Conventional landing gear

Conventional landing gear is the most classic wheeled landing gear, it consists in a set of two big wheels under the wings and a small wheel in the tail that makes the aircraft incline backward when it's stopped in land. Despite it's name it's use is not so common like it did during past years, instead most modern aircraft are more used to feature tricycle landing gear.

Variants

In some light aircraft the tail wheel is replaced by an inclined needle.

Flying techniques

Unlike in tricycle landing gear, in conventional landing gear must stay straight in landing due to the risk of losing the tail wheel after hitting the ground first. Since the main wheels are located in the left, it's necessary to keep the plane on a straight position then landing to let them make contact first and seeing the runway at the same time, after the wheels finally make contact the pilot can already release the yoke and let the tailwheel touch the ground to finally brake safely.

Advantages

• Thanks to the tail wheel, it's almost imposible to scratch the tail against the runway, which caused damages and further accidents in modern commercial planes

Disadvantages

• Due to plane's backward inclination it's impossible to see the runway during the take off.
• There's a huge risk of laying forward if not braking carefully.
• If the tailwheel is loose a high speed rolling can end in a ground loop.

Aircraft

Commercial airplanes

• Douglas DC-3

Helicopters

• Boeing Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche
• McDonnell Douglas AH-64 Apache

Trivia

• Ironically some failed flying machines before Wright Flyer's flight featured this landing gear.