Landing my EE Canberra "flyin' coffin" PR9

[Peg o my heart]

She wants me to die every time I am trying to land her. I know she belongs up there but what goes up must land.
I really need a help as I spent the weekend trying to land her without crashing

The aircraft doesnt want to align with the runway no matter what I do, the yaw attitude is unforgiving and aligning to the runway using aileron with rudder corrections dont really help. I tried to use rudder solely (rudder stability knob "standby"), it seemed to be working but as I got closer, she would yaw wildly when rolling. I always ended up either in the grass or had the asphalt above my canopy. Even if I landed successfully, the aircraft never fully stopped in the centerline. Wind calm, long runway and visibility is good. Even though in my opinion it is one of the best addon for MSFS so far, this is the most difficult aircraft to land.


help

#pokeMartyn

[IanHenry]

Hi,
Yes, the Canberra switches from having very benign flight characteristics to being a real handful once you deploy the undercarriage and flaps. The Justflight model is fairly accurate in this respect, it was tested by real life Canberra pilots! There is a U.S training film available on You Tube warning pilots of the Martin B-57 variant of the aircraft of the dangers of attempting to land on only one engine.


Try lining up with the runway before lowering the undercarriage and the flaps (the flaps are little more than a massive airbrake) and keep your speed up for as long as you can.


Oh, and good luck,
Ian

[joe bob]

And keep the ball centered, stay on top of the rudder

[delta558]

There are so many different things going on during the approach, being set up correctly at the start really is the key and one of the first things to check is your fuel (P.102-103 of the manual) - if it's out of balance, you may find yourself wallowing a bit as the speed decreases.

I find it best to lower the gear and the flaps when joining the circuit, that gives you the time to get the trim and speed sorted before you start playing with any turns. Flaps are primarily for drag on the Canberra, so were used for landing only. They take about 15 seconds to deploy and create significant trim change :

"When flaps are selected down you would pause a second or two then start trimming fully nose down. This would more or less balance out the change in trim force. However you would run out of trim before the flaps had finished travelling with the last 5 seconds or so developing a small push force to prevent the nose rising. This push would gradually decrease as speed reduced."

Once settled, I find the fighter-style curved approach quite comfortable, bearing in mind "To use full aileron at lower speeds you would have to use a lot of rudder to overcome the adverse aileron yaw". I find that smaller aileron inputs do not create the need for such drastic rudder inputs, but as mentioned by others you do need to keep on top of the rudder throughout.
The two quotes above are from one of the current PR9 pilots with Midair squadron, who helped in the creation of this aircraft.

It is possible that the adverse yaw is slightly high at lower speeds, but not by much I'd say - I'll take another look at it when I have a few minutes.

Edit:
Having taken it up for a quick spin, it does rather seem as though the yaw damper is permanently on, even though it isn't! I've done a 'rough and ready' fix which doesn't appear to affect the single-engine handling too much but does give more rudder at circuit speeds (head is full of Tornado at the moment, Canberra has been pushed right to the back so I can't guarantee its absolute accuracy). I'll drop Martyn a line later and see what he thinks.

[Peg o my heart]

Hi,
Yes, the Canberra switches from having very benign flight characteristics to being a real handful once you deploy the undercarriage and flaps. The Justflight model is fairly accurate in this respect, it was tested by real life Canberra pilots! There is a U.S training film available on You Tube warning pilots of the Martin B-57 variant of the aircraft of the dangers of attempting to land on only one engine.


Try lining up with the runway before lowering the undercarriage and the flaps (the flaps are little more than a massive airbrake) and keep your speed up for as long as you can.


Oh, and good luck,
Ian

Agree sir. This seems the working method for me. Entering downwind leg with speed not less than 220 gives me a good roll in making the final turn, the speed drops to 200 on base leg and entering final it doesn't drop that bad. On final, as a thread on JF forum suggests, keeping the speed above 170 will still give me roll even with less or without rudder. But the horror comes when the flaps down. I had to force the yoke down before finally cut off the throttle and land.

