Landing the Mosquito?
 

Hello

I'm having a problem landing the Mosquito.

Everytime I get near to the ground, i.e. within 500ft one of the wings dips and I end up ploughing into the ground.

I read on wikipedia this is a peculiarity of the plane and it catches out novices (which I am I guess, despite being just about able to land Hurricanes and F4U Corsairs) but it didn't say how to overcome it.

Please could someone offer up some tips on how to land the Mosquito properly?

Thanks in advance.

Never found the Mossie particularly difficult to land.

If the wing is dipping then it means you reached the stall speed and one of the wings stalled before the other one.

Watch the speed on landing and aim to have the last few kilometers of speed above the stall speed drop off as you are wheels down. Full landing flaps, throttle back to 20-30%, let the speed bleed gradually.

Land it at a higher speed.

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.

I tend to land WWII fighter aircraft in a much steeper descent then say, a Cessna 172 or the like. After looking over the airfield to determine where I would like to land (some fields are just that, fields, and you can land anywhere inside the base area) and position myself on the downwind leg. My pattern is short and steep, allowing me to have throttle to zero for the most part until I drop gear and a notch of flaps on base, then get my power up to around 30% and another notch of flaps on final. By then I am just 30 seconds or so from 'crossing the fence' and can lower full landing flaps and touch down.

http://www.zenoswarbirdvideos.com/Im...oFB6Manual.pdf

There is a section on stalling (pg33).

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 :)

Simple trick to land at just over stall without rolling over.

Don't use ailerons to keep yourself level below 210kph. Use the rudder, which is what you would do IRL. If a wing starts to drop, rudder away from it just a bit.

What goes on is when a wing is close to stall with no side-stick, you push the stick to the side to get one wing to lift and the outer wing on that side will get a higher Angle Of Attack that might take it right into stall, force it to drop and go back at the same time which puts the plane into slip and stall at the same time which is the formula for spin.

Ruddering away from the dropping wing makes that wing move just a bit faster. Don't just watch The Ball because it's too slow. Watch the wings and the horizon.

I told a pilot friend about sidestick on takeoff and landing in EAW and he told me that would get me killed IRL. In IL2 that practice doesn't work.

Any time you're slow, sidestick is a good way to get in a spin.

OK I've tried putting into practice some of what you guys have said and I still can't get the Mosquito to land.

Here's a short vid of what I'm doing and what's happening, starts in the cockpit, then there's an outside view of it all.

Map is the Korean war map (the runway west of Seoul is nice and visible).

Vid -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvWsD-Dn52E


Basically I seem to get to about 100ft and the plane just drops out of the sky and crashes!! I appear to be descending far too quickly. The plane is very unresponsive at this point however, as soon as I slow down it becomes rather unresponsive and keeping it at any sort of level at around 120mph so I'm not dropping like a brick is almost impossible?!



So what am I doing wrong?


I would try coming in from further away at 1000-2000ft but I'm afraid of ending up too short and not reaching the runway!

I would also try trimming the plane but my trim controls are limited to either the hat switch on my flight stick (Thrustmaster T Flight Hotas X), the keys on my keyboard numerical keypad or my mouse wheel - and none of those are ideal as by the time I've got the plane trimmed to any decent fashion I've spent 5 minutes doing so due to constantly having to correct the trim up or down and then conditions change so I have re-trim!!

Still too slow, and losing altitude too fast. You're basically falling out of the sky, not gliding in. Even if the ground was 20 feet higher and you touched it before your wing dipped, you would still likely break your gear on impact.

Your speed at touchdown was just over 160km/h; I land single-engine fighters at about 170-180. It can be done even at 200 km/h, though you will bounce.

Also, your angle is too steep; if you can see the runway as clearly in front and above your nose as in that video, then you're coming in too steep unless you drop more flaps/add some throttle and pull the nose up at the last second.

You're dropping your gear and flaps way too late, not allowing yourself enough time to trim the aircraft for landing, and are consequently rushing things on final.

