I must be from another planet

[Finkeren]

I don't know why I'm backwards the way I am, but something must definately have gone wrong during my childhood:

 

I'm finding the Pe-2 really, really easy to land.  

 

Understand: I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything. I've been terrible at landings since the first days of BoS. I can still just barely manage to put down the LaGG in one piece, and never without singnificant bouncing. But for some reason the Pe-2 just seems to like me. I've flown it almost exclusively for 3 days now and I have yet to destroy it on landing. 

 

I've landed it with significant damage and on one engine.

 

I've landed it with heavy ordinance onder the belly.

 

I've landed it with full flaps, no flaps and anything in between.

 

I've landed it while wounded.

 

I've landed it off field, down a slope.

 

The most I've ever got was one or two small bounces and a hard time preventing ground loops when only had one working engine.

 

I wondered, if I had just gotten really good all of a sudden. Then I tried to land the LaGG.... ....and lost a wing and the tail on my first attempt!   

 

[ShamrockOneFive]

Apparently the Pe-2 speaks to you I've only recently gotten the hang of landing the Pe-2... everything else about the Pe-2 is fantastic. I love flying it!

[SvAF/F19_Klunk]

Once u get a grip on it., it isn't that difficult.... The "problem" I guess is that you have to treat her quite differently than the other now available planes... U really have to "fly" it down so to speak, with very little vertical speed... But she is very unforgiving if u treat her the wrong way..

 

 

 

I am quite curious about the landing characteristics of the upcoming He111, but I think it will be far from as twitchy as the Pe...

Edited April 26, 2014 by F19_Klunk

[Requiem]

The landings I mess up with bounces are when I misjudge the height of flaring, so I end up flaring a bit too high and sink down harder than I should followed by the bouncing, so it sounds like you are better at judging the flare height better in the Pe-2 than the LaGG. The view through the floor window of the Pe-2 probably helps with that, but after being accustomed to the Pe-2 landings then trying the LaGG afterwards probably made you flare too high, sink too much, bounce, and crash

[Finkeren]

I think you give me too much credit Requiem. I'm not really consiously 'judging' anything let alone trying to calculate rate of descent. Most of the time, I have no idea what the hell I'm doing when attempting a landing. Gradually I just tend to develop a 'feel' of the plane, and obviously that has come faster for the Pe-2.

[BeastyBaiter]

I haven't found the Pe-2 terribly difficult either tbh. The LaGG-3, Yak, IL2, Ju-87 and Pe-2 all land easily for me. The Bf-109F4 gives me all sorts of trouble though. I land it successfully more often than not, but I find it very tricky still.

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

I found, after recording and reviewing with an outside view, I did not have my nose high enough on my single seater flares. It felt fine from the cockpit but was 10-15 degrees low in the nose. I was creating pilot induced oscillations during wheel landings. The Messerschmitt was far less forgiving than the LaGG at this. Now that I keep the nose up, even if u screw up the sink rate or flare too early the messer settles down in one bounce and nothing gets broken. Landing it cleanly is still a challenge but very satisfying now. I feel more pride in a bounceless Messerschmitt landing than a multi-kill sortie!

 

 

Keep the nose up and three point those single seaters. Congrats on the Pe-2. I haven't tried her yet.

[oneeyeddog]

Good for you Finkeren, and I'm also using the  'no idea what the hell I'm doing when attempting to land'  technique.

[SvAF/F19_Klunk]

I think we all will land better when trim is implemented

[216th_Peterla]

I think we all will land better when trim is implemented

I hope so because my landings end always upsidesown :-)

[BlitzPig_EL]

Originally the real Pe 2 was designed as a high altitude fast bomber.

 

As time passed it's role was changed to the typical VVS tactical support role, but, it kept it's high speed wing.  With that in mind one would think that landing should require the aircraft to be flown more like an airliner, that is, a long relatively flat, relatively high speed approach.  I admit I have not flown it in BoS, as I am still on the sidelines waiting for it to go gold, but in IL2/46 it definitely needs, as Klunk said, to be flown right down to the ground.

I am still having difficulty understanding the slow part of what some of you are reporting, as the Pe2 should have a pretty pronounced stall, and should require much higher landing speeds than any of the VVS "modern" fighters.

 

Perhaps it's FM is not totally finalized?

 

[Finkeren]

Originally the real Pe 2 was designed as a high altitude fast bomber.

 

As time passed it's role was changed to the typical VVS tactical support role, but, it kept it's high speed wing.  With that in mind one would think that landing should require the aircraft to be flown more like an airliner, that is, a long relatively flat, relatively high speed approach.  I admit I have not flown it in BoS, as I am still on the sidelines waiting for it to go gold, but in IL2/46 it definitely needs, as Klunk said, to be flown right down to the ground.

I am still having difficulty understanding the slow part of what some of you are reporting, as the Pe2 should have a pretty pronounced stall, and should require much higher landing speeds than any of the VVS "modern" fighters.

