Andy Ross writes: > > 2. Maintaining a straight heading is hard during the early part of the > > takeoff roll, but the text describes S-curves rather than violent > > spinning as the problem for inexperienced pilots. > > Is that with or without braking being applied? I can confirm that I > execute lots of S curves during takeoff in the DC-3 when using the > brakes method. It only spins violently when you try to correct yaw > divergence with a flapping rudder.
As far as I can tell, that's without braking. Braking during a takeoff roll would be so unusual for typical pilots that stories about flying the DC-3 aimed at a modern audience would be sure to mention it. One of the narratives specifically mentioned just tapping the rudder pedals rather than making large rudder inputs during the early part of the takeoff roll (i.e. at slower speeds) to avoid the s-curves. > Hey, now that's really good information. This would *definitely* > help with directional stability. You can lock the tailwheel by > simply removing the castering="1" bit from the gear definition. > This could be pretty easily made settable at runtime via a > property. I tried that, and it's an improvement, but the tailwheel seems to slide sideways too easily. You can see it most clearly from external view, where applying only a light differential brake causes the tail to rotate sharply. Could there not be enough weight on the wheel? Note that I set castering="0" rather than removing the attribute completely. All the best, David -- David Megginson, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.megginson.com/ _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