By the time you turn on final everything should already be down, except for the last bit of flaps. On final you should only be lining up on the glideslope and establishing descent speed until touchdown, not trying to hurry up and drop everything in a mad rush before you land.

As a basic, general rule:
Downwind leg - drop gear and first increment of flaps.
Base leg - drop second increment flaps.
Final - Trim and adjust throttle for the glideslope (imaginary or otherwise) until touchdown.

Throughout, you're managing your speed and descent rate.

When established on final, you control your altitude/descent rate with throttle, and control your speed with the elevator.

Cut throttle as you pass the runway threshold, and - this is key - hold the aircraft just off the surface and let it settle itself onto the runway just before stall. When touching down, you're actually trying to just keep the aircraft from landing, not make it land. It sounds counter-intuitive, but that is the smoothest way to land an aircraft and comes naturally after a bit of practice.

Good luck!

Approach is too far towards the end of the runway. Sink rate too high. And because of both then the speed drops beyond stall-kaboom
But that would be easier to correct - by slowly applying throttle -or even gradually to full throttle and go around.
Try another airfield, e. g. Iasi map, Husi airfiled, that one is on a hill and allows approaches where you can even go below airfield altitude.
For landing I would overtrim elevator to nose high -I find it helps flaring the plane, rudder trim for some planes in the direction you will have to push the rudder, but most times no trim.

Generally I would say a landing a plane with an approach that is too fast, but not too high is much easier to make, than one too high but correct speed. For starters focus on a point about 100m in front of the runway, and fly your plane there with some more speed than landing would need.
At that point, with only a little altitude under your nose, flare the plane, e. g. drop the sink speed to almost none -it can help to apply a few RPM, but slowly, else torque does you in. Now you will glide nearly parallel to the runway, and will slow down gradually, thus your plane will start to descend and almost lands itself by then.

What can help is intentional belly landings, where you approach is as low as possible - fly low, very low at maybe double the speed you would usually use for landing, and then gradually decrease speed, extend flaps, but always keep your plane very low -keeps the sink rate low, and thats crucial. Belly landings with too great sink rates end in desaster, but you can usually touchdown at 250kph+ and walk away.

Thanks guys I'll have another go tonight.

In the meantime are there any tutorials like the carrier landing tutorials by Zeus-cat, I found those immensely helpful and they've resulted in 1-2 out of 3 carrier landings (sometimes multiple landings in a row) being successful whereas before I had to rely on the autopilot to land on a carrier.

Something like those tutorial missions but for airfield/airstrip landings would be immensely helpful.

Can't help you with tutorials. But for any plane, take it to some altitude where you don't immediately crash and check the stall speed there. Drop flaps and gear as you would on a landing, nose up so that you maintain altitude and look at the speed when a wing or the nose drops. Add 30 km/h to that speed, and use it as a landing speed. Fly level at some altitude in the landing configuration at that speed so you get a feel for the control characteristics at that speed, and so that you know what throttle settings you need to maintain altitude. For the Mosquito at 50% fuel, try around 180 km/h with around 50% power. Should be slow enough for a decent landing, and fast enough for decent control.

Hmm, I make 180kmh 111mph, which is slower than I tried last night, and about what I was trying when I first opened this thread.

I'll give what you've said a go though JtD.

Really want to be able to land this plane (and it'll probably help me with any other plane on land) as I'm currently doing the 633 Squadron addon campaign and I'm only on mission 2. I must have landed it on mission 1 though, but I think I probably belly flopped it and fluked a survival or dug the nose or something else in but still managed to survive...

With planes that I can use manual prop pitch, I set it at 100% rpm and generally I can run at very low speed with 30% to 35% power. With P-40B it's about 33% right near stall which lets me run a bit faster while slowly descending.
Low power and high rpm has a kind of braking effect on higher speed, you can find a power setting and buzz along then lower yourself by backing off the power just a bit. But get real close to ground over a landing strip in IL2 and you get ground effect modeled (IL2 ground effect is/was only over landing strips) where you'd better be cutting power to land.

