152 crash at Sussex

[F4TCT]

BBC News - Light aircraft crashes at Shoreham Airport (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-19258877)

[Ballywalter Flyer]

Nose wheel collapse. Hardly worth a mention, or even a full emergency response

[A and C]

Ah music to the engineers ears, a big insurance job.......... Oh hang on, shock load on the engine, engine frame, firewall damage, new prop.........that will write off the average club 152.

But probably music to the ears of the owners with the new inspections that Cessna have mandated.

[Duckeggblue]

There, but for the grace of God, go many of us.
Whilst I can fully appreciate the cynicism - or even realism - my sympathy is with the pilot who either just got it wrong, or who suffered some sort of mechanical failure. Whoever you are, I hope you are back in the air soon. :)

[Chuck Ellsworth]

When I flew in England it never ceased to amaze me how many pilots wreck airplanes by landing on the nose wheel.

[Sir George Cayley]

The few words on the BBC link are actually quite accurate and none sensationalistic. So credit where it's due.

Hope the pilot isn't put off - it happens.

[DeeCee]

How many did you see then Chuck?

[chevvron]

Local, ie not operated by the airfield, fire and rescue services have a standard 'worst case' response to callouts such as Aircraft Accident and Full Emergency, there is no 'in between' just because it's a two seater, in fact normally they won't even know what size the aircraft is until they arrive.

[ShyTorque]

When I flew in England it never ceased to amaze me how many pilots wreck airplanes by landing on the nose wheel.

I always taught my students that the mainwheels were for landing on, nosewheels were just for steering with after landing. It seems that many others like to land fast, on all three, or just the one....

[Pilot DAR]

the local fire and rescue services will usually send far more units than are realistically required.

Well, yes.

I have been a volunteer firefighter for 21 years. We always dispatch at least three trucks (though usually four) to anything with "crash" in the subject line. This policy was put into place because of a car accident call just before I joined, in which the rescue truck alone went to the accident. At the scene the car burst into flame, and the lone occupant burned to death, with the Fire Department unequipped to extinguish the fire. Ever since then....

In a more basic way of looking at things, trucks need the run in any case. Sorry if we make a scene, but it's your tax dollar at work, and someone called...

Glad there were no injuries, but then there should not for that type of crash. Shame about the plane, but A and C is probably right, the commercial use of that aircraft probably will not justify its repair....

[Chuck Ellsworth]

How many did you see then Chuck?

Ever heard of the AAIB reports?

One does not have to ever have seen an airport to be able to read these reports.

My personal opinion is the main cause of wrecking simple training airplanes by landing them on the nose wheel can be traced to poor pilot training.

[DeeCee]

Chuck, you said 'When I flew in England' not 'When I was reading the AAIB reports'.

If you single out English Pilots as being poorly trained, then don't expect us not to comment. However, I bow to your superior number of posts - you must spend a lot of your spare time on Pprune.

[Pilot DAR]

have no knowledge of this crash, but I know lots about Cessna nosewheels.

Though I do not suspect any particular nation's pilots, I do share a concern that too many pilots do not (or were not trained to) regard nosewheels as delicate. I would hope to see a C 152 nosewheel "light" by 20 MPH during takeoff, and not bearing any appreciable weight until slower than 30 MPH on landing. All kinds of things about flying a C 152 are better with the nosewheel not doing any work!

[Big Pistons Forever]

When I flew in England it never ceased to amaze me how many pilots wreck airplanes by landing on the nose wheel.

Not a particularly helpful remark IMO. I would be surprised if UK PPL`s were any worse or for that matter any better :( than North American pilots.

Nose wheel first landings are almost always a result of excessively high approach speeds. For the C 152 anything more then 60 kts across the fence is too fast.

If you are a low houred PPL and don`t want this to ever happen to you then I would suggest you pay attention to two things

1) Never push forward on the yoke in the flare. If the aircraft balloons during the landing flare hold the landing attitude and wait for it to settle back towards the runway. If it feels like the bottom is going to drop out apply full power and go around.

2) If you ever touch nosewheel first immediately go around. These kinds of accidents almost never happen on the first time you have a nose wheel first touch down it is the second (or third) hit that does the damage.

[A and C]

I have to agree with Chuck & Big pistons about the standard of training, the worst is in the places with the instructors dressed up with enough gold braid to put a South American general to shame. You know the places I am talking about 5 mile stablised approaches in a 152 !

The best instruction in the UK comes from the places were the instructor is dressed in jeans & tee shirt an he is not dreaming of flying a 747.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Whilst Chuck's information sources may be dodgy, I think that his conclusions are probably correct. I have a suspicion that part of the problem is that so few instructors in the UK have ever flown tailwheel now. So they are used to landing relatively flat, and pass this bad habit onto their students, who then flatten it a bit more and once in a while one manages to land on the tailwheel.

North America probably is slightly better off, because not that many experienced pilots don't have tailwheel experience, which means that most instructors are more inclined to pass on an obsession with keeping the nose up on landing.

I'd guess from my experience that the majority of UK FIs don't have more than single figure tailwheel time.

G

[waldopepper42]

It was impressed upon me right from my first lesson that the nose wheel only touched the runway at the very start and at the very end of take offs and landings respectively. Failure to achieve the correct nose high attitude in either case led to my friendly monika for my instructor:

Ian "Get That :mad: Stick Back!" Drake... :-)

[172driver]

Its puzzling to me how anybody would be motivated to learn to land well if they're paying a fee for every single landing

Valid point.

[foxmoth]

Ghengis,

I would be surprised if as a percentage there are actually that many instructors in the States that have Taildragger experience and wonder if it is actually less of a problem there than here,

Certainly Taildragger experience teaches a good hold off, but there is no excuse for not teaching this on any aircraft.

[Capot]

I've always thought that everyone should learn to fly - and land - an Auster before moving on to girlie aircraft with nosewheels. Like I did.

But then again, I broke the nosewheel of a C172 at Lympne by trying to land in a x-wind that was well ouside the limits, because ATC told me to use the hard runway and not the grass, and I never even thought about x-wind limits.

Which proves that accidents happen, usually to the careless.

['India-Mike]

One can take almost any month's AAIB bulletins and there'll be at least one report of nose wheel damage that includes the word 'fast'.

It may be training, but I suspect a lot of it is people just getting sloppy or inventing their own way of doing things over a period of time. My experience of flying with qualified pilots on checkouts is fast approach speeds.

I recently overheard one experienced PPL say that he flew his group's Archer towards the ground at 80knots.....'just to have extra energy incase I need to go-around'. And that after the second time of collecting his aeroplane from the engineers...for damaged nose gear rectification.

And while Chuck might have observations about English:E pilots(we know what you mean), I have to say that my son and I sat at Victoria international last year and took a professional interest in landings there. I remember we agreed that 'these Canadians can land'. Can't recollect seeing a fast one.

And I am so scruffy when I instruct my wife usually says 'you're not going to fly with people, dressed like that....'

[jez d]

The worst offenders at my club weren't students but multi-houred grey-haired sky gods. Pre JAR, as long as they kept current it meant they never required a check flight and so were at leisure to develop bad habits including the 'carrier landing'. Three nosewheel incidents in one short summer was the record at the airfield, I believe.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Hmm, yes, fast !

I recall a few years ago being checked out in a PA28-161 at Long Beach where until I forced them to read the relevant page of the POH the instructress was insistent that the roundout started from 75kn. At-least partial proof that it's not just the British/English/Scots/Welsh who have some attitudes to recalibrate.

Approaching at the correct approach speed for the configuration and weight is not widely regarded as as important as it should be, and the ludicrously high test tolerances on the PPL skill test(s) do not help.

