I just went through the Grumman G-111 UF-2 Aircraft Flight Handbook looking to see how long to idle the engines before shutdown (for those who want to know, it’s 30 seconds minimum at 150 degrees Celsius CHT). I found that no problem on page 156 but then I read a little farther down the column and found this:
22. Squat Strut—INSTALLED.
I’ve had a couple instances where, on a ramp at an airport, the plane is standing tail down or “squatting.” In the two cases this happened I had to start the engines, advance the throttles slowly to ~1600 RPM until the plane started to tip forward. Once the front wheel hit the pavement I could shut the engines down and the plane stayed in the proper attitude.
This usually happens with fuel tanks half full or less, and load differences of ~4000 lbs between the load in the forward compartments and crew and passengers, and the loads in the rear compartments, but not always. I’m thinking there may be problems with certain airports as I first ran into this over here at CYSN Niagara District. In that case the load difference was 1030 lbs in the forward compartment plus crew and pax, and 5450 lbs in the rear compartments for a difference of 4020 lbs.
You can see where this is going – could you install the squat strut? The ladder is always in place at the start of a flight so the squat strut should be as well.
From this video…
…here’s the best image I could get from the ‘net (that isn’t a ripoff from an art supplier):
This is the greatest plane I’ve flown in MSFS so far; my favourite before this one was the WACO YMF-5 from another (unnamed!) developer.
Bob