For fast speed landings, don't give it much flaps or you'll bounce badly.

Generally I like to touch down at the speed I took off or slightly less just to minimize the hops.

Once I'm down either way, the flaps come up to cut lift and help me stay landed. When I slow down more, 160-170kph or less, I can drop them for the drag.

Going by your video, it looks like you were a bit too high and hot, and extended gear/flaps a bit too late. I've spent the last year or so showing some friends how to play, and the #1 cause of landing crashes I noticed was that they weren't giving themselves enough time/distance to set up a landing. I like to have everything ready (runway lined up, flaps down, gear out, trimmed etc) a good 30 secs before I expect to touch the runway, and only make minor corrections in those 30 seconds.

I threw together a little video of me putting the Mosquito down - I'm sure there's plenty of mistakes in there somewhere that a more regular Mossie flyer will correct me on, but the key is to be ready to land long before you do (for any plane really). I was also a little too twitchy on the throttle and touched down sooner than I expected, because I've been flying the P-36 a lot lately and wasn't used to the high landing speed and sitting so far above the ground.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmdiRMxpMCc

I also noticed that it's a lot easier if you have the gunsight up to give you a reference as to where your nose is pointed. Otherwise you tend to guesstimate a lot.

Thanks I'll have a few watches of that video and make some notes.

BTW how do you turn on the gunsight in the Mosquito, on my copy it's turned off, and I notice the guns are aimed to a point just left of the gunsight, kind of in the middle between the edge of the gunsight glass/plastic bit and the edge of the cockpit window on that side? (I'm running the latest DBW and TFM on patch 4.10.1m if that makes any difference)

All the other planes I fly the gunsight is on by default and the guns are zeroed in the middle of the gunsight (to 500m distance).

Press Shift+F1. But I'd recommend to use the not gunsight view, and raise your point of view for the best possible view over the nose (6DoF, you can use mouse). Keep some small part of the reflection in the sight, for reference, but don't have it centred there.

Check attached screens for different viewpoint, grab0007 is gunsight centred. It offers the worst view over the nose. grab0006 is possibly the easiest for landing, and grab0008 offers the best view. (Yes, I use a vertical monitor. I tend to read a lot and in game I get a good view at the instruments all the time.)

Interesting view you have there.

I can't replicate it. I play on a landscape 21" widescreen LG TV and I set my FOV to 110% as that seems the most appropriate for me in most planes.

Plus in the Mosquito when I press Shift+F1 it zooms in and centres for the gunsight, but I can zoom out again to 110%. That's very odd because in other planes (mostly single prop fighters) the aiming reticule is displayed by default.

I also can't seem to raise the point of view up, I tried pressing S which I've assigned to raising the seat but that does nothing - any info on how to raise the view up in the Mosquito?

You don't raise the seat to get what I got in my pictures, you move the point of view. This can be done through track IR, or, as in my case, by assigning controls and move the viewpoint with the mouse. I use my mouse scroll wheel to raise my head and my right click+mouse movement to move around.

I do occasionally use FacetrackNOIR which acts like TrackIR (even uses a dummy TrackIR.exe) so I know what you mean about using that to do it, but I find it too twitchy and I can't seem to dial it in so that it doesn't "twitch" when I'm not actually moving my head. It's OK but nowhere near as good as I've seen Freetrack or TrackIR and quite often just ends up being a pain in the proverbial

But excuse me for being a bit hard of thinking - where in the controls menu would I set the controls that you describe?

At the very bottom of the Controls menu. I use a mouse setup similar to what JtD describes, it works quite well.

You don't need TrackIR for landing. You need it for locating the airport. Once located, and once you're roughly lined up, switch to wide view and make landing happen. Start in an altitude of 500 or 600 meters, flaps down, gear down, speed not exceeding 240 kph, distance to the airfield about 1 minute. Watch your climb/sink indicator. It should be between 2 and 3 feet per second on your approach (maintaining a speed of about 200 kph), then when you're 'over the fence' and in an altitude of 30 to 50 meters, level out, loosing some speed (down to 170 or 160 kph) and reducing your sink rate to between 1 and 0 feet per second (the less, the better for a smooth landing).

