Originally Posted by
Fl1ingfrog
Sorry pchapman but airspeed = lift:
Let's not forget that angle of attack is in there somewhere too! Getting the nose down for tri gear should make a big difference (depending on all the angles and incidence and wing sections involved).
The Avweb article sounds interesting although will take a while to read through. Sounds like it involves someone who was touching down 20 mph faster than stall. Different from the, say, <5 mph that I was thinking about.
If you want to land shorter, plant the aircraft down on the ground at a light descent rate after the flare, get the nose down (for tri gear) to kill lift so you can start using brakes. (Unless its some aircraft where aerodynamic braking were better than wheel brakes.)
Don't keep the nose way up in the air, floating along another few hundred feet, trying to eke out just another few mph less airspeed, right to the minimum, while floating along along inches above the ground, waiting for an unpredictable stall point (because you can't look at the airspeed at this point and or its effectively off the clock anyway), possibly exposed to unexpected ground contact from any gust that moves you a few inches down, while you are also unsure of when to take out any crosswind correction, because you don't know when that stall will come and you'll touch down.
I thought in larger aircraft and the military they also tend to like planting the aircraft down instead of getting to the very minimum possible airspeed. And that's in aircraft where approach speed control is more important, and too fast touchdowns may lead to undesirably long landings.
Anyway, it's a good agree-to-disagree sort of topic. Hopefully we are talking about issues that don't totally overlap -- minimum speed vs. a reasonable speed slightly faster vs. way too fast touchdowns.