OT - BF109's

The gear wasn't fragile as such. The geometry of it made for tricky handling on the ground. Obviously narrow track causing instability, but perhaps more importantly the pronounced 'negative camber' - get a swing on take-off and landing and the plane would ride up on the 'outside' wheel and bicycle around into a ground loop with plenty of resulting damage. Having said that I believe that the Spit didn't take any prisoners on the ground, with more lost to take-off, landing and training accidents than to the enemy - although I've never been able to get any sort of confirmation on that fact.

Julian.

Remember that both were also tried in carrier-based versions, if handling on grass wasn't hard enough...

Grass strips must make things interesting, too. I wonder what typical tyre pressure was? They always look like they run at quite low pressure, but then I suppose they are supporting quite a lot of weight.

I've heard that too, but I'm not sure where. Supposedly they were a total sod to land due to the high nose angle and hence extremely poor visibility, and it took a lot of practice to get them down and for them to stay down without just bouncing off down the runway.

cheers

Jules

Actually, grass strips in times of old were just a big round(ish) field, so take-off and landing was always done into wind - that makes life very easy. It was only the arrival of bombers with a nosewheel (like the Liberator) that made hard runways a necessity. Cross winds on hard runways are the most tricky conditions for tailwheel aircraft.

Yes, they flew a curved final approach to land so that the runway remained visible to the pilot until the last few seconds of the approach. A standard straight approach made the runway disappear beneath the nose..... Not ideal! T

Julian.

In one of the other 109 YouTube clips, the pilot makes a bouncy landing & you can see the gear flexing.

Mind you. the undercarriage on the TSR2 used to do some interesting things!

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

I guess. But as I'm sure you realise, weigh is the enemy of aircraft designers and materials used in construction by necessity have to be as light as possible and ''work'' for a living. So therefore it's not 5 times as strong as needed like the Forth road bridge. Have you ever sat by an over-wing seat on something like a 777 or 340? The flexing of the wing and rocking of the engines is something else in turbulence. Thankfully they don't seem to snap off too often :-)

IIRC, watching some programme featuring Douglas Bader several years ago, the Me109 pilot's biggest concern was ripping off the tailplane during high G maneuvers. It seems one or two had met their maker as a consequence of this and word spreads fast. No such structural problem was encountered by the Hurricane or Spit. (again to the best of my knowledge)

Julian.

Kim,

That video looked like Duxford, a nice pair of Gustav's, I think Black 6 the sandy coloured crashed at duxford a while back, one of my volunteering tasks there was occasionally putting pressure into the tyres of the Static exhibits, I cant remember the pressures but I know they were high. One Sunday we were given the Nitrogen trolley and asked to pump up all the tyres in one of the hangers, all was well until we connected to the main landing gear of the Lightning, jet, the pressure on the gas bottle increased so we reported this to our crew chief who quickly apologised and said he had forgotten to tell us not to do that aircraft as its tyre pressures were very high.

Martin P

In article , campingstoveman scribeth thus

JOOI what sort of pressure?..

And why Nitrogen and not just plain olde Air?..

Cheers...

All aircraft tyres (above the size of puddle jumper aircraft) are inflated with nitrogen because it's an inert gas. Air contains oxygen - couple that with rubber and heat generated by airliner's carbon brake units and there's the chance of an explosion.

I think also that a nitrogen bottle trolley is very convenient. Typical airliner tyre pressures hover around 200-230psi, that's beyond the reach of normal air compressors.

Julian.