Agusta AW139

[bandit19]

desert landing

Our FLIR is mounted on the belly with very little clearance, so the crew chief has to visually clear us down. (not fun and you better have EAPS) Hopefully the nose mounted FLIR should do better for you. You will find that the skinny mains sink very easily into the sand but the nose wheel seems to do better with two tires and less weight.

As for the night-sun I would highly recommend that it is brought to a horizontal, or near horizontal position prior to touchdown. I usually switch from the night-sun to the searchlight prior to being enveloped in sand because the backscatter from the night-sun can be blinding under some conditions. (you also get a secondary confirmation that the gear is down because of the big nose wheel shadow)

Anyway, when you get bored, rotate it to the full down position just to show yourself how little room you have for obstruction clearance even on an improved surface.

(also, if you are going to play in the sand, you may want to clean out the bleed air filters if you notice an engine(s) running at a higher temp then usual and don’t forget to flush the EAPS during washes they load up pretty fast)