Comment by PeteD on February 25, 2011 at 10:55pm

I love watching the landing...rock stable

Comment by MarcS on February 26, 2011 at 6:30am

The landing is quite interesting to watch... The plane flies stable, for sure.

But it´s not a landing as a pilot would do it. It seems like they command a constant sink rate from the beginning of the cut in the video and then detect contact. A pilot (RC or in a plane) would do a flare... You can see that the landing gear has to absorb a good amount of energy :-)

Question is, if they do this approach because it is simple to realise or if its closer to a carrier landing..

Comment by Rich Weaver on February 26, 2011 at 7:25am

My wag is it's easier to hit closer to the desired landing spot, a flare adds more variability, ok if you have a lot of runway.  I keep thinking it looks like a mini B2.  Also like the old work horse chase plane.  Nice photography of the control surfaces.

Comment by MarcS on February 26, 2011 at 9:02am

Yes, seems to be standard procedure for auto-land on this class of UAV...

See at 1:50 in the followinng vid of Barracuda : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1JgJEcT1Ss

Comment by CyborgCNC on February 26, 2011 at 9:04am

That is just AWESOME!!!

Comment by Jack Crossfire on February 26, 2011 at 12:38pm

Too bad the hobbyist versions can't go anywhere.

Comment by john bero on February 26, 2011 at 10:20pm

The air brake seemed to be fully deployed, It looked close to carrier landing.  Being the first flight, I wonder if they wanted to get some actual data on the robustness of the landing gear.

Comment by Jared S on March 1, 2011 at 8:24pm

You don't flare on a carrier landing for several reasons. Maybe they were emulating that. Or decided to only program one landing type (carrier).

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