 

Perhaps it's FM is not totally finalized?

 

First: No, the Pe-2 wasn't designed as a fast bomber, it was designed as a high altitude escort fighter (similar in concept to the Bf 110). However, just as it was about to enter production the twin engine fighter project was scrapped and the Pe-2 was redesigned as a dive bomber (the Stukas precission apparently impressed the Stavka quite a bit) without superchargers and pressurized cabin.

 

It's true that it was built for speed, but as a fighter, it was also quite gentle in flight and very easy to control. Apparently takeoff and landing were the real problem. This seems very much in accordance with the way the Peshka behaves in BoS: Extremely pleasant to fly in most situations, but (as you say) with high landing speed needing a shallow approach.

 

As for the FM being finalized, it's hard to say, but I don't really see much wrong with the Pe-2s FM atm. I'm simply surprised, that my usual crappy "style" of landing apparently becomes the Pe-2 well.

[SeaQuark]

I just finished reading "Dances with Death," a series of interviews with the female bomber & fighter pilots of the VVS during the war, and so many of them talked about what a pain in the *** this one was to land, how it caused quite a few nasty crashes. They blamed its unusually high landing speed, if I remember correctly.

[Finkeren]

Is that also where the claim comes from, that some female pilots had insufficient strength to make the take off alone, so they had to be helped by their observer in pulling back the stick?

 

That claim has always struck me as very odd, usually stick forces increase with air speed. If some pilots couldn't handle the stick forces involved in take off, how on earth were they supposed to handle pulling out of a 70^o+ dive when dive bombing?

Edited April 26, 2014 by Finkeren

[TJT]

Is that also where the claim comes from, that some female pilots had insufficient strength to make the take off alone, so they had to be helped by their observer in pulling back the stick?

 

That claim has always struck me as very odd, usually stick forces increase with air speed. If some pilots couldn't handle the stick forces involved in take off, how on earth were they supposed to handle pulling out of a 70^o+ dive when dive bombing?

 

Automatic pullout. IIRC the Pe-2 had this like the Stuka.

Thats said, the statment about taking off like that strikes me as odd too.

[Finkeren]

Automatic pullout. IIRC the Pe-2 had this like the Stuka.

Thats said, the statment about taking off like that strikes me as odd too.

It does, doesn't it?

 

I mean, even if taking off required the stick to be pulled fully back, and I have never heard of a plane requiring full elevator deflection just to take off, you'd think the force required would be fairly light at speeds below 200km/h.

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

I suspect some gender bias and manipulation of history in regards to the female VVS pilots. A bit of folklore by someone with an axe to grind.

Edited April 26, 2014 by A1FltTrn=HerrMurf

[DD_Arthur]

I don't know why I'm backwards the way I am, but something must definately have gone wrong during my childhood:

 

I'm finding the Pe-2 really, really easy to land.  

 

 

I have a solution; try landing on the PE-2!  But hurry, next week we get a prop damage model

 

[Finkeren]

I suspect some gender bias and manipulation of history in regards to the female VVS pilots. A bit of folklore by someone with an axe to grind.

Wikipedia repeats the claim and attributes it to a L. L. Popova, who I resume to be a female VVS veteran, so it might well be folklore, but not necesarilly grounded in gender bias. The original interview is available in Russian on the site Airpower.ru.

[ShamrockOneFive]

I have a solution; try landing on the PE-2!  But hurry, next week we get a prop damage model

 

LOL that's hilarious! I never would have thought to do that... but that's actually pretty amazing from a game engine standpoint.

[Avatar13]

...Gradually I just tend to develop a 'feel' of the plane, and obviously that has come faster for the Pe-2.

 

 I hear you, Finkeren. I've got friends that learn all the stats of planes to tweak their settings to get max performance in all aspects of flight and how best to take off and land. Unfortunately, my life doesn't allow me the luxury of that much time and I'd rather spend it flying than researching. So I just tend to "use the Force" to get my own feel for a plane. Don't ask me what I'm doing but I can show you. :D My friends just shake their head at me but I generally keep up and can usually hold my. S!

[LLv34_Flanker]

S!

 

 

 I finally got my flying gear plugged in and Pe-2 was not that hard to land. As pointed out, fly it in at a very shallow descent and you are good to go. Pleasant plane to fly, maybe feels most of them all like a plane at the moment. I just wish that gunner would stop staring at me like a puppy.

Edited April 27, 2014 by LLv34_Flanker

[ShamrockOneFive]

S!

 

 

 I finally got my flying gear plugged in and Pe-2 was not that hard to land. As pointed out, fly it in at a very shallow descent and you are good to go. Pleasant plane to fly, maybe feels most of them all like a plane at the moment. I just wish that gunner would stop staring at me like a puppy.

 

My problem is that I come in steep and fast and I bounce on the landing... OR I try and bleed speed and end up losing too much and then a wing stalls and I'm nose down into the snow. Your approach and natural tendency is obviously working better!