homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Battle of Britain + Battle of Britain II Finally....

I wish I had taildragger notes to dig out, Benny! Alas, I have only spent time in a tricycle Cessna, and not much at that.

It's obvious this effort is a labor of love, and even if there were a dozen such "open source" projects to choose from, I'd still say it's well-chosen. A project as ambitious as BOB really deserves to be "finished". Ironically, Rowan's folding may well make it more likely to become "finished" than any other sim in history.

Musk !
For some reason tail-draggers seem to be a "handful". Right after learning to fly i let myself get "lured" into converting to a fancy new Piper Colt with nosewheel !. I can tell you when i returned (after 10 hrs) to my "old" tailwheel type (KZ-3) i was in trouble
Somehow the nose-wheel trainers are "too nice" compared to the T/W ones
Happy Landings
Benny

It's very easy to ground-loop from what I hear, and I could see it being pretty easy to pickup "bad" habits if one spent some time in an nosewheel aircraft.

On the other hand, I once performed a soft-field takeoff from a real sod strip, and it became vividly very clear to me why taildraggers reigned supreme until paved airstrips began turning up all over the place. Between bumping along the grass with the yoke in your lap and the reflexes required to lower the nose just enough to stay in ground effect but not hit the ground, I was pretty unnerved. It seems somehow ironic that today's modern aircraft have to push the envelope to do something the early planes could do by design.

But back to BOB...

I remember back when I first got hold of the BOB demo (the original, not the BDG, I think), landing at some airfield and taxiing around a bit. I recall noting how quickly I could swing the tail about, and thinking this sim must actually model the ground-handling of a taildragger somewhat accurately. It was just like I imagined it would be--sluggish at first, but then picking up very quickly to be able to almost turn in place.

I haven't noticed this behavior since then though. Has anyone else noticed it before? Is there some tailwheel lock I've missed, or did I hallucinate the whole thing? I suppose I could dig the demo up and give it another whirl.

Hi' Musk !
Tail-wheel lock was(is) very individual to each type. My "basic" type (KZ-3 /2 seat) didn't have one, were it's big Brother (KZ-7/ a fourseater) had one you activated by pulling the stick all the way back, "After" rolling straight It got deactivated once you started kicking the rudder hard ( yes i did a ground-loop or two , mind you it was landing in cross-wind on wet grass, a pain on T/W )
Happy Landings
Benny

I once read an interesting article about the Me 109 of the Messerschmidt Stiftung, that still flew a few years ago. BTW, does anyone know whether it still does?

Anyway, they had a policy to always use grass. If there was a concrete runway, they would just use the grass beside it.

Hi' Osram !!
Years ago MBB operated a re-engined (Daimler Benz) Spanish "Gustav". It crashed during Take-off from Neuberg/Zell on 3. june 1983.
I think there is another re-build Gustav flying (to G-10 standard) in Germany today.
Most big piston-engined types were intended to be operated from grass fields , you could allway's take-off and land into the wind. Mind you wet grass is as slippy as ice
Happy Landings
Benny