30.06.2013, 06:01
A lovely sight, it really is, but why did he turn in to the runway so low? Why did he lower flaps during the landing run?
Incidentially the 109 was notorious for bumslandung ("Heavy Landing") accidents and almost half the airframes written off were down to landing accidents. To say it's a myth is ridiculous. There's been a lot of revisionism in recent years but a lot of it is rather more dubious than the belief that the history it replaces is. Period testimony also backs up the high accident rate. Heinz Knocke recalls having to fly a 109G that had been damaged in a landing previously.
Notably the Germans were horrified at the way the finns flew them on their handover flights.
PS - I've since realised the pilot is using flaps as airbrakes to shorten his landing run. That's a ploy that might be expected of a short field pilot and not something my instructor would ever have allowed me to do, but it's a valid tactic despite some question of effect, since the full flap deflection doesn't occur until the aeroplane is at a slow pace and thus is doing little more than exposing the surface to possible damage from loose objects on a rough field, but there you go.
For those who haven't realised, turning in so late and low may improve last minute visibility of the airfield/runway (we are dealing with taildraggers coming in nose high) but the consequences of turbulence, wind shear, sidwewinds, vortices, and any other atmospheric disturbance that low and slow can only serve make risking a wingtip strike all the more dangerous.
You never ever trust to something you can't see - that's something I very nearly learned the hard way more than once.
Incidentially the 109 was notorious for bumslandung ("Heavy Landing") accidents and almost half the airframes written off were down to landing accidents. To say it's a myth is ridiculous. There's been a lot of revisionism in recent years but a lot of it is rather more dubious than the belief that the history it replaces is. Period testimony also backs up the high accident rate. Heinz Knocke recalls having to fly a 109G that had been damaged in a landing previously.
Notably the Germans were horrified at the way the finns flew them on their handover flights.
PS - I've since realised the pilot is using flaps as airbrakes to shorten his landing run. That's a ploy that might be expected of a short field pilot and not something my instructor would ever have allowed me to do, but it's a valid tactic despite some question of effect, since the full flap deflection doesn't occur until the aeroplane is at a slow pace and thus is doing little more than exposing the surface to possible damage from loose objects on a rough field, but there you go.
For those who haven't realised, turning in so late and low may improve last minute visibility of the airfield/runway (we are dealing with taildraggers coming in nose high) but the consequences of turbulence, wind shear, sidwewinds, vortices, and any other atmospheric disturbance that low and slow can only serve make risking a wingtip strike all the more dangerous.
You never ever trust to something you can't see - that's something I very nearly learned the hard way more than once.