SEL 'FIRM' landings

Jay Honeck wrote:
1) In any choice situation, take the crosswind from the right. Be
especially wary of left crosswinds. (I have not seen this published
anywhere)

Can you expand on that a bit, please? I'm not sure I see where you're going
with this.

When the nose is high in the flare, if you have to add power for any reason,
P-factor will tend to add to your problems with a wind from the left and help
you with a wind from the right. In addition, I've always found that slipping
into a wind from the right gives me better visibility in the high-wing aircraft
I've owned.

George Patterson
Coffee is only a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to
your slightly older self.

Jay Honeck wrote:
1) In any choice situation, take the crosswind from the right. Be
especially wary of left crosswinds. (I have not seen this published
anywhere)

Can you expand on that a bit, please?

I should have clarified the sentence & said for takeoffs only. It
already takes right rudder in a zero wind to compensate for the
rotating slipstream etc, but it takes still more right rudder for any
left crosswind. The result for me (C172M) is that a 10 knot left
crosswind is like a 20 knot right crosswind in terms of rudder-needs
and pucker factor.

Is this true in the Cherokees? It may not be so much so because of the
fixed nosewheel steer connection, although when the nose is raised it
has to be true.

NRP

nrp wrote:
I should have clarified the sentence & said for takeoffs only. It
already takes right rudder in a zero wind to compensate for the
rotating slipstream etc, but it takes still more right rudder for any
left crosswind. The result for me (C172M) is that a 10 knot left
crosswind is like a 20 knot right crosswind in terms of rudder-needs
and pucker factor.

I'm still not sure I follow you. If your objective immediately after
takeoff was to have the fuselage aligned with the runway, as it is
immediately before landing, I'd agree that more rudder would be
required against the rudder weathervaning. Takeoff is not the same as
landing in this respect though. Upon liftoff you should make a
_coordinated_ turn into the wind in order to add the appropriate amount
of crab angle required to stay above the runway (left aileron and left
rudder into a left crosswind). Asymmetric rudder usage shouldn't
really apply, I think, aside from the usual net left-turning
tendencies.

If you're not flying in a coordinated manner on takeoff you're throwing
away performance and operating at less than optimal efficiency - at a
time when you can use all the performance you can get.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding. I'm still licensed to learn.

-R

As a Mooney owner and CFI I do a fair amount of Mooney transition
training. From talking to Mooney shops that fix the damage afterwards,
I've discovered that you get 2 bounces for free in the Mooney. The
third bounce costs about $20,000. I tell my students not to try to save
a Mooney bounce, just add full power and go around. Also, the attitude
the plane sit at while on the ground will result in a bounce (I guess
teh nose hangs lower than the mains). The visual picture you want to
see on landing should have the nose higher than you see while at rest
on the ground. Weight also makes a pretty good difference. With two
guys on board and less than 1/2 fuel you should reduce your normal
approach speed by 5 knots vs. near gross. The nice thing about Mooneys
is that there is no cross wind in the flare. The wings sit so low that
they really don't feel cross wind. Its the bushes effect, below waist
level the bushes disrupt the wind. I've landed in as much as 25 knots
cross wind in my Mooney. Once in the flare you can pretty much take the
cross wind correction out. Its very different than a C172.

-Robert, CFI

"Tony" wrote in message
oups.com...

....
That's my story (and I'm sticking to that excuse!). What's your's, and
what were the lessons learned?


Flying with my brother in his T-18, Kinda rusty. And we went to to an
airport with runways that were at least 100 if not 150 feet wide. Huge
things.
I'm coming down, thinking that I'm practically on the ground, flairing,
holding it off, holding it off, wating for the gear to touch. Why haven't we
touched yet? We GOTTA be there! This runway looks way too close. Then, drop,
bang. I must have been 6 feet up. All that runway had "tricked" my eye.
The runways I was used to claimed to be 30 or 40 feet, but only a little
down the middle was still solid blacktop. A lot of the width had pretty much
just faded away into the grass (kinda like my memory). I wasn't used to
seeing much pavement out the side windows.

--
Geoff
the sea hawk at wow way d0t com
remove spaces and make the obvious substitutions to reply by mail
Spell checking is left as an excercise for the reader.

On 2006-01-06, Tony wrote:
'Fess up' time. We were having a hanger session a while ago, talking
about firm landings.

Right after I got my Comanche I was up with my CFI doing practice landings.
I did one short field landing that was just fine, so we were both a little
complacent when I came around the second time and made a perfect short
field landing about 3' in the air. I saw it coming and had full power on
just as the bottom fell out, and we just smacked down for a split second
and then we were going around. What I was totally unprepared for was how
upsetting it was to do something like that to *my* *airplane*. I was a
wreck on the next pattern. I tried to land softly, ended up forgetting
to ever totally cut power, skating around on the runway with full flaps
until my instructor pointed out the throttle.

At that point my Comanche landings were (obviously) not up to the standard
of my 172 landings, and that incident set me back another 100 hours or so
while I regained confidence flying low and slow in the Comanche. It's a
pig when slow (very little aileron authority) which gives you the feeling
that it won't be able to round out and flare, but it actually has plenty
of elevator authority.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

On 6 Jan 2006 06:56:53 -0800, "Tony" wrote:

During my initial private pilot night training I had plenty of "black
hole" landings where I just "knew" the runway had to be inches below
when it was actually several feet. After one particularly hard night
"drop in" I actually asked my instructor to inspect the landing gear
area the next morning with me; he laughed, but looked at the 172
anyway.

Since this ng dosen't seem to be limited strictly to winged aircraft
(I haven't read the FAQs or charter if there is one) I'll mention my
second hot air balloon landing. I wasn't able to arrest the descent in
time to avoid slamming into the ground in no-wind conditions; My
instructor and I were completely surrounded by the balloon skirt as
the envelope kept descending after the basket hit the ground. Worse,
we did it all over again twice seeing a little less skirt each time
before the thing just ran out of bounce.

Ricky

Tony wrote:
'Fess up' time. We were having a hanger session a while ago, talking
about firm landings.

I bought my Maule back in '95. Took a CFI down to the factory, and we flew it
back; he made all the takeoffs and landings. Then he set about the process of
teaching me to land the aircraft.

I had a vision problem in that plane, which I later cured by putting a 2"
cushion in the pilot's seat, but I had no cushion back then. I came in for a
landing at 47N, leveled off, and let the speed degrade a bit, planning to let it
settle down to the runway. Sure, I was high, but I had plenty of runway ahead of
me. Kenny later estimated our altitude at about 25' AGL.

Well, I misjudged the airspeed and suddenly I realized that the controls were
getting a bit sloppy. I hit the throttle just as the bottom fell out. That's
probably all that kept the gear from going through the bottom of the plane.

We climbed back to pattern altitude and took a brief detour while Kenny made
sure the right gear was still there and I did the same on my side.

Maule builds tough airplanes, but mine always had a tendency to turn left when
taxiing. I'm not sure it did that right after we left the factory with it.

George Patterson
Coffee is only a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to
your slightly older self.