Variations in soft field landings

Roger (K8RI) wrote:


There is one thing in normal short field landing I've heard with which
I disagree and that is holding the yoke back all the time. I plant
the mains on, immediately let the nose gear down, get on the brakes,
and THEN bring the yoke back again.


Then you're too fast to start with. A short field landing is a
bang-bang play. Bang, the mains hit, then bang the nose wheel hits.
Stick position is irrelevant and won't really affect what happens with
the nosewheel because if you have your speed right any additional drag,
such as the mains hitting, means she's all done flying. The nose is
coming down and nothing short of a lot of power is going to change that.





Something to remember in planes with electric flaps is the time it
takes to retract them and how much added lift you get during the
retraction. With most planes most of us are flying the last portion
of flap extension adds drag without adding lift. So when removing
flaps we remove drag, then add lift for a time before the flaps have
retraced enough to reduce the lift.




Not correct. From full flaps, retracting any amount of flaps will
always reduce the total amount of lift the flaps are providing. On your
typical Cessna the majority of the lift comes in the first 20 degrees
with not a lot of added drag. But going from 20 to 40 degrees does add
lift, that's why the stall speed is lower at 40 flaps than at 20. So
reducing any flaps reduces lift, it raises the stall speed thereby
putting more weight on the wheels.