Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
On 1 Jan, 17:14, Dudley Henriques wrote:
Roy Smith wrote:
In article ,
Dudley Henriques wrote:
No flap landings should be handled by instructors as simply
another procedure to be learned. There's nothing earth shattering
about a no flap landing, BUT and this is a BIG BUT HERE......there
are aspects of a no flap landing that are very different from a
landing using "flaps as required", so all CFI's should demonstrate
no flap landings and go over the aspects of no flap landings with
every student. I don't treat this situation as an emergency;
simply something the student must be completely familiar with
before solo.
The issue with no flaps landings is not that the landing itself is
an emergency, but that the pilot should recognize that the flaps
didn't extend and adjust his plan accordingly. And understand the
performance implications.
Like many CFI's who came up during my period, (old people :-) I much
preferred to teach no flap landings to students as BOTH a possible
emergency AND an option that could be used by a good pilot who for a
viable and safe reason wanted to land long for a far end turnoff on
an exceptionally long runway for example.
Many of the airplanes we flew as trainers had no flaps; i.e. Cubs,
Colts, etc. You learned early on in these airplanes to fly the
approach properly and with no "devices" to help you control the
landing speed. These airplanes are still in use today and in many
cases are priced low enough that many students becoming aircraft
owners for the first time will end up purchasing an aircraft with no
flaps. I personally know two pilots who own a J3 and a Piper Colt;
each have no flaps.

Flaps and their use are VERY aircraft specific. In some airplanes a
POH might define a no flap landing as an emergency. Others simply
alter the approach profile a bit. In the T38 Talon for example, (I
use this as the airplane is extremely high performance and landing
cfg is critical for the Talon) the procedure for a no flap landing
is to add 15kts to the normal landing speed...period! No big deal at
all.

Landing a normal GA airplane with no flaps should not pose a good
pilot any problems at all, and training should reflect this.

The bottom line is that instructors should teach landings in a way
that defines every one of them as a unique experience dealing with a
unique and ever changing dynamic. No two landings that a pilot will
make during an entire career will ever be exactly the same. Each
landing carries its own individual fingerprint.
No flaps can be an emergency landing or it can simply be a pilot's
option. Either way, the pilot should be on top of it and have each
individual landing planned based on current conditions existing for
any given instant in time that pertain to THAT landing.

Hear hear.
I've often met pilots who use no flaps on landing in very gusty
conditions or stiff crosswinds. I've tried this and don't really see
the benifits. Like a lot of things it's probably mostly in the head.
I think the higher touchdown speeds invovlved and the resultant float
only prolong the agony.
Having said that, any pilot should be able to fly his airplane in any
reasonable configuration it might end up in and this should be taught
as a matter of course. I did some instruction in Cherokees(most of my
instruction was in Cubs) and found the flaps were confusing the issue
when the students were learning landings. I opted to do most of them
flapless and this porved quite productive. the problem was, none of
the other instructors were teaching this and it was off the page for
the school, so I kept it to a minimum.
Bertie
I'm short enough that even sitting on a seat chute, in the Mustang, I
lowered 20 degrees of flap on downwind just to see over the damn nose
:-))


Doesn't adjust vertically? I would have assumed it followed just about
every other US military airplane of the period and had a vertically
adjustable seat and horizontal rudder pedals.


Bertie

Bertie

Oh the 51 had adjustments of sorts for both the seat and the pedals. The
seat had two pins you could adjust with a lever on the right side of the
seat in vertical mode only. There were nine holes you could set the seat
for but the damn things always got hung up and were a royal pain in the
butt to deal with.
The pedals could be adjusted back and forwards by hitting a lever on the
inboard side of each pedal and matching the locking pins on each side to
get them together and straight. Mine were in close to me as I needed to
know I had a full throw for rolls as well as on takeoff.
All in all, they weren't enough for my 5'6" frame. The truth is I didn't
use a seat chute. I was always leary of the 28 foot military canopy as a
means of getting me down with a reasonable descent rate if I needed to
use it and besides, I liked the back pack I had better anyway. Always
thought that if I had to get out, the scenario would be a pull from
somewhere on the deck where something went wrong to an altitude where I
could go over the side. If that happened to me, I didn't want a seat
pack getting hung up on the canopy crank on the right side or the
throttle quadrant on the left, so hence the back pack :-)


--
Dudley Henriques