A lose sortiment of Pe-2 tips&tricks

October 23, 2016

I´m starting a bit of a series... no spectactular news, but just some things to remember if you want to have fun with the Peshka.

It starts with the typical: "Oh, my control surfaces have left me... what am I going to do now?!?"-question, which kind of translates to "what is an emergency, and what is not?"

In a flightsim, you can take it easy and a lot of things are not dramatic emergencies, but rather fun situations. Let´s assume we´ve lost all controlsurfaces but half an elevator:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1Z_2hQ-KgA

so, to recap: don´t panik, any peshka with half an elevator and two running engines is still flyable and perfectly controlable. Flying is decision making, and the more you have the situation classified in categories with pre-determined sets of options, the faster you will get to decisions. The only real emergencies that force you to consider another landing area or an bailout are those 5:

a) loss of all Elevator -> Required Action: Bailout

b) Loss of a full Wing -> Required Action: Bailout

c) Engine Loss -> Get aircraft as clean as possible (shut dead engine radiator flaps, set it´s prop pitch to 0%) and head to nearest friendly airfield.

d) Fire -> Verify type of fire: Engine fires can be put out, by diving and shutting that engine down, fuel tank fires require a bailout action

e) Loss of All Fuel -> establish best landing ground, put plane to max clean configuration (all radiators shut, gear up, flaps up, prop pitch both 0%)

If they occur, don´t think much, just act, there is very little other options then the ones collected here.

aditionally to that, there are some tricky combinations of damage, like a damaged engine and the complete loss of one tailfin, but we´re going to cover that later.

For experimental and training purposes, the procedure to replicate loss of control surfaces is as follows:

initiate a 45° dive, full power, no flaps, no airbrakes from at least 3000m. Deploy airbrakes at around/shortly before 800 km/h and pull out.

It´s fun to train and it will improve your handling of the Pe2 as well as your apreciation for it ;=)