G

[foxmoth]

Whilst a fast approach does not help, I see the problem more that people do not hold off properly, with people who do a fast approach and flat landing I ideally will show three landings. The first approach is using their approach speed but properly held off, I then point out two things, the difference in nose attitude and how far down the runway we have gone. The next approach will then be at the correct approach speed and properly held off, pointing out the difference in runway used. The last approach will be slower than normal (use short field speeds) this I point out is NOT how I want them to fly it normally but is to demonstrate how the NORMAL approach speed is already giving them the safety factor that they are adding in for Their "normal" approach. The emphasis though is on a proper hold off.

[mad_jock]

Not that it isn't the hold off but....

If you at the right speed the control issues in the flare have less chance in happening.

The longer the aircraft is fannying around in ground effect and subjected to the chance of getting raped my mother nature the more chance there is of things going wrong.

So yes the control in the hold off is important but fundementally not having the correct approach speed is the first huge cock up in the plan.

The number of runway prangs in the UK is directly related to the number of clueless fuds that are teaching to do approaches with 3 degree glides with an extra 10 on the POH another 5 knts for gusts and another 5 knts for mum and ending up being nearly 30% above the stall speed in the flare with abit of power on "cause it makes the landing smoother". Thus using more runway than a 737 does.

[Pilot DAR]

When I have done familiarization training in tricycles, with a pilot who was too fast, I would brief a touch and go on approach, and insist that the nose wheel not touch at all.

Some pilots (many) don't realize that though the type you're flying now might tolerate fast sloppy landings, many other types, and types of landings will not tolerate forgetting pitch control near and in contact with the surface.

A seaplane at speed on the water, without pitch control at ALL times, is probably going over....

[mikehallam]

Could MJ please give advice on his preferred Stall Plus factors after completing the final turn at a sensible speed ?
i.e. From setting up on 'finals' and through to late 'finals' - say at tree height (30 ft ish).

Years ago I used to be quite happy on short finals with 25 % margin, till pundits told me I was wrong ! And I upped it to 30%.

Personally, having a stall of 46 statute mph, with landing flap and low power, I find keeping the beast at +30% = 60 mph all the way down to almost round out does lead to a rather too long landing.

mike hallam

[mad_jock]

Just the standard to be honest, what ever is in you POH.

No add ons for gust, for mother or any of that nonsense.

And I made a mistake with my post I meant above POH approach speed.

Which is normally 1.3Vs as you have been told. But to be honest 1.25 for a short field landing is not unreasonable and if you can safely fly it at that speed...... Its better than being to fast in my opinion. The when to slow down etc is purely personal preference in my book as long as you do it under control. Students get them settled by 500-700ft depending what flap you are using and when its gets put in, experenced I wouldn't say anything if they trickled it back at 100-200ft to be on approach speed.

But to be honest I really don't look at the speed on finals nor do most instructors sitting on the RHS, the parallax error is huge. We set an attitude and stick with that, the speed sorts itself out to the knot for the student.

We don't even need to look at the ASI to know when the student has it wrong, doesn't half annoy them when your obviously looking out the side window and say "check your airspeed"

[Genghis the Engineer]

I think I spot a gotcha here.

Mike - you fly a Rans S6 don't you? That particular aeroplane has a scandalously poor POH, combined with an unverified ASI that varies significantly between airframes and is usually grossly inaccurate at low speeds. The right speed to fly finals in an S6 is whatever works, particularly since with low inertia and high drag, it's pretty hard to land it too fast.

If the LAA did the job properly; that is a verified POH, a calibrated ASI, and a comfirmed set of IAS operating speeds, as you'd get with something like an X'Air or Skyranger, you'd have no need to ask the question. Go and borrow the POH for any BMAA homebuilt, or any type-approved microlight, around your flying club to see what it's supposed to look like.

I have no idea why the CAA have allowed LAA/PFA to get away with this for years, since they certainly don't let any other organisation do so. Nor should they.


For just about any other aeroplane, I agree totally with MJ. Follow the POH and there is no need for safety factors for gusts or crosswinds - although for a 1980s era light and draggy microlight 1.3Vs is usually a bit slow and you want nearer 1.5Vs.

But in a pre-1999 homebuilt microlight without knowing the IAS/CAS correction, as I said, use the speed that works for you, but still use the same speed regardless of wind conditions or paranoia on the day.

If you work through the maths, going faster increases gust response in proportion to the square of airspeed. So, adding 10% to approach speed adds 21% onto the loads on the airframe, which will do something similar to the disturbance to the airframe.

G

N.B. There are good reasons to add something to the speeds in a flexwing, but we weren't talking about those.

[mad_jock]

Mike as a matter of interest what would it cost to get an AoA sensor on a Rans S6?

Apart from looking out the window that is :p

['India-Mike]

going faster increases gust response in proportion to the square of airspeed

Proportional to airspeed I think (dn/dV)

[Genghis the Engineer]

Damn, caught out by I-M yet again.

1/2 Rho V^2 (dCl/dAoA) (u/V)/(W/S), the V.s cancel.

Proportional to V it is.

Still no good reason to fly faster on approach however :}

G

[Genghis the Engineer]

Mike as a matter of interest what would it cost to get an AoA sensor on a Rans S6?

Apart from looking out the window that is :p

90 minutes with a GPS would do a full range ASI calibration, then it could all be worked through anyhow.

(A) problem with AoA on a little aeroplane, is that nobody has ever worked out the strategies for flying to them effectively. I keep trying, but need to find the time and funding.

G

[mad_jock]

Very true G but all you are really interested in is the AoA for the approach.

The airspeed is just fudged indicator that you are in the right ball park usually at max weight.

I would imagine it the same as looking out the window in the RHS. Ie set your attitude trim the aircraft and don't annoy it.

Have it on a bleeper like a glider VSI ie the tone speed and volume go up the nearer you get to the critical angle of Attack. Start it pipping at 1.4 so you can just keep it at that all the way down.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Basically yes I agree.

Looking at modes of flight, you should be able to work well with:-

Take-Off: ASI

Climb:AoA, VSI, Alt

Cruise: AoA, Alt

Approach and landing: AoA (+ ASI when setting flaps and gear, Alt for positioning)

Extreme manoeuvring: AoA, Nz


But, I'd personally prefer to see some technical aviation grown ups doing some proper assessment of the use, and training in that, rather than PPLs bolting it onto their aeroplanes and making it up as they go along.

G

[mad_jock]

They seem to have them across the pond using either a temprature differential sensor or a differential pressure sensor.

I would stick with the ASI for most things just have the AoA for approach backup. And follow the pips ie if the speed and tone goes up lower the nose.

[Crash one]

AoA indicator. I'm pissing about with an idea that if it works will cost about £30. If it doesn't, I'll say nothing:O

[patowalker]

AoA indicator by Crash one :)

[Crash one]

There are, it would seem, plenty of instances where an AoA indicator would have prevented the requirement for the services of "Crash one".:cool:

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Chuck, you said 'When I flew in England' not 'When I was reading the AAIB reports'.


Sorry for not wording it in the correct manner, however I was more apt to read AAIB reports when I was in England than when I was in North America.

The bottom line is there should be no acceptable excuse for landing a Cessna trainer on its nose wheel......that is what proper training is for.....which is teaching the attitude the airplane " must " be in before runway contact during a landing.

The approach airspeed has sweet f.ck all to do with contacting the runway with the nose wheel before the main wheels.......your airplanes attitude is to nose low for this landing......how more simple can it get???

You can approach the runway at VNE and flare for the landing......it will require a long runway waiting for the airspeed to decay but if you wait long enough and maintain a safe height above the runway the speed will gradually decay to the speed where you will need to start moving the elevator control backwards to allow the airplane to assume the correct touch down attitude where the nose wheel remains in the air until after the main wheels are on the runway and there is not enough elevator effectiveness to keep the nose wheel off the runway.

