Is every touchdown a stall?

cjcampbell writes:

I like much of what Langewische says and I like how clearly he says it.
The trouble I have with him is really with just a few short passages
that I think are very misleading.

Which ones?

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

In article ,
says...
Dave Doe writes:

No, if you carry too much speed onto the ground, you will notice a well
known phenomena occurs - the plane wants to fly, the pilot doesn't want
to let it - and the aircraft will often porpoise. That's a bad
situation and I bet it's seen the demise of many a nose wheel.

If your rate of descent is constant and very low, you will settle
gently onto the runway.

No as I said, if you try to land (with good flying speed up your sleeve
which is what you're suggesting) you will porpoise along the runway,
possibly agravating the effect by pushing down to stay on the ground -
and bust the nosewheel and crash. That's what will happen.

--
Duncan

"Dave Doe" wrote in message
. nz...
No as I said, if you try to land (with good flying speed up your sleeve
which is what you're suggesting) you will porpoise along the runway,
possibly agravating the effect by pushing down to stay on the ground -
and bust the nosewheel and crash. That's what will happen.

Neil's original statement was simply "if the aircraft is flying, it is not
landing". This is not true. As near as I can tell from the quoted thread,
this was the point Mxsmanic was addressing. There is nothing fundamentally
incorrect about the statement "If the aircraft is flying and descending, it
is landing" (assuming we're talking about airplane flight near a runway,
which seems like a reasonable inference in this context...obviously aircraft
fly and descend without landing all the time in other contexts).

I'm unclear as to the official definition of "with good flying speed up your
sleeve", the phrase you use. IMHO, it's exactly that sort of ambiguous
statement that results in far too many Usenet arguments (or perhaps
arguments in general, for that matter). That said, if you simply mean
"enough speed for the wing to not be stalled", you are incorrect, and if you
mean "a speed tens of knots above the stall speed" then I don't see how you
inferred that from anything Mxsmanic posted. So either way, you've got an
error in your post.

As far as the specific question of stalling while landing goes...

It is true that if you attempt to land with *far* too much airspeed, it is
*possible* that you will strike the nosewheel hard enough to begin a
pilot-induced-oscillation. That is, porpoising.

But that is hardly the same as showing that the airplane must be stalled in
order to land, and in fact that's just not true at all. It is quite common
to land airplanes without actually stalling the wing. Any reasonably
nose-high attitude can result in a comfortable, porpoise-free landing, and
it is possible to have a reasonably nose-high attitude without stalling the
airplane.

Whether this is desirable, I leave to the individual pilot. Different
airplanes require different techniques. Even in absence of any porpoising,
there is still the issue of landing distance. A touchdown at an airspeed
higher than necessary uses more runway than is necessary, and in some cases
uses more runway than is available. Obviously, that would be a bad thing.

But nonetheless, pilots can and do land airplanes without stalling the wing.
It happens all the time, and without undue risk of porpoising, landing long,
or whatever.

Pete

Dudley Henriques wrote:
Or, heck, just turn off at the first taxiway -- the one that is at the
end of the runway where you land.

Nah.......land it 90 degrees ACROSS the runway, not ON it!!! :-))))
Dudley

I always just thought of that as a very wide runway.

Yeah. That's the old 200 foot long, 11,000 feet wide runway if I remember
right :-))

Its a great airshow maneuver. In doing a comedy act, I've done it a few
times (cheating with some wind on the nose but don't tell anyone :-)) Put
one down across 200 feet once doing a "bum stole the airplane" routine.
With a "real good sense" for flying behind the curve, a good pilot can plunk
a J3 into a Mason Jar!! :-))

I love that act. It is absolutely my favorite.

In article ,
says...
"Dave Doe" wrote in message
. nz...
No as I said, if you try to land (with good flying speed up your sleeve
which is what you're suggesting) you will porpoise along the runway,
possibly agravating the effect by pushing down to stay on the ground -
and bust the nosewheel and crash. That's what will happen.

Neil's original statement was simply "if the aircraft is flying, it is not
landing". This is not true. As near as I can tell from the quoted thread,
this was the point Mxsmanic was addressing. There is nothing fundamentally
incorrect about the statement "If the aircraft is flying and descending, it
is landing" (assuming we're talking about airplane flight near a runway,
which seems like a reasonable inference in this context...obviously aircraft
fly and descend without landing all the time in other contexts).

snip

The original point was ('in reply to'txt also shown):
"
2) The descent rate depends on many factors, but if the aircraft is
flying, it is not landing.

