PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - why oh why does flaring suck the lemon :-(
Old 4th Sep 2014, 14:51
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9 lives
 
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The idea is not to land, but to keep it flying ever more slowly.
This is the key.

Arrive over the threshold at about the right altitude, and airspeed, and with everything pretty stable. From there, pretend as though you're in bare feet, and the runway is very cold and wet. You know that you're going to have to put your feet on it at some point, but you'd like to delay that unpleasant experience as long as you can.

To do that, you will not climb the plane, but you will try to prevent it from touching for as long as you can. With the power at idle, it's not going to fly off the end of the runway, so don't worry about stopping, just slow down, and down, and down, holding it off the ground, until it settles on for lack of lift.

Oh, by the way, the stall warning horn will be sounding by then, and that's excellent! And, bonus, as you just stalled nicely onto the runway, the aircraft is very unlikely able to bounce!

The flare seems to be something pilots want to get over with as quickly as possible. Why, it's fun! Play around there, get a few extra seconds of pleasure from it! If you have a nice long runway, you can even feed in a bit of power to hold yourself there. Take the time to look more "around" to get a better sense of the visual cues. The more time you can spend in the flare, the better you'll be at landing. Don't rush to get through it.

For fun, in the winter, I'll fly my C 150 for miles over a suitable (for landing) frozen lake, a foot or two up, with the stall horn screaming - for miles. It's like playing that game with your significant other of getting as close as you can, without touching. See it as being fun to perfect the skill of the flare, and it will come to you easily.

If you've ever seen the videos of one wheel landings, that's exactly what those pilots are doing, holding the plane in a very prolonged flare.

Good luck, you'll get it....
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