Sorry for ruffling some British feathers as that was not my intent.....it is the general training in the flight training schools or lack thereof that I get annoyed with.

[mikehallam]

Thank you everyone,

It is actually the short wing tail-wheel Rans S6-116. A fine animal and usable into quite small strips, yet able to go reasonably well.
The ASI is very inaccurate and with, in the UK, no external static source it exaggerates to give a highly inflated 'cruise'. GPS to & from made the error over 15 mph at ~100 mph.
For assessing correction over the full speed range, especially at the stall is a bit hairy - hovering close to the stall AND waiting for the GPS to yield a figure. To the best of my ability I think it gets closer to the truth at very low speeds

When I taxed the LAA with this they replied that I should use the IAS at the stall as a reference. Which makes sense. But I prefer it to tell more like the truth when faster.
A RansMail reader told me to try a static pipe to near the cabin floor level, which helped enough. Even so, though reliable it reads ~7 mph high at 100 mph.

As for the last bit of finals, I guess having set her up by the ASI one does then principally look forwards at the strip and landing point for round out/flare etc. [My Jodel years ago had a stall warning tab operating a squeaker, set above the stall of course, and one had an excellent aural speed cum effective AofA input whilst concentrating one's vision out front. I always liked that feature.]

I'd considered something simple & similar would be safer for the Rans, but the leading edge of the Rans wing is an Ali tube which wouldn't take kindly to having a hole for a tab switch hacked into it.
However if anyone has some other simple solution I'd be happy to try it.

mike hallam

[mad_jock]

Now this might sound daft....


A piece of thin plate on the forward support strut thin profile to the wind. And a bit of string through a hole in it trailing back along the plate. Make some marks round the plate and video it while you do a stall then back up to max chat.

When you get back you using the marked reference points you can perm mark the stall angle on it knock a couple of degrees off for the approach.

Might work.

[Big Pistons Forever]

The approach airspeed has sweet f.ck all to do with contacting the runway with the nose wheel before the main wheels.......your airplanes attitude is to nose low for this landing......how more simple can it get???



I strongly disagree with this statement particularly as it implies that flying the proper approach speed is not important. Experienced pilots can turn any approach into a good landing. Low time pilot as these undoubtedly were, are much more likely to have a good landing if it was preceded by a good approach. Critical to flying a good approach is flying a stable flight path to the touchdown point at an airspeed that will allow flare, enough time to establish the landing attitude and then have the aircraft settle nose high onto the runway.

Too fast an approach invites a long float where the airspeed, attitude required to maintain the flare altitude, and the bank angler and rudder to maintain the centerline, if there is a crosswind, is constantly changing. The probability that a low time pilot will get this wrong and allow a premature nose wheel first touch down is a lot higher then if he/she flew the right airspeed on final.

Therefore IMO the solution to the epidemic of nosewheel first touchdowns in the UK and everywhere starts with on speed approaches.

There are no instructors who say to their students "land on the nosewheel first" and I think pretty much every student knows that they are not supposed to do this, so saying "just keep the nose up in the flare" is facile and IMO of little practical use in improving the accident rate.

On the other hand as I posted earlier resisting the urge to pad the approach speeds as unfortunately many flight schools and emphasizing good attitude and airspeed control on final along with the automatic reaction to immediately go around anytime a nose wheel first touchdown occurs, would IMO actually make a difference.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

I strongly disagree with this statement particularly as it implies that flying the proper approach speed is not important.

So in your world of flying everything is black and white is it?

You and I sure have different ideas about flying and teaching flying, one of the biggest difference seems to be I am not a " paint by numbers " type of teacher.

If you are considering getting your type rating on that PBY, best you not choose me as your instructor B.P.F.

[DeeCee]

Girls, Girls!

The correct speed at round out will result in a landing at the right AoA after the necessary hold off. I don't care how many hours you have, this will always be true for a 152.

[JW411]

So, I discovered over morning coffee today that, not only did your man collapse the nosewheel on his Cessna 152, but the really interesting event of the day was a visiting Cirrus.

It came out of the clouds for the first time, hit the runway (several times) and had to make a go-around.

It came out of the clouds for the second time, hit the runway (several times) and went around.

It apparently landed off the third approach.

Good result.

[24Carrot]

Now this might sound daft....

A piece of thin plate on the forward support strut thin profile to the wind. And a bit of string through a hole in it trailing back along the plate...

It doesn't sound daft. The R22 helicopter (and others, I expect) has some woollen thread stuck to the screen in the middle to detect left/right airflow. It is a lot more accurate than the skidball (especially for light helicopters where different weights in the seats make a difference). My FIs called it the most accurate instrument in the helicopter.:)

So why not for up/down airflow too? For low-wing aircraft some wool stuck toward the rear of the wing might also show early signs of the stall.

I guess the most obvious drawback is you have to look away from the runway to see it.
And it might cost a few thousand quid to get type approval for the wool... :ugh:

[mad_jock]

Stole it from gliders so can't patent it changing the direction it measures.

[Piper.Classique]

The number of runway prangs in the UK is directly related to the number of clueless fuds that are teaching to do approaches with 3 degree glides with an extra 10 on the POH another 5 knts for gusts and another 5 knts for mum and ending up being nearly 30% above the stall speed in the flare with abit of power on "cause it makes the landing smoother". Thus using more runway than a 737 does.

Amen! Yeah brother!

Personally I hate doing three degree approaches in any light aircraft. I actually tried really hard the other day to do one in the cub and couldn't force myself to get that low that far from the runway. Must be doing too much tug flying this year (which involves crossing the threshold 200 feet agl so as not to bounce the rope off a public road as our club is too tight to buy the doohicky that winds the rope in)

Plus if the engine coughs on a stoopid flat approach there's not much choice of where to crash......

[Pilot DAR]

I was "checked out" in June in a DA-42, so I could be insured to flight test a modification on it. The instructor was a nice fellow, who I'm going to presume had a training regime of a more recent style than mine. He was intent that I should land the plane very flat, just about three pointing it on. I found it very challenging to touchdown in and aircraft which was not ready to be on the ground yet. I did not get a landing as smooth as my personal standards would like to see doing it his way. But, to get the okay, I did things his way. Once off on my own doing the testing, I reverted to my way of doing things, which is to keep it in the air, until it wanted to settle on. It landed beautifully every time - and much less rattling and shaking from the rather long nose strut up front.

It served as a reminder that "today's" instructors might have a different way of flying, and it might not be what my experience tells me is "right". But, I'm not an instructor either. I do imagine a whole lot of students who have been trained by these instructors, and believe that fighting an aircraft into contact with the runway, against the physics of the aircraft wanting to still be airborne at that speed, is the proper way. One day those newly trained pilots will fly with an old timer, and be presented with the other way. It will take a relearning for them to grasp the concept (probably 'cause they're afraid to stall too!)

[Genghis the Engineer]

Thank you everyone,

It is actually the short wing tail-wheel Rans S6-116. A fine animal and usable into quite small strips, yet able to go reasonably well.
The ASI is very inaccurate and with, in the UK, no external static source it exaggerates to give a highly inflated 'cruise'. GPS to & from made the error over 15 mph at ~100 mph.
For assessing correction over the full speed range, especially at the stall is a bit hairy - hovering close to the stall AND waiting for the GPS to yield a figure. To the best of my ability I think it gets closer to the truth at very low speeds

When I taxed the LAA with this they replied that I should use the IAS at the stall as a reference. Which makes sense. But I prefer it to tell more like the truth when faster.
A RansMail reader told me to try a static pipe to near the cabin floor level, which helped enough. Even so, though reliable it reads ~7 mph high at 100 mph.

