"G. Stewart" wrote:

Thanks for the answers.

I was off on the dates for the shift to tricycle undercarriage
dominance ... sorry.

I guess what I was asking was - when the designers of the Spitfire, or
the FW-190, or the Mustang, etc. sat down to consider the
undercarriage part, why did they go with the taildragger design
instead of the tricycle design, when the latter offered so much more
visibility on the ground, and which seems to be the design of most
modern aircraft today?

Just think about it for a second..........

Taking each of those 3 types you mention - where would you put the
nosewheel ??

You would have to provide space underneath the engine.

Then, raising the tail would cause the prop to touch the ground.

So you would then have to lengthen the main gear legs to raise the whole
a/c (and move them back to maintain cg).

I suppose one solution would be to put the 'nosewheel' BEHIND the
mainwheels - into the lower fuselage behind the wing (or radiator in the
case of the P-51!).

You would still have to lengthen the mainlegs - but you could then make
the fuselage datum parallel to the ground.

Would such a scheme work - a 'reverse' tricycle undercarriage ??

I have a mental picture of just such an arrangement - but I can't think of
the a/c it was on ??

And would a reverse-tricycle undercarriage have the same effect as a
'normal' one - in terms of flared landing, ground-looping etc ?

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Ken Duffey - Flanker Freak & Russian Aviation Enthusiast
Flankers Website - http://www.flankers.co.uk/
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