One of the quirks of the new MiG-29 PFM that Eagle Dynamics released to DCS World 2.5 beta during the week was that the nose wheel can cause quite a bounce on landing. Such a bounce that you can end up damaging the aircraft or even becoming airborne again. We don’t know if this is a realistic behavior or not but there are ways to get around it and I’ve got some handy tips if this is causing you some trouble.

A real MiG-29 pilot performs a DCS landing

According to the caption on this video that has been shared around the DCS community, this is a landing as performed by a real MiG-29 pilot and it was the foundation around this post that I’m writing.

A couple of key notes here:

1. Touch down around 270km/h as indicated on the HUD
2. Main gear touchdown but nose wheel is held high
3. Nose-wheel touch down around 200km/h

Replicating this landing myself

Armed with this video, I took out the newly revised DCS: MiG-29S and after performing some fun aerobatics, I decided to try and bring it in for a landing. The last time I did this, things went badly…

So this time I decided to follow the video above and after lining up for landing I managed to bring the wheels down around 290km/h and nose-wheel down closer to 230km/h. It’s a bit higher than the video above but it is much more workable and leads to a safer landing.

Some handy tricks for dealing with the new MiG-29 when you fly it next.