As for the last bit of finals, I guess having set her up by the ASI one does then principally look forwards at the strip and landing point for round out/flare etc. [My Jodel years ago had a stall warning tab operating a squeaker, set above the stall of course, and one had an excellent aural speed cum effective AofA input whilst concentrating one's vision out front. I always liked that feature.]

I'd considered something simple & similar would be safer for the Rans, but the leading edge of the Rans wing is an Ali tube which wouldn't take kindly to having a hole for a tab switch hacked into it.
However if anyone has some other simple solution I'd be happy to try it.

mike hallam

Mike,

I'm about to do some flight testing on somebody else's S6 at the start of what's likely to be a slightly protracted mod approval process that I'm helping him with.

As part of that I'm going to be doing an ASI calibration against GPS (using the BMAA's method, which I've done before on probably 20 or so assorted aeroplanes).


It would be interesting to see how his compares to yours, and I'd be happy to fly an ASI calbration for you.

I'm not sure how coherent your owners community is for the type, but I imagine that you're at the centre of it. It really wouldn't be that hard to collectively build a sensible operators manual for the type, built upon this information (and probably using another type's manual as a template) and you'd be doing something genuinely useful for the safety of the owners community you're in.

Ignoring the regulations for a moment, in my opinion, it really doesn't matter if the ASI reads badly out, so long as it's consistent, AND YOU KNOW WHAT THE ERRORS ARE. BMAA policy, which I agree with (but I would I suppose) is that homebuilts all have the ASIs calibrated against GPS, and the errors placarded - so long as you know correctly: Vs, Va, Vf, Vne, Vref, Vx in IAS, and the ASI doesn't hit the stops anywhere between Vs and Vne, that's all fine. Checking all this, as I said, takes 60-90 minutes in the air, and maybe an hour of number crunching on the ground and is not unsafe to do.

But, the LAA is in my opinion wrong in the advice they've given you. Lots of aeroplanes in this class will particularly show a significant and worsening underread between 1.3Vs and Vs. This means that if you multiply Vs(IAS) by 1.3 you could in reality be flying well below 1.3Vs which particularly in an aeroplane that light and draggy could well just lead to an accident.

G

[Momoe]

They're not called mainwheels for nothing, I'm ex Super-cub and Auster although have some 152/172 time.
I can understand why the 3 degree approach is favoured by some, however my preference was always for a steeper approach with a gradual round out to get me over the hedge at the right speed - comparatively easy with a draggy Cub or Auster admittedly.
However, the 152 and 172 carry speed better, (esp. a loaded 172) and speed control is more difficult, for a tyro it's difficult to get speed control right along with everything else and erring on the 'safe' side is inevitable.

Correct speed control is the key and a good hold off too, the other thing is NOT to get fixated on landing on every approach. I had a good instructor who always made me go around if it wasn't right, didn't b*ll*ck me but explained what was wrong and how to make it right - as he said you only get charged for landing, you can go round for free!

[mad_jock]

for a tyro it's difficult to get speed control right

Its is if they are chasing the needles.

Once you get them to look out the window its very simple.

[lenhamlad]

Its is if they are chasing the needles.

As a recently qualified PPL that is exactly what I did a couple of weeks back. Bit of a porpoise but got it down. In hindsight I should have made an early decision to go around instead of fannying around, to use one of your technical phrases.

[mad_jock]

:ok: you can use it as much as you like.

It does convey so many issues in one simple phrase.

[Andy H]

Slightly off-thread, but I am quite interested in Ghengis' suggestions that the RANS community work together to devise a usable POH for the S6. It will be difficult as there are so many variations of the type (different wings, engines, undercarriage, weight, etc) but I am sure it is doable and I'd be keen to participate if Mike H wants to get something going.
Andy

[Wardie73]

Flying 1 | Flickr - Photo Sharing! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/71954055@N02/7794155532/in/photostream)

This photo was taken by myself while my instructor flew the landing. Rolling out onto final at Kidlington, due to traffic it was high & fast. We landed around the midway point & as we turned to vacate the runway, I looked over my shoulder to see the following aircraft perform a go around. :D

[Contacttower]

I was "checked out" in June in a DA-42, so I could be insured to flight test a modification on it. The instructor was a nice fellow, who I'm going to presume had a training regime of a more recent style than mine. He was intent that I should land the plane very flat, just about three pointing it on. I found it very challenging to touchdown in and aircraft which was not ready to be on the ground yet. I did not get a landing as smooth as my personal standards would like to see doing it his way. But, to get the okay, I did things his way. Once off on my own doing the testing, I reverted to my way of doing things, which is to keep it in the air, until it wanted to settle on. It landed beautifully every time - and much less rattling and shaking from the rather long nose strut up front.

Pilot DAR I've never flown the DA42 but having examined one up close it looks like it has very little tail clearance at the back, could that have been the reason for the instructor not wanting much of a flare? How easy would it be to strike the tail? Just something I've always wondered about the aircraft...

[mad_jock]

Thats certainly not high!!!

Wee bit fast but nothing stupid still in the white arc.

[Contacttower]

I'm sure most on here have landed off worse...

In the whole speed vs. attitude debate, and which is the most important factor for getting right in the landing it seems to me that there is nothing wrong with arriving fast provided one has enough runway to lose the speed and then select the right attitude. I mean one flies an ILS down to 200ft faster normally than one would if approaching in visually (or at least that is what I was taught...) with the assumption being that a runway with an ILS will be so long for a light aircraft that it doesn't matter. Similarly it is quite correct to land well beyond the threshold at a busy airport with a 3000m runway if that means you minimise your occupancy time by getting closer to an exit.

The nose wheels get broken when people arrive too fast at short runways and rather than go around try and force the aircraft to land in a flatter attitude than is correct.

[mad_jock]

I wouldn't say that i would say that its when they arrive to fast in ground effect then fanny about. Bleed your speed off outside ground effect and wait to you start to sink and you will be fine. Appart from anything else it takes longer in ground effect to get rid of the excess.

And I am quite the oppersite when flying an ILS everything is cock on and visual approaches are the ones you come steaming in on.

[Booglebox]

I think that teaching people how to recover from a nosewheel-first bounce is very important. I have been very lucky in that all my instructors have been excellent.
A couple of years ago I landed a C172 at EGSR which has a pretty narrow runway - and I hadn't flown a 172 for a while. It also had the old-fashioned ASI where the difference between 40 and 80 kts is about 2mm of needle travel, and it's only really possible to read the speed to an accuracy of about 5kts. These factors caused me to (gently-ish) land on the nosewheel, and bounce slightly.
I applied back stick to stop the next bounce, and made a second landing on the mainwheels about 3 seconds later - no harm done.
Bounces are going to happen. If people are trained to deal with them, far fewer nosewheels are going to be broken! :cool:

[Big Pistons Forever]

I think that teaching people how to recover from a nosewheel-first bounce is very important. I have been very lucky in that all my instructors have been excellent.

These factors caused me to (gently-ish) land on the nosewheel, and bounce slightly.
I applied back stick to stop the next bounce, and made a second landing on the mainwheels about 3 seconds later - no harm done.
Bounces are going to happen. If people are trained to deal with them, far fewer nosewheels are going to be broken! :cool:

You made the correct recovery, but to actually touch nose wheel first as apposed to the proper tail low landing, the attitude of the aircraft had to be much lower then it should be. This is quite a serious error. The problem is that metal is hardly ever bent on the first touch of the nosewheel it is the second or third one that does the damage. That is why I want my PPL students to immediately go around if they feel the nosewheel touch before the mains. For any low time pilot a nosewheel first hit means you have seriously got this landing wrong, the safest thing is to just go to full power, and come around for another go. If everyone did this I bet their would be a lot fewer aircraft with bent nosewheels and wrinkled firewalls.

