Beechcraft 18 landing

[ZombieHunter]

If anyone has this awesome aircraft, how do you land it?

I tried a 3 point landing in crosswinds last night and crashed it. I had a stable approach and tried to touch down on the upwind wheel. It bounced on me. So I pulled up and bled off more speed and it bounced again. At this point I am losing directional control so I opt for a go around. I add in full power, full prop but dropped the flaps one too many times down to 10. This increased my stall speed, the left wing stalled and I went into the trees on the left side of the runway. I could not recover after the flaps mistake. I pushed the nose over to avoid the stall and get it flying again but I wasn't high enough. Terrible go around. Once I retracted the flaps too much there was no chance to recover it. I should have just kept in 30 down the runway and even though that is the improper setting for a go-around, stuck with it until I had some altitude or a clearer area and then bring them back to 20 and proceed from there.

[d[-_-]b]

Read "I'll take the 18", he talks about the perils of three point landing obsessions in the Beech 18 there. It can be done, but it's such a fine line that it will eventually bite you and bite hard. The stable landing approach in a Beech 18 is main wheels first.
Fantastic book that really brings to life the Beech 18 experience in MSFS.

For a go around flaps are progressively retracted , but you figured that out already it seems.
In a nutshell use the following Go Around sequence:
. Push power and Push nose down to correct nose up tendency when power is applied, get to manoeuvring speed
. Progressively retract flaps, watch manoeuvring speed
. Gear up on +ve rate of climb (don't exceed retraction speed, esp on multi-engines)
. Trims
. Turn

https://youtu.be/RqKERFrvHGg?si=MVa6ktZJbC3dkhSZ

The https://flightsim.to/file/51532/denarq-twin-beech mod greatly improves the engine management simulation. The flight model is being fixed in an upcoming release (currently in beta testing) which should be out very soon.

[ZombieHunter]

I've been doing pattern with it today and doing wheel landings. Much better. Still really fidgety as the tailwheel slowly comes down. For some reason in FS 2020 during this transition, the plane loses directional control for a bit. You really have to be careful with this plane on landing or she will veer off the runway or you lose directional on takeoff. During this transition for the tailwheel both in takeoff and landing the plane tends to act very strange. I'm doing approach right around the blue line if not just a bit over it. Seems to work really well. I flare it out to level just over the runway between the numbers and the 1000 footers and drop the power and hold it off but more like hold it level. The stall horn will sound and then wheels will touch. After that it gets fidgety but I think that is a sim ground handling issue. With the tail wheel locked the plane should not change direction between being level and the tail wheel coming down. Even with it unlocked, this should not matter until the wheel touches. Something is off with the ground handling.

I love this plane, though.

As for the flaps issue, it was my mistake thinking the sim did not register the flaps on my Logitech panel. Usual go around is first notch out first and then climb out and progressively take them out from there. I just messed up and brought out two notches by mistake.

[d[-_-]b]

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

... Something is off with the ground handling

I think this is a sim thing, more so than a specific plane thing. It does vary from plane to plane depending on how much work the devs have put in tweaking it (esp in xwinds), but the ground handling is a recognised weakness in MSFS itself.

SU15 beta has improvements in the ground handling, but it's still a WIP atm. Also they haven't documented the new ground handling in the SDK yet either, so 3rd party devs are eagerly awaiting that so they can update their addons too.

The Beech 18 is great. Many great planes to learn and fly but there's a few that have that special feel/experience, and it's one of them.

[ZombieHunter]

https://www.flyingmag.com/warbirds-you-can-fly-beech-18/

This is a good article about flying it as well. Very tricky aircraft.