New Plane - FW190 D9 Glider

[fergal69]

QMB to try out new update & collided with A-20B that I gained on quicker than I thought. I imagined there would be more damage, but all I did was break the propeller.

 

Thought about bailing out, but it glided quick nicely, & I had to land just short of a runaway that I spotted & was heading for.

 

Must be the larger wingspan of the D9 that makes it glide in a controlled way. 

 

 

 

Edited September 18, 2020 by fergal69

[Reggie_Mental]

All planes glide engine out. It's the sink rate that is not very 'glider' like. 15-20 to 1-ish for most fighters rather than the preferred 40-50 to 1-ish plus of a sailplane glider.

 

Some airliners glide very well. Look up The Gimli glider for a truly marvellous piece of airmanship. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

Edited September 18, 2020 by Reggie_Mental

[PatrickAWlson]

Here's another:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACA_Flight_110

 

And then there is my own Me109 F4.  I blew an IL2 apart at close range and thunk!  no prop.  With the altitude that I had I glided to a front line airbase for a flaps down, wheels down landing on the runway.  One of the more memorable moments in my IL2 flying.

[Ram399]

Early on in my ongoing JG 52 career in the December of 1941 my flight got scattered engaging a flight of Pe-2s near Rzhev and I got separated from the unit.

I eventually burned through all my ammo shooting down a straggling bomber and turned for home at Dugino.
By that point the rest of my flight had also returned to base and started landing- but when I arrived I discovered a single MiG 3 from the escort flight was harassing one of my pilots in the pattern who, being AI, refused to interrupt their landing ritual to deal with the threat.

So I got right up behind the MiG in an attempt to scare him off but he refused to break from his attacks, and since I had no ammo left I took drastic action and rammed him.
It was a picture perfect hit, my prop chewed off the entire tail and the MiG went into a spin, the pilot bailing out just in time.

Naturally my prop was now completely useless, but I was only half a mile from the field so I turned in and glided down, landing just past the threshold like I had planned the whole thing.

Note the parachute in the back:

Spoiler

 

Edited September 19, 2020 by Ram399

[EAF19_Marsh]

The surprising thing is that you managed it with the rockets on - those things are a weight / drag pain.

 

 

[Enceladus828]

18 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

Here's another:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACA_Flight_110

A bit OT here, but thanks Pat.

I remember like it was yesterday, but it was 8 and a half years ago watching an episode of a show called Mayday (in other places called Air Crash Investigation, or Air Disasters) where they covered the TACA Flight 110 incident. The episode was titled Nowhere to Land. 
A fact is that the Captain lost vision in one of his eyes several years prior due to being struck by a bullet while evacuating people during the El Salvador civil war.

By far, that’s probably my favourite episode of that show.

[Avimimus]

21 hours ago, Reggie_Mental said:

All planes glide engine out. It's the sink rate that is not very 'glider' like. 15-20 to 1-ish for most fighters rather than the preferred 40-50 to 1-ish plus of a sailplane glider.

 

20/1 actually isn't that bad for a 1930-1940s glider and under the right conditions thermal soaring is even possible.

 

The absolute state-of-the-art record setting experimental designs did better. The Akaflieg Darmstadt D-30 Cirrus had a glide slope of 36/1, and the Horten VI purportedly achieved 43/1 (I'm a bit skeptical).

 

But most competition gliders were closer to 25/1 and the performance of a lot of training or troop transport gliders was more like 15/1 or even 10/1 in some cases!

 

This book has some wonderful tables near the end (although they also include post-war gliders):

https://cevans.me/VINTAGE/Books/Krasilschikov_Gliders of USSR_eng.pdf

[PatrickAWlson]

59 minutes ago, Enceladus said:

A bit OT here, but thanks Pat.

I remember like it was yesterday, but it was 8 and a half years ago watching an episode of a show called Mayday (in other places called Air Crash Investigation, or Air Disasters) where they covered the TACA Flight 110 incident. The episode was titled Nowhere to Land. 
A fact is that the Captain lost vision in one of his eyes several years prior due to being struck by a bullet while evacuating people during the El Salvador civil war.

By far, that’s probably my favourite episode of that show.

 

That show is where I originally learned of it.  I have a fascination with air crashes.  Sounds ghoulish,  I know, but there is much more to it than that.  Because airplanes are so safe, when one is lost it is usually a bizarre combination of failures: physical, system design,  and human.  My career in software has taken me through some very complex real time systems so I have seen first hand how easy it is to introduce a vulnerability.  It usually amounts to assuming things will be fine and not thinking through what can go wrong (like an engine failure spewing parts that in turn slice all of the hydraulics because they are all co-located, and many others like it).  In software it is often failure to account for lack of data at a critical moment - what do you do if it really does go wrong?  That ability to see ahead and anticipate failure is a really interesting thing.

 

In the case of TACA it's a nice story.  No fatalities.  I believe no injuries at all.  Brilliant flying.

[Jaegermeister]

On 9/18/2020 at 2:26 PM, fergal69 said:

Must be the larger wingspan of the D9 that makes it glide in a controlled way. 

 

That and the fact that you lost the propeller. You had way less drag without the prop blades windmilling since you cant feather the single prop.

[Soilworker]

What's really fun is (in an Fw-190) not losing your prop but all your control surfaces in a dive then trying to get it on the ground without dying by using your horizontal stabiliser adjustment and engine power+torque for control. 

 

Only tried it once so far and I survived, must give another go some time. ?

[PatrickAWlson]

39 minutes ago, Soilworker said:

What's really fun is (in an Fw-190) not losing your prop but all your control surfaces in a dive then trying to get it on the ground without dying by using your horizontal stabiliser adjustment and engine power+torque for control. 

 

Only tried it once so far and I survived, must give another go some time. ?

 

About that time I'm thinking they gave me this parachute for a reason.

[Soilworker]

36 minutes ago, PatrickAWlson said:

 

About that time I'm thinking they gave me this parachute for a reason.

 

Ah well I was just screwing around in the Quick Mission builder. ?