On Jun 25, 10:00*pm, E Z Peaces wrote:
Yesterday I chatted with a retired man flying a model airplane. *He said
he'd taken lessons in a plane with conventional gear in the 1950s. *On
his third lesson, the instructor had him land. *It was perfect.

After that, every time he landed he would bounce and float above the
runway. *His instructor didn't know what caused it. *A senior instructor
* went up with him and observed that when he touched down, he didn't
continue to hold the stick back. *That caused the tail to rise and the
plane to lift off.

That doesn't make sense to me. *I've always understood that with
conventional gear, excess speed is the cause of bouncing and floating.
With the main wheels forward of the center of mass, your angle of attack
will increase when you touch down, and the plane will rise if you still
have flying speed.

If a pilot touches down too fast, I've understood that he needs to keep
the tail up and use the brakes without nosing over.

If the instructor had told him he was touching down too fast because he
wasn't holding the stick back far enough during descent, that would make
sense to me because a higher angle of attack induces more drag.

The man said the problem was that he had failed to keep the stick back
after touchdown. *Does his recollection make sense?

Are you kidding? After nearly 60 years the recollections of a 3 hour
student have any validity? The VAST majority of botched landings are
due to flawed airspeed control and it doesn't matter what kind of
airplane. Many instructors fail to recognize that, or, fail to do
anything about it, especially when instructing. I see it all the time,
harp about it daily,and continue to mentor less experienced pilots on
this.
In the case of taildraggers specifically, if the airspeed and vertical
speed are not controlled, it will nearly guarantee a bounce with
predictable control problems. For a three point to be executed
properly, the airspeed MUST be near stall as in within Vso+ 5 mph or
less. Anything in excess of that must be dissapated during the flare/
roundout or touchdown and will result in an unpredictable touchdown
point.
Now, are you talking about a full stop landing? Then the touchdown
speed should be as low as possible. Are you talking about a gusty
cross wind? Then you have a different set of conditons to deal with.
Not to be a pushy butthead but I've got at least 6-7000 hours in
tailwheel aircraft crop dusting in a broad variety of aircraft
including twin engined and a lot of time instructing in them (couple
of thousand hrs..?)
taking a deep breath and just sitting back now .....
Ol S&B
p.s. I realize you were asking and not postulating so please don't
feel I was being gruff towards you personally?