[STC]

When in Canada it never ceased to amaze me, the number of Cessnas with the wrong prop installed.

[Crash one]

When in Canada it never ceased to amaze me, the number of Cessnas with the wrong prop installed.

Prob because Cessna have run out of the right ones sending them all to UK:D

[Pace]

That is why I want my PPL students to immediately go around if they feel the nosewheel touch before the mains. For any low time pilot a nosewheel first hit means you have seriously got this landing wrong, the safest thing is to just go to full power, and come around for another go. If everyone did this I bet their would be a lot fewer aircraft with bent nosewheels and wrinkled firewalls.

The reason pilots do this is once they are down they think they are down and try to stop!
The Seneca is a lovely aircraft to land! Flat land it or worse land on the nosewheel and you will get the famous Seneca porpoise or wheelbarrow and she is a cow to land.
The aircraft starts to bounce around the nosewheel, has a mind of its own and the bounces intensify to the point that the nosewheel will collapse.

I was in such an aircraft right seating a pilot who did just that into Lydd and became an unwilling passenger with no knowledge or skills on how to stop it.

Going around while an excellent way out of the situation does not teach you to deal with the situation. Dealing with the situation is important.

Applying power and pulling back into a rotation position will stop the bounces and place the aircraft in the correct situation to resettle onto the runway.

Ok minimal runway and you cannot afford to be fiddling around with runway length vanishing but on a half decent runway there is no need to go around.
There is a need to understand and to be able to handle the aircraft.

How not to get in that situation in the first place?

A lot is poor trimming so pilots come in nose heavy, do not flare properly and as such arrive flat or on the nose wheel.

Trim the aircraft correctly on final! Coming into very short final add more trim so there is a slight forward pressure required to maintain the glide.
Do not be a passenger to your aircraft fly it and there is no need to land flat or on the nose or to go around :ok:

[Genghis the Engineer]

Slightly off-thread, but I am quite interested in Ghengis' suggestions that the RANS community work together to devise a usable POH for the S6. It will be difficult as there are so many variations of the type (different wings, engines, undercarriage, weight, etc) but I am sure it is doable and I'd be keen to participate if Mike H wants to get something going.
Andy

You're all very welcome to my help - I've not written a POH for about 5 years and the practice would do me good.

G

[Contacttower]

A lot is poor trimming so pilots come in nose heavy, do not flare properly and as such arrive flat or on the nose wheel.

Good point Pace. I catch myself coming in without enough back trim from time to time and while I always land mains first on aircraft that have very heavy elevators anyway, like the Seneca, the lack of trim causes a tendency to de-rotate too quickly and bring the nosewheel down very firmly onto the ground rather than gently lowering it.

[cumulusrider]

Try landing a big modern glider 10knts too fast. A combination of low drag, long wings in ground effect and relativly high mass will put you through the upwind hedge. You have to get it right as you dont get a second chance.

[Pace]

You have to get it right as you dont get a second chance.

Cumulus Rider

Can you not just go around for a second go like the rest of us :E ? Or if all fails pull the ballistic chute system? :ugh:
Sorry being naughty again :(

[mikehallam]

Actually there are passable POH already available on the web for the Rans S6 ES and the S6-116. So no owner should be lacking. Their build manual and comprehensive parts list are also excellent refence tomes.
I have copies on file, but don't have their web addresses to hand.

If anyone's desperate PM me & I'll e-mail a copy.
{mikehallam@btinternet dot com}

The problem already discussed above is that the S6 is not one single 'plane but a whole family of models with quite different characteristics, from early microlight through to light aircraft. Engines, e.g. Rotax 503, 582, Jabiru, R912.

The wing too has several sizes long, short, intermediate, plus pull-on & conventional fabric. And (AFIK) has different areas in the UK with bigger ailerons to meet microlight requirements.
Trims are bungee, manual tab and more.
Nose & tail wheel.
Different tails & tail-plane AofA settings can vary too.

The lighter models have a much lower stall <38 mph, but the -116 with 912 is nearly 60 mph clean.

So really there's no such thing as "an S6", it's been around a long time and updates, market requirements and customers' needs have made it so varied.

It's a good roomy, honest machine, no BS, great performance for the money & a credit to the US designer. [Was that Randy Schlitter himself or was he a wise enough entrepreneur to commission the design ?].

My interest and gathered knowledge has really grown from owning the older, delightful tail wheel microlight Rans S4. RansMail grew as a spin off from that, then RansTips. In fact I only bought the S6 for a bit more speed !

[Big Pistons Forever]

Going around while an excellent way out of the situation does not teach you to deal with the situation. Dealing with the situation is important.



Dealing with the situation is important, but I think recognizing the impending nosewheel first arrival and fixing it before it occurs is IMO more important. My experience with teaching low time pilots is that if they lack the ability to recognize the aircraft attitude in the flare is going to result in a nosewheel first touchdown then it not very probable that they are suddenly going to display the skill to gracefully transition the kaboing of the first hit of the nosewheel into a nice tail down touchdown without in the best case a big balloon and an ugly smash down on mains or in the worst case a second insufficient flare, a second nosewheel first touchdown, and a real potential for damage to the aircraft.

Far better IMHO to simply go around and sort out a second better approach to a normal landing. Usually the whole problem started with a rushed or a misjudged too high/too close approach, something that is not unexpected and completely understandable with low time pilots.

[Pace]

BPF

The person I right seated in the Seneca was An experienced pilot yet seemed unable to be anything but an unwilling passenger to the intensifying bucks the aircraft was making.
To me it shows something lacking in training that a pilot gets in a situation slightly out of normal and fails to know what to do.
A go around with a bucking aircraft goes against all your instincts which is to stop.
Whether a student has the wherewithal to identify that they have actually landed flat or on the nose is another question.
The answer is to train pilots not to land flat and correct trimming is part of that.
The go around is part of the technique to rectify the situation but not needed in its entirety to me it's back to the principal of training aircraft driving rather than handling .
Anyway I am not an instructor

[Genghis the Engineer]

Actually there are passable POH already available on the web for the Rans S6 ES and the S6-116. So no owner should be lacking. Their build manual and comprehensive parts list are also excellent refence tomes.
I have copies on file, but don't have their web addresses to hand.

If anyone's desperate PM me & I'll e-mail a copy.
{mikehallam@btinternet dot com}

The problem already discussed above is that the S6 is not one single 'plane but a whole family of models with quite different characteristics, from early microlight through to light aircraft. Engines, e.g. Rotax 503, 582, Jabiru, R912.

The wing too has several sizes long, short, intermediate, plus pull-on & conventional fabric. And (AFIK) has different areas in the UK with bigger ailerons to meet microlight requirements.
Trims are bungee, manual tab and more.
Nose & tail wheel.
Different tails & tail-plane AofA settings can vary too.

The lighter models have a much lower stall <38 mph, but the -116 with 912 is nearly 60 mph clean.

So really there's no such thing as "an S6", it's been around a long time and updates, market requirements and customers' needs have made it so varied.

It's a good roomy, honest machine, no BS, great performance for the money & a credit to the US designer. [Was that Randy Schlitter himself or was he a wise enough entrepreneur to commission the design ?].

My interest and gathered knowledge has really grown from owning the older, delightful tail wheel microlight Rans S4. RansMail grew as a spin off from that, then RansTips. In fact I only bought the S6 for a bit more speed !

mike.

It's do-able, but the reality will be a basic manual with appendices specific to each airframe - which is how for-example the X'Air manual works.

But the fact is, any aeroplane should have a useable POH, with numbers (operating speeds, stall speed, Vne, TODR/LDR) that are correct for that aeroplane. Okay, I can accept that back in the 1930s things just weren't like that, but there really has been no excuse through the history of the S6.

