Ilyushin 62B Ventral Undercarriage?

[strake]

Well...probably not but as we were taxying through DME yesterday, I noticed dozens of the above a/c parked with a 2-2.5 metre leg extending from inside the ventral area of the fuselage to the ground. At the end of the leg were two wheels about 0.5metre dia. This "undercarriage" was in addition to the normal nose/wing sets.
I couldn't tell if this system extended from the a/c or if it was shoved in by ground crew but, I did wonder what it was for. The obvious thought is that it stops the a/c from tipping backwards on the stand while loading; maybe because of the substantial rear four engine configuration. That would seem a little worrying from a design point of view however...!
Any thoughts.....?

[fritzi]

Yes, the tail wheel is there to prevent the aircraft from tilting back down onto its bum.

It is retracted and stowed inside the rear part of the aircraft.

Here is a good pic of the tail wheel of the IL-62
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/306097/L/ (Here)

[strake]

Fritzi,
Thanks for such a quick reply.

Do you happen to know at what point the tilting hazard is over Do they retract before taxying, or on take-off etc...?

[Kerosene Kraut]

They do retract the tailwheels before taxying.

The Il-62 is quite tail-heavy. On Takeoff the pilots push the control column (elevator) most forward and rotate by just releasing it to the neutral position. We had a crash in Berlin some years ago (Interflug,SXF around 1989) when the elevator-parking lock engaged by accident close to Vr. The a/c unable to rotate overran the rwy and as the FE had killed all engs it was again limited in braking power. (No reverse anymore).