Landing gears to strong

[drewpee]

It used to be almost imposable to take off or land in a field in IL2. Most WW2 AC were designed to take off from grass fields so I guess undercarriages were pretty strong. I don't know but maybe they were under modeled in IL2 but we were all just used to it that way. I've seen plenty of film of AC bouncing hard on landing.

[lion737]

Originally Posted by drewpee

It used to be almost imposable to take off or land in a field in IL2.

The FM of IL2 was just not accurate enough to simulate the landing more real. But I think they did what was possible.

Originally Posted by drewpee

Most WW2 AC were designed to take off from grass fields so I guess undercarriages were pretty strong.

Luftwaffe pilots were NOT allowed to land with gear extended on "unapproved" fields. That means, when they had to do an emergency landing ("Außenlandung" - outside aerodrome) , they had to do it with gear up ! (and engine off).
The reason: It was much to easy to go nose over. The plane and often the pilot as well would have been lost. After landing on the undercarriage (with engine shut) the repair was quite easy and the pilot survived often without injury.

Originally Posted by drewpee

I've seen plenty of film of AC bouncing hard on landing.

I am sure you did see no single film, where real WW2 planes did land on unapproved grass fields. They were bouncing on good prepared runways !

And this is perhaps the reason, why landings are not modelled more real. If 95 percent of the gamers would crash even on the airports, that would be somehow frustrating and not good for selling the game. In "Rise of Flight" the interaction with the ground is modelled much more accurate. But this is a "niche sim" with much smaller selling numbers. Most of the online gamers are RL pilots or PC sim enthusiasts with several hundred hours of training. And they often still damage their plane on landing.

[scissorss]

I was also testing the strength of the tiger moth's landing gear earlier today. It is tough as nails apparently! I tried scraping it off on hills, slamming it HARD into the ground repeatedly, tearing it off via a farmhouse.. nothing seemed to work! Was fun trying though, and could see the wheel suspension in action.

[palvas]

During my last "landing" i lost a tyre and after i stopped,the left leg of the gear landing slowly collapsed on itself.Wonderful effect

[JG1_Luckystrike]

Landing grear is in any case a bit to0 strong.

[Flying Pencil]

Originally Posted by lion737

Luftwaffe pilots were NOT allowed to land with gear extended on "unapproved" fields. That means, when they had to do an emergency landing ("Außenlandung" - outside aerodrome) , they had to do it with gear up ! (and engine off).
The reason: It was much to easy to go nose over. The plane and often the pilot as well would have been lost. After landing on the undercarriage (with engine shut) the repair was quite easy and the pilot survived often without injury.

The 109 had a notorious problem of snapped legs.
The strut was not only small, but it was at an angle, so it had a lot of side loads, and snaps.

Spitfire I think suffered snaps, but the Hurricane was solid.

Off top of my head, it is rarely mentioned in books.

the real issue seems to be within the shock absorbers IMHO. In a "patched" version of IL-2 I have the reworked FM for the BF109 which behaves properly, and trust me, the plane bounces around and torques on the landing gears like it's supposed to! Apparently the reason is a mistake in the FM coding, or so the guy explained me some time ago in " a certain other forum"

Let's hope they fix this.

Landing on a grassy field is VERY dangerous business, cos you never know what the ground is actually like (soft, bumpy, ditches etc..), that's why you should ALWAYS go for a wheels up landing outside a landing strip (unless you're using a road).

Tiger Moths landing gears are VERY rugged, in order to break one you will probably have to break the joints on the fuselage first!

Having said this, I've seen videos with Hurricanes literally bouncing off the ground with the gears down, that's definitely overmodelled..

[b101uk]

Just be aware that lots of UK grass airstrips during ww2 were not just grass, they had Irving grid mating all over them to help make them more all weather yet with grass still growing threw which helped hide them from aerial photos, also they could be laid down quite quickly yet be functional and lots of grass fields were done as auxiliary airfields and were never used especially in the midlands in 1939/40.

A good many of the old ww2 era grass airfields even today if you dug down a few inches you would find ww2 Irving grid mating which I can tell you now from personal experience are a pain to revert to arable use even though it can be quite lucrative in scrap steel.

[drewpee]

Originally Posted by b101uk

Just be aware that lots of UK grass airstrips during ww2 were not just grass, they had Irving grid mating all over them to help make them more all weather yet with grass still growing threw which helped hide them from aerial photos, also they could be laid down quite quickly yet be functional and lots of grass fields were done as auxiliary airfields and were never used especially in the midlands in 1939/40.

A good many of the old ww2 era grass airfields even today if you dug down a few inches you would find ww2 Irving grid mating which I can tell you now from personal experience are a pain to revert to arable use even though it can be quite lucrative in scrap steel.

Very interesting,thanks for the info.

[drewpee]