From - Wed Aug 19 01:08:39 1998

Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games.flight-sim

Subject: Landing an Me262

Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 22:20:34 +0100

By 'eck, I've done it. At last.

OK, here's the technique: (it's worked for me precisely once so far... use at your own risk).

The 262 has 2 major problems; flying slowly, and flying slowly. Fall below about 200kph and directional stability is worse than a Fokker Triplane. Fall below 200kph with flaps and gear down, and you'll wish you'd started to spool the engines up five seconds earlier. That spoolup time is a killer; once you're on the wrong side of the power curve, there's not much you can do.

So, you fly the approach fast; about 200kph. At that speed you can't see very much, so take a classic curving fighter approach to keep the runway in sight. Throttle to about 30%, and aim for the end of the runway. I haven't done this enough to quote specifics of height/range/glideslope.

I have a marked tendency to underestimate my sink rate. Pancaking the 262 just doesn't work; there's no ground effect to speak of, and once the speed's bled off the only thing you can do is enter that incipient spin and hope for the best. So keep it high and fast, and don't even think about chopping the throttle until you're at 5ft.

The other major tip is this; go with WB 2.0r4. Maybe it's just me, but the beast seems easier to handle than it was in r3?

Good luck. Either I'm a crap pilot (plausible), or landing the 262 is about the hardest flight sim thing I've done. Well, apart from seeing the runway from an SBD...

--

Jonathan Sanderson http://www.quern.demon.co.uk/jonathan

'If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter' (Pascal)