homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Falcon 4.0 Landing on Short Runways

Thats all good unless your HUD is out. I like to shoot landings with no HUD. Makes you a better Viper pilot!

Well I'd say one degree is important. At 15 deg pitch you scrape the tail. At 14 you don't.

Anyway, the bracket is indeed 11 at the top, 15 at the bottom and 13 at the middle, forget about eyeballing stuff. As for flaring, in all the RL F-16 vids I've seen, they flare. It's the F-18 pilots who usually don't flare. Landing on exactly the right spot or a few meters later is not important, not breaking the plane is. I remember a RL Viper driver who had said (coming to the F-16 from F-4s) that landing the Viper feels like trying to land on watermelons in comparison.

Finally, when you flare you change your pitch and consequently your flight path (rate of descent), not your AOA! As long as you do it right at least.

I'm not a Viper driver, nor do I have experience in a Viper sim so I can't talk to specifics of the jet, but I can talk flying and I think there is a lot of misinformation going around so I'll try to clarify some things about FLYING (note: NOT Viper details).

I'm not trying to single anybody out, but I'm going to use quotes from the latest post to explain. Please do not be offended Kosmo.



This is true. If you pitch up to a certain degree on any airplane, you will tail strike. However, I think some people are getting confused about pitch angle and AOA. They are NOT the same thing. Pitch is the angle of the aircraft with respect to the horizon. AOA is the angle between the chord line of the aircraft and the RELATIVE wind. You can have 15+ units AOA in a Viper and not strike the tail as long as the nose isn't pitched up too far.



This is also true. AF pilots flare, carrier based Naval Aviators don't. They fly AOA approaches all the way down, meaning they fly the glideslope and AOA all the way to touch down. Whoever said that AF pilots land and NA's "squat to pee" has it backwards. It is the other way around. Someone also mentioned pitching for ROD and power for airspeed. That must be an AF thing too because the Navy does it exactly opposite: Pitch for speed, Power for ROD. I know, I know this is a Falcon thread and I am not a Falcon driver. I just couldn't resist throwing a plug for Naval Aviation in there.



This is only partially true. Flaring changes your pitch and ROD, but it changes your AOA too because it's changing the angle between the chord line and the RELATIVE wind. The flare slows the aircraft down, which changes the velocity of the relative wind. Couple that with the increased pitch and you will definitely change the AOA. That is the entire reason why you don't want to flare too high, too much, or for too long; you can stall. So, when does an aircraft stall? When it exceeds its critical AOA!

Final note to everyone: PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE do not be offended. I'm not trying to start a pissing contest, flame anybody, or be disrespectful. I am simply trying to clarify some of the info that is being passed along in this thread. If you think I am incorrect, that's fine. Prove me wrong and I will gladly admit it, but PLEASE do not get defensive and try to prove you are "more correct" because "So-and-so said so".

Well, considering that the F/A-18 was meant to take the abuse of a non-flaring carrier landing, it's not surprising

Nah, the area of reverse command works for Air Force pilots and Navy aviators both. I'm sure that Air Force pilots, too, use throttle to control the sink rate and pitch for airspeed. It works the same in Falcon. Throttle way down and watch your FPM drop like a stone. Pull the nose up to keep the FPM where it was, and there you go�same rate of descent as before, a much higher AOA, and much lower airspeed. Then pitch down, watch your airspeed increase, watch your AOA decrease, watch the FPM more or less stay where it was.

I think it's a very good excercise to take the Basic Handling TE and just practice some slow flight. Dirty your jet up as much as possible (i.e., gear, boards) and slow down to 120-140 knots. See what your FPM does when you throttle up and down and change pitch. With some experience it all becomes second nature. I think it's this experience that makes the veterans go, "Not a big deal, just stay on the staple and plunk 'er down!", not recognizing that this slow flight behavior doesn't at all feel natural to the newbies.

When you're on the ground, your pitch IS your AoA...More than 15 degrees pitch while aerobraking in the Viper and you WILL strike the tail.

As soon as I read "area of reverse command" I was confident that you understand what's going on. I thought the AF probably did things similar in this regard. I agree with you 100%, basic handling of the aircraft is a great way to demo how pitch and power (and trim) work in different configurations and phases of flight.



No, it isn't! Pitch is pitch, AOA is AOA. They CAN be the same "number" in certain circumstances, but just because you are on the ground does not mean your AOA is matching your pitch angle.