There are so many different things going on during the approach, being set up correctly at the start really is the key and one of the first things to check is your fuel (P.102-103 of the manual) - if it's out of balance, you may find yourself wallowing a bit as the speed decreases.

I find it best to lower the gear and the flaps when joining the circuit, that gives you the time to get the trim and speed sorted before you start playing with any turns. Flaps are primarily for drag on the Canberra, so were used for landing only. They take about 15 seconds to deploy and create significant trim change :

"When flaps are selected down you would pause a second or two then start trimming fully nose down. This would more or less balance out the change in trim force. However you would run out of trim before the flaps had finished travelling with the last 5 seconds or so developing a small push force to prevent the nose rising. This push would gradually decrease as speed reduced."

Once settled, I find the fighter-style curved approach quite comfortable, bearing in mind "To use full aileron at lower speeds you would have to use a lot of rudder to overcome the adverse aileron yaw". I find that smaller aileron inputs do not create the need for such drastic rudder inputs, but as mentioned by others you do need to keep on top of the rudder throughout.
The two quotes above are from one of the current PR9 pilots with Midair squadron, who helped in the creation of this aircraft.

It is possible that the adverse yaw is slightly high at lower speeds, but not by much I'd say - I'll take another look at it when I have a few minutes.

Edit:
Having taken it up for a quick spin, it does rather seem as though the yaw damper is permanently on, even though it isn't! I've done a 'rough and ready' fix which doesn't appear to affect the single-engine handling too much but does give more rudder at circuit speeds (head is full of Tornado at the moment, Canberra has been pushed right to the back so I can't guarantee its absolute accuracy). I'll drop Martyn a line later and see what he thinks.

I did try that actually sir, based on your thread on JF forum as well . Gear and flaps kill speed rapidly, when those are deployed on downwind, I would struggle to make the final turn, and at the same time to keep the nose pitch down. But will definitely try this again. Do you use speebrake before touchdown? Sometimes, it is easier landing without flaps, an that is flat 180 knots threshold speed! And is it the right thing to increase speed to compensate nose pitch down tendency after flaps are down? Trimming seems useless when flaps down before touchdown

Thank you

[delta558]

A couple of pointers here - Canberra gear and flap limiting speed (off the top of my head) is around the 170kt mark, you should be looking to fly the circuit around 155kts (in ideal conditions and weight). If you drop the gear first, there isn't a huge trim change. Drop the flaps next and the pitch change will be marked (but nowhere near as sharp as you'd see above 180kts!) You will still need a push force on the yoke until you are in the region of 135kts, that is the sort of speed you should be decreasing to as you turn onto finals - here is where the curved approach helps, you can gradually bleed off speed throughout the turn.

Airbrakes are not hugely effective at lower speeds, but I tend to deploy them once established on finals as that big wing does seem to want to fly. The wing also provides a lot of drag - rpm should be at least 70% for a normal approach, and holding the nose high through the roll-out should see your speed down to nearly walking pace in a touch under 6000ft without the need for brakes (anything the Vulcan can do, eh?).

[Peg o my heart]

A couple of pointers here - Canberra gear and flap limiting speed (off the top of my head) is around the 170kt mark, you should be looking to fly the circuit around 155kts (in ideal conditions and weight). If you drop the gear first, there isn't a huge trim change. Drop the flaps next and the pitch change will be marked (but nowhere near as sharp as you'd see above 180kts!) You will still need a push force on the yoke until you are in the region of 135kts, that is the sort of speed you should be decreasing to as you turn onto finals - here is where the curved approach helps, you can gradually bleed off speed throughout the turn.

Airbrakes are not hugely effective at lower speeds, but I tend to deploy them once established on finals as that big wing does seem to want to fly. The wing also provides a lot of drag - rpm should be at least 70% for a normal approach, and holding the nose high through the roll-out should see your speed down to nearly walking pace in a touch under 6000ft without the need for brakes (anything the Vulcan can do, eh?).

Im printing your reply as I am ttyping Paul, and will comply with this after work. THANKS!