FPV Crash Landing in Scale Cockpit - so realistic

Tench745

Master member
Really neat video, and the second perspective is great for analysis.

I noticed you concluded that "too much elevator pull induced liftoff." Unless you were attempting a touch-and-go I would say that you deduced a symptom and not the cause. The cause would be that the landing was too fast. The aircraft was still at flying speed after the wheels touched, and when elevator was added (to flare?) it turned that speed back into altitude. If the speed was closer to stall when the wheels touched, liftoff wouldn't have been possible.
This might be old news to you, I see you have a large catalog of FPV vids, but might be useful information for someone else who runs across this thread.
 

FPVAirCombat

Well-known member
Really neat video, and the second perspective is great for analysis.

I noticed you concluded that "too much elevator pull induced liftoff." Unless you were attempting a touch-and-go I would say that you deduced a symptom and not the cause. The cause would be that the landing was too fast. The aircraft was still at flying speed after the wheels touched, and when elevator was added (to flare?) it turned that speed back into altitude. If the speed was closer to stall when the wheels touched, liftoff wouldn't have been possible.
This might be old news to you, I see you have a large catalog of FPV vids, but might be useful information for someone else who runs across this thread.

That is the correct analysis! Glad you were paying attention. I normally do flare to a stall landing with almost full aft elevator just as main wheels touch - like all GA pilot are taught to do. For this formation flight, I was distracted watching the lead plane land while wanting to demonstrate a wheelie landing for the peanut gallery, forgetting there was decent headwind and thus higher than normal airspeed when my main wheels touched down, but I still instinctively yanked the stick back - as I normally do for aerodynamic breaking. Should have just let the plane settled as the initial touch down were soft enough not to cause a bounce if no additional aft elevator pressure were applied.

By the way, since this plane is a Pilatus PC-21 Model, an advanced turboprop “jet” trainer, the prototypical way to land this plane is to fly it to the ground instead of flare to stall type landing.