Erm, OK, I still can't find it.

All I can see towards the end of the list of controls that adjust the view is the set of Look controls under Snap View and the set of Pan View controls below those.

And I've had a play with Look Up and Pan View Up and they don't work to raise the view up, Look Up doesn't even work unless I press F9 and then it does the same as Pan View Up which rotates the view upwards, rather than moving it straight up as though you were raising your head.

:confused::confused::confused:

EDIT - I've just read this - http://simhq.net/downloads/air_comba...1_Guide_RC.pdf

It says "Raise with mouse is achieved with the mouse wheel and Activate Mouse Move Mode button pressed" and says this is set under Head Movement, but when I go to look at my controls I have no section marked Head Movement?!

That looks like the readme for v4.11m and I'm getting the feeling that because I run 4.10.1m I'm SoL on that feature. Shame, that probably would have helped, but DBW/TFM wouldn't work for me in 4.11...


Thanks I'll take your advice on-board. I don't have TrackIR though, I can't afford it, nor do I like the idea of wearing a silly hat/headband, that's why I went with a PS3 Eye cam and FacetrackNoIR.

But as I said FacetrackNoIR isn't all that great for me so far, so I just stick to using the Pan View left/right controls that I've mapped to the d-pad style thumbstick on my flight stick.

Are you patched up all the way to 4.12.1?

No.

I run Dark Blue World mod and The Full Monty Mod and some other smaller mods, and none worked for me in 4.12.1 when I tried updating to 4.12.1 - it kept crashing whilst loading. Apparently that's expected behaviour because patches post 4.10.1m aren't all that mod friendly.

Hence the reason I'm still using 4.10.1m. I might make a 2nd install, clean and patched up to 4.12.1 and do an experiment by setting the relevant keys in that version, then copying them from the 4.12.1 settings file to my 4.10.1m settings file and copy the 4.12.1 .exe over to my modded 4.10.1m install and see if it works still and gives me the 6dof head movement function.

No biggie though, I'll get there eventually, just have to read what you guys have said some more, watch the video posted a few times, make notes and practice some more.

Hmm yeah, didn't work. Didn't think it would either.

But what I didn't realise is that the DBW/TFM mods come with a solution available already, this - http://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php?topic=7163.0

I was wondering what that was when I was installing the mods, so just now I installed the "normal mouse" version.

Works a treat as well, now all I have to do is hold down the left mouse button and move the view up and/or the right mouse button to move the view forward/back.

Slight problem though in that I have my rudder trim set to my mouse buttons, will have to unbind them. :rolleyes:

This is my usual 110% FOV view -

http://imageshack.us/a/img690/826/lhh6.jpg


This is how it looks now I can raise the view up -

http://imageshack.us/a/img19/6586/b7yc.jpg



Hopefully that will help a little with landings.

Sorry about the size of the pics.



@KG26_Alpha - cool video. :cool:8-)8)

1/fly straight and level at 2000ft, reduce power and drop gear/flaps until stall, note speed at this time.

2/fly your approach at 1.3 stall speed, not too steep, not too shallow so you can see runway

3/keep speed, no reducing speed on short final

4/start the flare according to your descent path, the more shallow the path, the lower for flare. Keep power settings during flare, drop the throttle AFTER wheels touch ground.

5/When you're comfy with landing this way, try reducing power DURING the flare, for shorter landings.

Hey all sorry for the threadmancy but I thought I should report back on my progress with the Mosquito...

Just been practising, after some time away from IL2 and wow! What a difference a good-ish stick like the Saitek X45 and knowing how to trim a plane makes!

I just did 3 landings in a row with the Mosquito, although I overshot the end of the runway but I landed it.

I think the majority of my problems with the Mosquito last year were due to a poor stick, i.e. the Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X.

Thank you to everyone who gave me advice.