What part of the flight model controls the pitch attitude at which the plane sits under various flap and airspeed configurations?
The issue is this: I could be wrong, but I’ll bet a dollar that in a P-47, for example, at the correct landing weight and approach speed, with gear and flaps down, you really can see the runway over the nose. Same with a P-51, F4U, P-40, and Mitsubishi J2M3 (just for example, of course…)
I can understand the nose obscuring visibility forward if the nose is stuck up in the air, as in the final moments before a pretty three point landing, or during the last seconds of a navy carrier landing, but if you’re in a 3 degree glide slope two miles out, on speed and configured for landing, I’m just not buying that the runway is obscured by the nose, even in a P-47. And in fact, Jeffrey Ethell, who did a “Roaring Glory” episode on the P-47, says explicitly that on final, with full flaps, you can see the runway over the nose.
So, if I wanted to mess around with the flight model, in an attempt to get the plane to fly with more pitch down at slow speeds, which table should I look at?
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