What/Where did you fly today? - Part 2

[Thorsten]

I think 2000ft is the most suitable atl to deploy landing gear, we still have time to check if they are fully down or not and feel how it affects flight control

The Shuttle is a 100 ton flying brick, and you have one shot at a decent landing. There's no point in checking whether the gear deploys or not, because if it does not you have to land anyway, there is no go-around procedure with something that glides as badly (besides, if the gear doesn't respond to hydraulics within a fraction of a second, it's deployed by pyrotechnics).

In addition, it's a pretty solid drag device, so once you deploy gear, you will lose lots of energy. If you start flaring low on energy, you will get into trouble because you can't pull the nose up more than 15 deg to controll sinkrate otherwise you will scrape the tail on the ground. So an early gear deploy schedule will mean that you have to first deploy speedbrake, then deploy gear, then retract speedbrake to account for the additional drag, then re-deploy speedbrake during the final flare. A late gear deployment schedule is far less hectic, you can basically keep speedbrake settings all the way to touchdown.

Landing a spacecraft is somewhat different from landing a GA aircraft - and NASA had good reasons to design the procedure such that the gear is deployed late (unless you have a speedbrake stuck in retracted position, in which case you would deploy it early).

[primtala2]

This is cool. Pun intended.

[chris_blues]

fmg: Great work! Looks absolutely stunning!

[wlbragg]

There's no point in checking whether the gear deploys or not

Not only that, but read the Operations Manual. Those gear are as guaranteed to come down as you are ever going to get. If the triple redundancy fails, then the pyro's take over and it blows the catches and springs the gear.

[Martien van der P.]

Making some (test)flights around Yellowknife airport:

The aircraft??? try to guess it

[MSA-S23]

DC-6

[Martien van der P.]

Nope, look at the livery.

Another tip: This aircraft is about 2 meters shorter than the DC-6.

[legoboyvdlp]

Douglas DC-4

[Martien van der P.]

Yes, it's the Douglas DC-4/C-54 Skymaster. There are not many differences with the DC-6 only the engines/windows/length and cabin (DC-6 cabin is pressurized) are different.

[fmg]

Yes, it's the Douglas DC-4/C-54 Skymaster.

Great! Where to get it? Waiting so long for the DC-4. Is there a paint-kit. Like to do a livery for it.

On topic:
Just a bit low

Always these engine trouble...

By the way

:shock:
fmg: Great work! Looks absolutely stunning!

Thanks a lot. Just some old advanced weather cold-front

f-)

[Martien van der P.]

Will release it soon with the paintkit, I guess you want to make the troop carrier livery which is to find on the C-54 which is based on EDDI (been there).

[fmg]

Will release it soon with the paintkit, I guess you want to make the troop carrier livery which is to find on the C-54 which is based on EDDI (been there).

Yes — that's it:

Looks like the nose is a bit fat. And engines differend also.
Love it anyway....

f-)

[gsagostinho]

Above Chapada Diamantina, experimenting with the camera:

[Catalanoic]

@gsagostinho: another "must be" for screen of the month. only lacks forest and trees but the picture looks here more impressive than commercial sims!

[gsagostinho]

@Catalonic thanks, I will add it to the other thread then! As for the trees, this is a region in Brazil known as caatinga, and the trees are very small and spare (it's a desert-like region), so with the sunset and high altitude we can barely see them. But they are there somewhere!