I know this is a military drone, which we don't cover here, but I was taken by the screen shots of the ground control center of the X-47B, which had its first flight a few weeks ago. HappyKillmore--yours looks way better!
The video has also been re-released with a new rock soundtrack, which is actually pretty good. Check it out:
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.
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.
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..
Comments
Yes, seems to be standard procedure for auto-land on this class of UAV...
See at 1:50 in the followinng vid of Barracuda : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1JgJEcT1Ss
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..