PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - CAF Dakota crash, Burnet, TX 21-7-18
View Single Post
Old 28th Jul 2018, 18:20
  #77 (permalink)  
Mach E Avelli
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: All at sea
Posts: 2,194
Received 155 Likes on 103 Posts
Absolutely agree with the vid guy about where the training emphasis needs to be. Warbird type ops are generally VFR, so learning to fly an engine out ILS at the expense of ground handling is a woftam.
On such training, another pointless exercise in these (and many other transport aircraft) is the touch and go. The takeoff needs to be from a static or slow roll on to the runway, to get the art of pushing tail up etc happening and ditto - landing needs to be to a slow crawl to get the directional control tecnnique as the tail comes down, brake against elevator, etc.
Further, for training the aircraft needs to be ballasted to a fairly aft c of g. When light and with a forward c of g it is generally easy to get the tail up, and it almost pins itself on the ground during landing. Tail heavy it is a quite different beast, as Bobby G has said.
And Bobby is right about how much they can vary in the way they feel. After such a long life, most DC3s have been bent, broken and rebuilt more than once. In one operation we had two almost identical aircraft with very similar weights and c of g. One had been damaged quite badly at some stage. It was definitely a bit twisted, but flew a full 10 knots faster that its sister ship . To prove this was not an indication error we formated and matched power settings.

Last edited by Mach E Avelli; 28th Jul 2018 at 18:24. Reason: typos
Mach E Avelli is offline