Indeed, CS-VLA (which used to be JAR-VLA), and BCAR Section S both require it.

Downloading stuff off the web that may or may not be appropriate to the individual aeroplane, and in reality probably isn't, is hardly the way to do things in my opinion. LAA should have been ensuring an appropriate manual on every airframe.

It need not be a long and complex document - in reality it can probably be 20 pages + appendices to hold the engine manual, prop manual, etc. but it still should be there.

G

[Pace]

In the whole speed vs. attitude debate, and which is the most important factor for getting right in the landing it seems to me that there is nothing wrong with arriving fast provided one has enough runway to lose the speed

This maybe slightly controversial but speed has nothing to do with landing all to do with stopping distance and other factors.
While we like to land just on the stall with a slow a speed as possible it is a misconception to attach speed above the stall and landing.

The Citation that had control problems and landed way too fast into Edinburgh.
Had a touchdown speed shown by radar of over 200 kts! surprisingly they stopped on the airfield :E when the normal VREF is around 105???
If you were good enough you could land your PA28 at cruise speed!
The problem being that at those speeds the wing is still flying so I stress the if you were good enough ;)
It is technically incorrect to attach speed to landing in that way and yes I am being pedantic before BPF jumps down my throat :(

[fattony]

If you were good enough you could land your PA28 at cruise speed!


I'm confused by that. I don't doubt you're right but I can't see how it's done...unless a nosewheel first (or, at the very least, flat) landing. Surely at cruise the aircraft would be flying with a very low AOA or, if without power, a nose down attitude?

I'm not going to try it - I'm clearly not good enough - just interested in how it might be done.

[Contacttower]

You would need a very shallow approach angle for a start...

[mad_jock]

You can do it.

In the commercial world its sometimes called a drive on. Quite alot of flap zero landings will be like this with just a whisker of nose up with zero flare when you land if not 3 points.

It needs serious amounts of runway and really shag's the gear on heavier types. The tyres are landing at 50-100knts over what they normally do and the amount of breaking they would have to do would normally over heat them and blow the tyre fuses.

TP's arn't to bad because of the straight wing profiles which means less of a range of speeds for stall between clean and max flap. And the fact we can use tons of reverse to slow the cow down.

[24Carrot]

I suspect you also need a hard runway.

On a bumpy grass runway you surely want the nose wheel up as much as possible from touch down onwards, which means you want to be as slow as possible at touch down.

[Big Pistons Forever]

BPF

The person I right seated in the Seneca was An experienced pilot yet seemed unable to be anything but an unwilling passenger to the intensifying bucks the aircraft was making.
To me it shows something lacking in training that a pilot gets in a situation slightly out of normal and fails to know what to do.
A go around with a bucking aircraft goes against all your instincts which is to stop.
Anyway I am not an instructor

You raise a few good points here. The first is the propensity for nose wheel first landings vary by type. The Seneca, especially the early Seneca 1's, without the elevator bob weight, are easy to land nose wheel first especially with full flap and a forward C of G. You can get into the situation where even the application of full up elevator in the flare will not stop a 3 point or even slight nosewheel first touchdown. When I check pilots out in the aircraft this is one area I pay a lot of attention to. Personally if the runway is long I make every landing with only first stage flap as it makes it much easier to flare and I also try to manage the load so that the C of G is aft of the mid range.

However the original poster was talking about an accident in a C 152 an aircraft an aircraft where it is very easy to achieve a tail low touchdown. In addition by the time you get to be PIC of a aircraft in the class of a Seneca you will normally bring considerably more flying experience to the table then your average person flying a C 152. From my point of view it is reasonable to expect the response to a problem to vary according to the experience level of the pilot. For a Seneca level of experience not being able to fix an inadvertent nosewheel first touchdown by being able to transition to a the proper touch down attitude in the flare represents an unacceptably low level of skills. For ab initio student or a low hour PPL the case is not as cut and dried. Yes they should be able to fix the situation but the penalty for getting it wrong is going to be bent metal, as is well demonstrated by the accident statistics. There is no penalty for just going around and pretty much invariably the next landing will be a proper tail low one because the pilot will do a better jib of flying the approach after the wakeup call of the nosewheel hit.

One of the reasons we seem to take opposite sides on many issues is that you approach the level of what could be called "mandatory" skills from what to me is the level of an experienced pilot. This approach is certainly correct for those pilots but does IMO address the reality for low timers. For them I feel strongly that a preventative approach to difficult situations is the usually the best response, but their actions will gradually turn more proactive as they gain experience.

The accident stats for nosewheel first landings is fact. Telling pilots to not do that and if they do transition to the proper nose high attitude while in the flare is what we teach now and it is not working. Therefore I have come to the conclusion that a new approach is need and so I teach my ab initio students and new low time PPL's to go around after any nosewheel first touchdown.

However don't get me wrong. We are both in total agreement that every pilot should aspire to attaining and maintaining a high level of handling skills. The difference I think is that unlike you, I have to deal with inexperienced pilots and so I am maybe more cognizant of the art of the possible when teaching low time pilots, as well as knowing that good advanced flying skills only happen after a pilot has mastered the fundamental basic handling skills and so those should be the emphasis during ab initio training

[mikehallam]

G the E,

Whilst I substantially agree, my mention of POH via web sources doesn't necessarily invalidate them. The -116 POH I found are on Rans inc 'paper' and contain a whole load of very useful information which any owner should have and carefully study. I think others I've seen are also based on the makers own performance and care notes.

Of course as the LAA were (presumably) required to impose different UK CAA standards of weight, balance and Vne to imported kits, one needs to pick out differences seen in LAA on line TADs too.

Rans USA had to make special kits if they wished to sell in the relatively limited UK market. But seeing as their original designed 'baby' was dumbed down over here, one can understand why Rans USA haven't done a POH make-over for the British.

mike.

BTW made an error earlier -116 clean stall is just under 50 statute mph ias.

[Pilot DAR]

You can do it.

In the commercial world its sometimes called a drive on. Quite alot of flap zero landings will be like this with just a whisker of nose up with zero flare when you land if not 3 points

Attempting this in a tricycle GA aircraft would be very foolish. Though I have no knowledge of how it is done in large jets, I do know that they have spoilers, which have the effect of instantly removing a lot of lift upon contact with the ground, and thus preventing a bounce.

You will find that for many GA tricycle aircraft. the nosewheel will be lower than the mains in cruise flight. Contacting the nosewheel first is bad, doing it at a higher speed is worse - that's how this whole discussion began.

The flight manuals tell you to reduce the speed, and raise the nose for landing, and that's really what you should be doing!

[Pace]

Pilot Dar

This was used to correct an assumption (incorrect) that speed and landing are intertwined.
No one is suggesting you land a PA28 at cruise speed obviously you use a reference of approx 1.3 times the full flap stall if that is the flap setting you are using and hopefully touch down at or near the stall.
Would I use that speed battling a surface wind of 40 kts? sit there holding off with a strong crosswind component?
No I would drive it on and carry more speed than 1.3 times the stall.
It is true that a Citation 2 straight winged with control problems landed at Edinburgh with a radar estimated touch down speed of over 200 kts surprisingly they got stopped within the confines of the airport :ok:
It was a 24/7 jet and I knew the pilot well! NO Spoilers!
Twice the normal speed and way above the tire limiting speeds so how did he do it?
So not recommending anyone does fast landings but purely dispelling a belief that landing is speed related, pedantic but not totally true.
Landing flat itself is not an instant porpoise exercise either its what the pilot does or does not do that makes it so.

Pace

[mad_jock]

Dar you can do it in bigger things its not pretty and its only as a last resort.

To be honest i really don't like flapless on my type its 130 knts plus and pretty horrible with zero flare. we don't have any gimiks just two big fans. Bigger things with swept wings its well over 200knts due to slats and all that stuff.