Here's a simple "HUD Cripple" explination. Keep in mind that this isn't "exactly how AOA works", but I think it will provide a good visual depiction of the difference. Imagine the HUD with the pitch ladder, flight path marker (or whatever it's called in the Viper community), and the "W" or some other such fixed nose reference (Hornets have a "W" when the gear is down). Ok, wherever the "W" is in reference to the horizon on the pitch ladder, that is your pitch angle. Period. No AOA indexer or indicator needed. You can also read it off of your attitude indicator in the cockpit, whatever it reads (as long as it's working properly) is your pitch angle. Now, look at your flight path marker. The location of the flight path marker in reference to the "W" is "basically like" your AOA. There is usually an AOA indicator to give you a numeric number of units of AOA, and an AOA indexer to tell you if you are "on speed" (based on AOA value) or not in the current configuration.

So, let's say we are on an AOA approach to land in our Viper after waxing some bad guys. The attitude indicator (or "W" or whatever) shows 10 degrees up and power is tweaked in to maintain a steady 600fpm rate of descent on the glide slope. For the sake of this discussion, let's say "on speed" AOA is 16 units (I know that's not what it is in real life, just go with it for now). The AOA indexer shows we are on speed and we continue all the way to touchdown, no flare and we roll out using aerobraking. Did we tail strike? The answer is NO! Our pitch angle was 10 degrees the entire time!

Ok, so let's say we flare, bring the nose up to 14 degrees, arrest the descent rate, and bleed off some speed. As the speed bleeds off, we get up to 19 units AOA. Tail stirke? Nope! Why? Because AOA is not the limiting factor for a tail strike, pitch attitude is! Shoot, you could land with 3 degrees nose up and 24 units AOA without striking the tail...well, not initially striking the tail. It would probably strike shortly afterwards because your descent rate would be enormous and it would most likely be considered a "crash", but hopefully it makes the point.

Does that help clear anything up for anyone?

Evidently my point was missed.

If you are on the ground, your FPM is where? 0 degrees, level.

Therefore if your guncross is 15 degrees, then your AoA is 15, which happens to also be your pitch angle.

Life is so much easier when you can fly a plane by feel and have no freaking clue about aerodynamics :P

Flamedog no offense taken, it seems I wasn't clear enough in what I said, your points are of course correct:



I know, that's why I said "pitch". I meant that 1 degree can make a difference in general, not specifically for AOA.



That's why I said "if you do it right", normally I will add some power when flaring to maintain my speed, otherwise if you don't time the flare exactly right, as you say your ROD will significantly increase due to the increased AOA and consequent speed reduction and you will have a pretty firm touchdown.

That is only true if the CHORD LINE of the aircraft is at the exact same angle as the X-axis (and there are no updrafts or downdrafts, but those aren't normal on deck). If this is true for the Viper, then yes AOA and pitch will be exactly the same in your scenario. I didn't miss your point. Regardless, if you are watching AOA on landing rollout, I would say you're looking at the wrong thing. I would argue that AOA on rollout doesn't matter if you aren't planning on getting airborne.

Kosmo, thanks for being understanding. I was only using your post to clarify some things and wasn't trying to say you were wrong about everything. I know you were saying pitch angle, but there were other people that I think weren't understanding pitch vs AOA so that was more for them, not you. As far as adding power in the flare to maintain AOA, I'm not sure that's "normal", but if it works for you great! Just keep in mind it is going to increase your landing distance because you are going to float longer with a higher speed so it partially defeats the purpose of the flare (all it would be doing is arrest your ROD).

Here's a question:

How is it possible for the gun cross (i.e.) cannon itself be x degrees higher than the nose of the plane? If the gun is positioned in-line with the fuselage, then it has the same angle as the rest of the plane, thus when the plane is sitting on the ground the gun cross should be at 0 degrees, parallel with the ground--but it's not. And if you were to take a side-view picture of an F-16 and draw a straight line through the bulge that houses the cannon, the line would also be parallel to the ground. So, how is it possible for the gun to be angled up at x degrees when the plane is at 0 degrees?

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Have a look at a P-51 on the ground. I think most aircraft has more or less of a positive pitch with weight on wheels. .

They use special bullets and the cannon actually whips around like Angelea Jolie in the movies to curve the bullets up.

The P-51 is a taildragger....by design it's nose will be angled up when on the ground.

What I'm saying is that maybe the main gear of the viper is lower than the nosewheel.
Though I could be wrong.