might actually be doing a 2 point but it's hard to tell to be honest.  It actually feels like all three have hit but it's not until I apply brakes that the tail comes back off.  I have a tendency to do that because of vulchers.  I wanna get stopped ASAP and if I break a tail wheel once the tail comes down violently because of loss of forward momentum then so be it.

I figure I'm either gonna be getting shot at or landing on the carrier so thats why I'm hard on the brakes.  I do know I've dinged the prop a few times doing it.  I guess if it meant we took a perk loss or something by how damaged the plane is upon landing I'd be a little more careful.  I'm also not sure if the take off and landings are as hard as they should be either.  I wanna say I read somewhere that if I did what I'm doing now in a real bird I'd be on my nose in a heart beat.

[mars01]

Rrgr that about the hard fast landing.

If your on the carrier and you three point that tail should have hooked.  Unless your really fast.

If you three point really hard you should bounce back into the air, otherwise once you touch down, if you keep that stick back the whole time the tail should stay down.

[Jose Gallegos]

This is a quote from the Diary of a Corsair Pilot :"The original XF4U had the cockpit much further forward than the production model. The Navy originally wanted one .30 cal. and one .50 cal. machine gun firing through the propellor and one .50 cal in each wing. After the first prototype was built they changed the specs to six .50 cal. machine guns in the wings. Placing the six .50 cals in the wings eliminated a fuel tank in each wing, so a fuel tank was added behind the engine and the cockpit was moved aft. This decreased forward visibility dramatically. The bent wing design placed the flaps very close to the ground which made the plane teeter-totter or float just before touchdown. The big prop transferred so much torque back through the airframe that the port (left) wing would stall before the starboard one, causing the plane to fall off to the left. If the wing stalled at more than thirty feet the plane would flip over. It was a tricky airplane to land. Later planes had a spoiler added to the starboard wing which caused it to stall at about the same time as the port wing.

To land a Corsair, the pilot didn't watch the runway ahead as in other aircraft - he couldn't see it. He would watch his instrument panel and keep the horizon in his peripheral vision. At night there is no horizon, so a night landing was always exciting, and this first one must have been incredibly tense after the problem with the landing gear. "

[mars01]

Nice excerpt,

The big prop transferred so much torque back through the airframe that the port (left) wing would stall before the starboard one, causing the plane to fall off to the left. If the wing stalled at more than thirty feet the plane would flip over. It was a tricky airplane to land.

Once all that torque is transfered to the ground and the tail is still in the air the gyroscopic precession causes the wing over.  Once the tail is down the gyroscopic forces are not enough to cause a wing over.

[Seraphim]

Best advice ive heard landin the f4u, is (of course) as slow as possible, but do NOT touch the brakes until under 50mph. Works for me every time.

[Overlag]

i always land on cvs because of this

its the easier option

[Zaphod]

I just use ailerons with differential braking, I land hogs regularly at 180-190 no flaps like this with no problems.  Most all the tail draggers that cause trouble with ground looping can be landed this way.  I land the way your "supposed" to only when I feel like being realistic (letting the plane settle in using throttle to control descent rate and elevators to control speed).

Zaphod.

[MaddogJoe]

from what I've heard, when landing a tail dragger the toughest part is when the tail hits the ground. I've heard pilots at airshows say they try and keep the tail off the ground as long as possible. Once they can no longer keep it there, the plane is slow enough for ground maneuvering with brakes.

To this end, I land my hog at any speed, and once the mains are down I add a touch of foward pressure on the stick and hammer the brakes. The only plane this gives me trouble in is the spits, but who flys those dweeb planes !  

[mars01]

The three-point landing is actually very similar to the stall landing.  Most taildraggers will sit at their three-point attitude just slightly shy of the stall.  When you really get familiar with a particular airplane, you can learn that exact attitude and touchdown so that all three wheels roll on at the same time.  Usually it's just shy of a full stall.  It requires a little finesse to do this nicely.

The wheel landing is actually pretty easy to make once you get the hang of it.  This landing simply requires that you make easy contact with the runway on the main wheels first, with the shallowest rate of descent possible so the downward momentum of the CG is slight.  At the moment of touchdown on the main wheels, almost with a slight anticipation, you apply forward stick/yoke to prevent the downward momentum of the CG from pulling the tail down.  You actually want to raise the tail at that instance, decreasing the angle of attack, maybe even to zero or slightly negative, so you really stick the airplane down onto the runway.  As the airplane slows down, the tail will come down and you end the landing rollout the same as if you had made a stall or three-point landing.

Is either the three-point/stall or wheel landing any better than the other?  This is a good topic of debate among taildragger pilots, but the answer is simply no.  Of course there are exceptions both ways for particular airplanes as specific airplanes have to be approached differently for all kinds of reasons, including how you might land it.  Overall, either type of landing is fine if executed properly.  What really matters either way is that you touchdown straight with no drift/crab.  If you can't get it straight, you must go around and try again, or go find another runway.  The bottom line is that for your typical taildragger you should remain proficient in both types of landings and make whichever one you feel most comfortable with in any given condition as that's going to be the safest type for you.

With all landings, you must keep that stick back when the tailwheel is down on the runway!  Keep it all the way back, without exception.  If making a full-stall landing, you want to work the stick all the way back so that it hits the stop the moment the airplane stalls and touches down, then hold it there until you shut down and get out.  With the three-point landing, you want to do the same if possible, or immediately get it back at the moment of touchdown (it will be almost there if not already).  After making a wheel landing, as soon as you get the tail down, immediately get that stick back and keep it back.  Keep that stick back at all times unless it's tied down!

[MaddogJoe]

well I guess all those guys flying the old wars birds at shows like MAAM in Reading are doing it wrong! Somebody should tell them so they don't crash and destroy the few remaining WWII flyable aircraft !!!

[mars01]

Geee madjoe you still don't get it.

There are two acceptable ways to land a tail wheel.  Not one, the Madjoe only way get over yourself lol.

And in aces high the inexperienced will wingover the f4U 90% of the time when you come in fast during the wheel landing.  A wheel landing is the harder of the two to do.  Hence this thread.  

For those that have a problem ground looping the F4U you should 3 point the landing.  It forces you to get the bird to stall about 1 to 2 feet over the runway thus dropping and sticking without the fear of ground looping.  If you need to get down fast, scream to the field, slip short final get to 100 to 150 mph and plant that tail.  The F4u is one of the easiest planes to slow down so losing all the speed at the end is no problem.  

Since there is no wind in AHI it is not critical to wheelland, after you get the hang of three pointing you can start to perfect your wheel landings.