[Pace]

Let me try and explain this better! Forget flaps for simplicity. We approach at 1.3 times the stall speed flapless.
(A)Coming in slightly faster and at a flatter angle we chop the throttles flare hold and wait for the tires to touch.
We may hold and pull back until the aircraft starts to stop flying and sinks onto the runway.
(B)We do the same except this time we actually touch down before the aircraft has stopped flying.
(C)Next time round we add 10 kts! We can do the same IE hold off using up loads of runway till the speed bleeds off and touch down at or near the stall.
We could fly it on 10 kts faster! Judging the tires proximity to the surface.
In part B of the first example the aircraft is flying, in C the aircraft is flying so we have literally flown the aircraft onto the runway.
We go around again this time 20 kts fast and do the same! The difference will be that the faster we go the less input to the controls for the same effect.
As long as the aircraft is descending and we stop the descent at just above the runway and reduce the descent to a fraction the aircraft will land.
We will take up a lot of runway but it will land.
You can stall onto the runway or you can fly onto the runway at what speed you fly onto the runway is irrelevant as you are flying onto it! But the faster you go the more sensitive and fine the inputs!
You could of course follow the principal at altitude for fun. Fly the aircraft clean at the maximum gear extended speed and descend to a pre determined altitude. You will have a descent rate to that altitude which you will reduce as you approach it till the aircraft is barely descending as you level at the altitude ! You then pitch the nose slightly and Bingo you are there :D But maybe doing 140 kts. Instead of air at altitude imagine its a runway!

Pace

[Pilot DAR]

Well... in theory, yes, you could bring an aircraft neatly into contact with the surface at any speed. However, in practicality, and much more so with lighter, slower aircraft, the wheel spin up forces become a much greater factor. It is not possible to take an airplane from being airborne, to being in contact with the surface without encountering, and having to overcome the drag force associated with the contact. That drag force will turn itself into a pitch change, and thus the "perfect" contact is not possible, as the pitch changed at the moment of contact, and no pilot is good enough to anticipate and overcome that in anything other than a "normal" speed landing.

So that small pitch change upsets the aircraft, the pilot corrects, and the whole bounce is set up. Once started, near impossible to arrest, other than to go around.

Perhaps it's time to present this video again (though I know many have seen it)....

Bad Landing - YouTube

[Pace]

Pilot Dar

You are one person I usually do see eye to eye on ;)

That video was really bad flying technique and not surprised at the result!
But hold to my statement:E
He pitched up then pushed the nose down which then made for a nose landing then on top of that failed to stop the wheelbarrowing! With that speed he would not even have needed engine power to have arrested the wheelbarrowing but could purely have pitched and resettled.

I Will demonstrate on a touch and go on a decent runway!
If I wreck the plane you buy the beer ;)



Pace

[pulse1]

There is a nose wheel accident to a C152 in almost every month in the AAIB bulletins. It is interesting that this particular one should generate 5 pages of discussions.

The video clip shows what must be the classic cause of most of them, putting the stick forward after ballooning during the flare. Much more likely if the speed is too high.

Even the professional can do this. In my last jumpseat ride before 9/11 in a B737, the FO did exactly the same landing at Gatwick. We hit the ground very hard on the mains and nose wheel together. My business colleague sitting in the passenger cabin thought that they had allowed me to land it.

[Maoraigh1]

A cockpit view of a fast approach in a Jodel DR1050 tailwheel aircraft. The ASI at the top left is in knotts. (Now deleted from videos section)
06Clghh329g

[Big Pistons Forever]

Let me try and explain this better! Forget flaps for simplicity. We approach at 1.3 times the stall speed flapless.
(A)Coming in slightly faster and at a flatter angle we chop the throttles flare hold and wait for the tires to touch.
We may hold and pull back until the aircraft starts to stop flying and sinks onto the runway.
(B)We do the same except this time we actually touch down before the aircraft has stopped flying.
(C)Next time round we add 10 kts! We can do the same IE hold off using up loads of runway till the speed bleeds off and touch down at or near the stall.
We could fly it on 10 kts faster! Judging the tires proximity to the surface.
In part B of the first example the aircraft is flying, in C the aircraft is flying so we have literally flown the aircraft onto the runway.
We go around again this time 20 kts fast and do the same! The difference will be that the faster we go the less input to the controls for the same effect.
As long as the aircraft is descending and we stop the descent at just above the runway and reduce the descent to a fraction the aircraft will land.
We will take up a lot of runway but it will land.
You can stall onto the runway or you can fly onto the runway at what speed you fly onto the runway is irrelevant as you are flying onto it! But the faster you go the more sensitive and fine the inputs!
You could of course follow the principal at altitude for fun. Fly the aircraft clean at the maximum gear extended speed and descend to a pre determined altitude. You will have a descent rate to that altitude which you will reduce as you approach it till the aircraft is barely descending as you level at the altitude ! You then pitch the nose slightly and Bingo you are there :D But maybe doing 140 kts. Instead of air at altitude imagine its a runway!

Pace

Touching the runway at much higher than normal airspeeds will by definition result in a nosewheel first touch down on almost every light aircraft. No matter how well this is handled it will always be wrong.

The only acceptable touchdown speeds for GA aircraft are those which result in the mainwheels touching first with the nosewheel a few inches off the runway at the high speed end and with the tail of the aircraft a few inches off the runway at the low end. In practice for you average light aircraft this result in approximately at best a 15 knot spread from the lowest to highest safe touchdown speed.

To imply that the aircraft can under any circumstances touch down at a higher speed is IMO spreading a dangerous fallacy and does a disservice to this forum

Theoretically you point that you could arrive at a safe touchdown speed irrespective of the approach speed is correct. I guess you could do a VNE dive to a 100 feet above the ground and well short of the runway and then fly level until the speed had dissipated enough to safely land, but it is like many things you could do in an aircraft, manifestly stupid.

Practically holding the proper approach speed is the best way to set up for a safe landing and is why (I hope) you maintain a briefed ref speed on final with a stabilized approach on the jet you fly.

Yesterday afternoon I was up with a new student I am training for the Canadian instructor rating. We were doing circuits and it was a wonderful still evening with air like glass. He was doing reasonably well but there was a bit of pitching up and down on final. For the last landing I told him to settle the pitch attitude for the 60 kt desired approach speed, set the power and trim and then not touch the controls until 50 feet AGL. The aircraft descended on a perfectly stable flight path and when he took over reduced power a slow flare to the landing attitude resulted in a perfect touchdown. As we were rolling out his comment was "WOW that was the easiest landing I have ever made" :cool:

I love watching the truly great pilots at work. No flash no muss and the controls hardly seem to move, yet the aircraft almost if by magic smoothly and exactly goes where it needs to go, whether it is an aerobatic manoever, flying close formation, sliding down the ILS, or yes even landing a C 152.

The best example I have seen of this is the in cockpit videos (On You tube now) of Bob Hoover flying his aerobatic routine.

I think at a fundamental level the source of our disagreement resides in what we think is important. You have posted you think it is the ability to aggressively "wring out" the aircraft. I think it is in fact the exact opposite, the ability and desire and discipline to always be so far ahead of the aircraft that you are always doing the hardest thing of all; making flying look really easy.....

[Pace]

You have posted you think it is the ability to aggressively "wring out" the aircraft

BPF

Have I ? Would you like to copy and paste anything I have said anywhere in any posting where I recommend aggressively doing anything with an aircraft? Infact the opposite!

I started this line of thinking off making a Pedantic point that aircraft can be landed at higher speeds !
Apart from landing in very high winds where you may carry extra speed or flapless I can see very little practical application in doing so!

If you were to do a high speed touch far from being aggressive with the aircraft you would have to be fingertip light.