If the aircraft is flying and descending, it is landing.
"

It was my aim to point out that this is not correct - in the sense and
context that I read it (which is that the plane has good flying speed
(is well above stall)).

While the poster can probably put the C182 in MSFS on the ground at
100kts, or even 75kts - this doesn't happen in the real world.

BTW, most of your post, Pete, was totally unecessary and well off topic.
However you read it the way you like, just don't expect another reply
ok.

--
Duncan

Recently, Mxsmanic posted:

Neil Gould writes:

2) The descent rate depends on many factors, but if the aircraft is
flying, it is not landing.

If the aircraft is flying and descending, it is landing.

Wrong.

Neil

Recently, Dave Doe posted:

In article ,
says...
"Dave Doe" wrote in message
. nz...
No as I said, if you try to land (with good flying speed up your
sleeve which is what you're suggesting) you will porpoise along the
runway, possibly agravating the effect by pushing down to stay on
the ground - and bust the nosewheel and crash. That's what will
happen.

Neil's original statement was simply "if the aircraft is flying, it
is not landing". This is not true. As near as I can tell from the
quoted thread, this was the point Mxsmanic was addressing. There is
nothing fundamentally incorrect about the statement "If the aircraft
is flying and descending, it is landing" (assuming we're talking
about airplane flight near a runway, which seems like a reasonable
inference in this context...obviously aircraft fly and descend
without landing all the time in other contexts).

snip

The original point was ('in reply to'txt also shown):
"
2) The descent rate depends on many factors, but if the aircraft is
flying, it is not landing.

If the aircraft is flying and descending, it is landing.
"

It was my aim to point out that this is not correct - in the sense and
context that I read it (which is that the plane has good flying speed
(is well above stall)).

While the poster can probably put the C182 in MSFS on the ground at
100kts, or even 75kts - this doesn't happen in the real world.

I agree. This is also the context in which I made my comment
distinguishing between "flying" and "landing".

Mxsmanic has two misimpressions in this case; that the stall horn
indicates that you have already stalled, and thus if it is going off when
you land you are touching down in a stall (hence the topic of this
thread); that descending is the same as landing, i.e., if you continue
your descent (regardless of speed) then you will eventually land. Well,
you may eventually hit Earth, but that would not necessarily be a landing
as we have come to know and love them. Speed is an important factor here,
and my comments were intended to call attention to that.

Neil

Cubdriver wrote:
On 30 Sep 2006 01:27:18 -0700, "cjcampbell"
wrote:

My opinion, that of most manufacturers, and of many commercial pilots,
is that the stall warning horn is a very poor indicator of proper
landing speed

In a Cub, which of course has no horn, the stall indicator is when the
door (the lower half of the door, which folds down) begins to float
upward.

Navions don't have a stall horn either. They buffet enough to warn
you and then very benignly drop the nose down.

On 2006-09-29, Mxsmanic wrote:
attack in a cloud of IMC, I heard him mention to a controller that
"the stall horn goes off every time I land." I thought that was
bizarre.

No, it's correct technique in many light aircraft (as other responses
have already noted).

There's more than one way to land an aircraft, though. Take, for
example, a tailwheel aircraft. You can land it in the 'three point'
attitude (the mains and tailwheel touching down pretty much
simultaneously) - which is often called a 'stall landing'. You're not
quite actually stalled when this happens - the three point attitude in
all the tailwheel planes I've flown has been slightly below the stall
angle of attack.

The other way to land a tailwheel aircraft is called a wheel landing,
where you touch down on the main wheels with the tail still up. Wheel
landings can be done in anything from a completely level attitude (where
you touch down, and 'stick it on' with a judicious amount of forward
stick), to tail-low wheel landings, where the mains touch down first,
with the tail a little off the ground. This is the way most of the big
old tailwheel piston airliners were landed.

Some tailwheel aircraft tend to land tailwheel first (indeed, it's
recommended practise to land some this way, I think Maule call it the
'double whomp' landing or something like that - tail touches down
quickly followed by the mains). In this case, it's likely the plane is
very close to the critical angle of attack. My old Cessna 140 tended to
land like this when you did a 'stall landing' - the tail wheel would
touch down first, then the mains would touch down - the 140 has quite a
flat attitude when sitting on the ground, certainly way below the
critical angle of attack.

--
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Montblack wrote:

"Ron Natalie"
There is a light aircraft called the Ercoupe. It's pretty much
unstallable. As a matter of fact, it's design fits Langewiesche's
musings on the "ideal" airplane.


Unspinnable?


You gotta stall to spin.