Tail vs Nose-wheel

Surely it can only drag its tail when on the gound? Unless it had a severe CofG problem that I’m unaware of?

CofG problems! On occasions, the Shack II had a propensity to drag its tail when in the air, too. I recall several (four?) a/c on 224 Sqdn having to be stripped bare of the fancy paint job that had been added to their aft fuselage and tail for a tour of South America, as the trim was seriously affected by the several coats of paint in these areas i.e. original (possibly more than one coat), South America scheme, repaint back to standard. This extra weight had trim implications too;(throw several buckets of the finest sea grey ‘dulux’ on the scales to find out how heavy this was when spread all over the rear end of the grey lady:D).
The Shackleton tailwheel was also well-known for cocking sideways at times during the takeoff run; this provided much amusement to onlookers as various attempts were made to bump it into a more regular alignment.

I am told that the Hermes flew with a definite tail down attitude, my first hand source on this is my mother, who was a BOAC stewardess on them!

As does the VC-10. You can feel tha you are walking uphill as you walk toward the front when in flight

Indeed the Type 398 (Attacker proto) was first known as the Jet Hooked Spiteful, catchy eh!
Never quite understood why when the Seafang title was already in use.

As far as I’m aware the Albermarle was the first British combat production aircraft with a nosewheel. The Horsa glider is worth a mention aswel.
GAL dabbled in nosegears in the mid to late ’30s the Cygnet II, a Monospar, and the Fleet Shadower.

… lagged a long way behind America in adopting the nosewheel undercarriage as standard. I think it was a bit of a stick in the mud attitude along the lines of “we’ve always done it this way so why change now?”

Agree.

I think it was down to individual companies and how they progressed into the jet age. When Supermarine built the Spiteful with its laminar flow wing, they stuck with it and simply designed a jet carrying fuselage to bolt on it.
This did not go unnoticed and Min of AP ordered ‘3 jet machines of the Spiteful type’
Later, the first Swift flew as a taildragger (type 510) but the second aeroplane was built as a trike.

Was the Albermarle our first tricycle U/C monoplane bomber?

Baz

Who’s going to start a thread on aircraft with apparent CofG issues then:p:)

This is hard work … my apologies for putting a comment about an aircraft that flew with a tail down attitude in a thread about aircraft that sit tail down on the ground … perhaps I should have used smilies too … :rolleyes:

My posts above were really in reply to Post 33 (D1566) 🙂
I used wrong quote LOL

I do remember some wag telling folk that the Shackleton could be configured for both & selecting “nose wheel” for landing when everyone is sitting forward of the main spar or “tail wheel” if they plan to overloaded the galley with pork pies again.:D

my input (probably 10 miles out)

its a lot to do with wing formation, piston planes are usually configured with the wings at the front of the plane, where as most modern jets have the wings further back, so its more feasable to mount the landing gear in the wings (unless its a B52) so dependant on where the wings and main landing gear is, is also dependant on the aircrafts balance point to where they put the 3rd wheel.

sound logical?

It appears my tongue in cheek comment has been taken seriously!
I was joking as the original post I was responding to sounded at first read that the Hermes tail might of dragged its a..e on the ground even when flying, hence it would be a severe (ie impossible!) CofG problem. We are after all disscussing tail/nose wheel and ground characteristics, not airborne CofG issues!
I must use the smilies more often!:)

I do realise that the wing incidence on the Hermes (an several other aircraft of the period) wasn’t aligned to the fusalage centre, but that could be for all manner of reasons.

Some interesting pics on this prune Hermes thread link !One contributor mentions a possible rearward C of G problem,but I would still doubt that a rear C of G would cause a large a/c to fly tail down – since it should be able to be ‘trimmed out’ in the cruise (still ‘draggy’ though LOL) and also – photos of the a/c on the ground do not seem to indicate a ‘Heavy’ tail,but would not want to argue about it with anybody…the a/c obviously had a fundamental aerodynamic design flaw !as another contributor on prune said,maybe a fuselage ‘plug’ fwd of the mainplane would have sorted any C of G/attitude problem.

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=12&ved=0CCAQFjABOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pprune.org%2Faviation-history-nostalgia%2F356877-handley-page-hermes-iv-2.html&ei=qTO5TKiNG5HQjAf9hc3kDg&usg=AFQjCNGOPrLMJb6x-Z2RRRX01U4UUYKrWA

Of course we might recognise a web footed contributor !! 😀

Surely it can only drag its tail when on the gound? Unless it had a severe CofG problem that I’m unaware of?

I would think that the main reason for any a/c with an unusual cruising attitude would be caused by a problem with the mainplane incidence angle – ie if the wing incidence is too high (for cruise ) then the a/c would tend to fly nose down (a la Whitley 🙂 ) – conversely if the incidence was too low then the a/c would tend to cruise ‘nose up’…which might be a little ‘draggy’ .
Blimey that area of aerodynamics almost brings us into ‘Longitudinal Dihedral’ country zzzzzzzzzzz 😀

rgds baz

Absolutely. As has been pointed out nosewheel aircraft are considerably easier to land than taildraggers. The predominance of nosewheel types in the US is almost certainly a reflection of the lower standard of US pilots. :p

Moggy

Not all of us. I’ve got more taildragger time than tricycle gear. I also prefer a stick to a wheel.

Most of the failures on the Shackleton MR2’s were related to the retractable tailwheels failing to lock down, or the tailwheels actually coming off. The MR3 wasn’t much better in it’s early years with nosegear failures fairly common. I seem to recall reading the SAAF’s first Shackleton delivery ended with a nose gear failure.

Regards,

Rich

Mk 1’s were bad for the main gear collapsing, which resulted in a jury strut being required to avoid inadvertent collapse.

Scotty

Surely it can only drag its tail when on the gound? Unless it had a severe CofG problem that I’m unaware of?

I am told that the Hermes flew with a definite tail down attitude, my first hand source on this is my mother, who was a BOAC stewardess on them!