We were talking armchair theory not any practical need to do so although I can think of a few scenarios?

BFG if you ever got badly iced up and had to land in that state I hope you would not carry the normal speeds and I also hope you had the ability to land off those higher speeds which could be considerably more than your 15 kt spread from the stall?

As with the Citation which landed without spoilers at Edinburugh at 200 kts it can be done although there are very few instances where you would want to land fast!

I was purely trying to discuss speed and landing in factual terms you try to make it into something else or put words into my mouth which were not said or intended.

If you really believe a single piston can only be landed within a 15 kt spread maximum you are sadly very wrong and you are yourself putting out false unfactual information which itself could be dangerous.

Really think about what you have said with that statement?15 kts spread above the stall? do you really believe that ?

So if an aircraft stalls at 48 kts with full flap it is technically impossible to land it at more than 63 kts :ugh: ???
God help you if you ever had to land a badly iced up aircraft through deice/anti ice failure or bad judgement in a non deiced/anti iced single with those beliefs!

Addendum

The secret probably lies not so much in jets having spoilers but the coupling.
Ie something like the Citation has a large distance between the mains and the nose meaning that even a slight nose up angle will take the nose clear.
Longer larger jets even better.
Looking at single pistons something like a Saratoga would do better at a fast landing than the 150 which is fairly short space between the nose gear and mains meaning a larger pitch change to take the nose clear.

Pace

[Pilot DAR]

So if an aircraft stalls at 48 kts with full flap it is technically impossible to land it at more than 63 kts :ugh: ???
God help you if you ever had to land a badly iced up aircraft

Ah, but Pace, if it was necessary to land the heavily iced aircraft at the faster speeds, it was most likely because the stall speed had also become much faster due to the weight and aerodynamic effect of the ice. You're back to landing it at 1.3Vs, which is just faster. The plane will react to being stalled at touchdown [more or less] the same - just faster.

Story ('cause I have too many):

I used to haul aircraft engine parts in an old C 182. That was back in the day when I wanted to fly more than I wanted to be careful. It was the boss's plane. So when he told me "Take it easy, she's really heavy this morning", I did. Yup, it took a lot longer and faster to get airborne, so I flew it faster on approach and landing, figuring what was good to get up would be good to get back down. When, upon unloading, I calculated the gross weight I determined that I had been more than 800 pounds overgross. Faster worked, as the stall speed must have been noticably faster in this irresponsible configuration.

Other that the effect of ice, or perhaps being flapsless (or silly overweight), I can't think of a reason to endorse an abnormally fast landing, or even the illusion that a pilot might "experiment". For all the posts I have read about the horrors of going weightless for a few seconds, or the terror of a full flap overshoot etc., those pale in danger compared to fooling around at abnormal speeds on the runway!

[Pace]

Pilot Dar

You know I won't back down on this ; ) obviously loaded with ice the stall speed will be higher. Not quite true you need 1.3 times the stall have you ever covered up the ASI and landed with an AOA indicator : ;
Fact is you will land a heck of a lot faster iced up 1.3 times the iced up stall speed and it's landing faster that we are talking about.
Come to think about it the same is the case at high altitude airfields where your TAS is higher : )
My friend who landed the 24/7 jet at 200 kts was not iced up but had control problems where that speed was as low as he could go!
Don't think he even burst the tires.
Thinking about it I am sure fast landings are easier with a large distance from the mains to the nose wheel! Less pitch to take the nose clear !!
Anyway I wish you and BPF the best on this one and hope no hard feelings between us ; ) I am not in reality that far apart from BPF as he thinks

Pace

[24Carrot]

Ah, but Pace, if it was necessary to land the heavily iced aircraft at the faster speeds, it was most likely because the stall speed had also become much faster due to the weight and aerodynamic effect of the ice. You're back to landing it at 1.3Vs, which is just faster. The plane will react to being stalled at touchdown [more or less] the same - just faster.

I get your main point, but is that entirely true?

If the ice is just being heavy, then yes, the critical stall angle is the same and you can touch down at the new stall speed with the same nose wheel clearance. So in this case it is "more or less the same, just faster".

But if the ice has had an aerodynamic effect, it has most likely reduced the critical angle of attack, (the same for both wings, if you are lucky) and you may not be able to avoid a nose down landing, at any speed.

Which makes me even more scared by ice than I was before, which is saying something!

[Pace]

24Carrot

I am not sure on this one so maybe someone else can add?

The Seneca five which I know well and is approved into icing conditions.
In level flight, in icing and operating the boots the IAS drops from 150 KTS IAS to 128KTS IAS. (Typical and which I have seen a few times.
That is keeping the boots clean and props anti iced.
The drop in airspeed is due to ice build up on the remaining airfame.
Flying level at 128 kts IAS instead of 150 IAS will mean the aicraft will fly level with a higher AOA. At the increased AOA ice builds behind the boot line under the wing which must change the wing shape.
I am pretty sure a change in wing shape will mean a change in the AOA that the wing stalls meaning that argument will not hold true but I am happy to be corrected ;)
As a small addendum it also depends on ice type clear ice can accumulate unevenly on the wings which will also change wing shape and hence stall AOA but stress I am a practical pilot not an icing Guru:(

Pace

[Big Pistons Forever]

We seemed to have strayed a long way from the start of this thread, a C 152 that suffered damage from a nosewheel first landing. Maybe it is time to start a new thread specifically addressing the issue of ice contamination on wings and the effect it has on AOA and landing attitude......

[mad_jock]

At one with the machine, so therefore not requiring the theory to know what to do.

Bet he is good with all things machinery.

I know a few "forest gumps" machine operators and would never be able to get near there competency handling machinery. One of them operates a huge crane and earth mover. Especially on the earth mover the arm never stops its just like a gymnast doing a floor exercise. And on the crane the bell never goes off. Even when the load v jib out means that it bloody should have.

BUt as you well know Silvaire1 piloting isn't only the handling there is the mental chess game going on all the time. And also people like that when you take them out of the operating enviroment and stick them into another one tend to fall over when there experence doesn't work. Yes the aircraft still fly's on rails but all the other good stuff goes to pot which may end you up in jail in quite alot of the world.

Its teh same with instructors inside there training areas they are the king/queens. Take them outside and they can be as lost and unsecure as a PPL on the QXC.

I will freely admit stick me in a SEP VFR around the london zone and I would be well out of my comfort zone. Even though I would be perfectly happy 2000ft up in CAS flying IFR.

[TomNH]

I'm not competent to engage in the BPF/DAR/MJ/Pace debate but can perhaps offer it fuel with my experiences as a current student.

I'm a PPL student in my 40s. Over the last two years I've managed 23 hours in a 152, just over one of which is solo. I also race and teach in sailing boats (and hold an embarrassment of instructional paper) which competes for time, money and decent weather.

I chose my instructor, who was not the first I tried, because I liked their style of practical instruction. I believe people learn by making mistakes and that as an instructor you ought to brief (and debrief) your student well but ultimately let them make the biggest mistakes that your skills allow you to underwrite. That's not to dis learning from other's mistakes - the AAIB (& MIAB) reports are regular reading - but memories of your own mistakes are rather more vivid. Anyway, I'd like to think that it takes one to know one, and I recognised a good teacher. I subsequently found out that they are an experienced ATPL and examiner who flies a tail wheel biplane (not that I can think of a trike biplane) for fun - which, from what I now know, probably marks them out as one of the good guys.

To my experience: I have had to do approaches without the ASI to drive home the feel of the correct AOA; I have been drilled in going around if anything looks or feels wrong; and I have been coached in how to apply power to manage a balloon on the understanding that it was not to be done solo. The only time I have had a proper dressing down was on a fouled up approach (post 1st solo, but dual) that saw me push (only a very little) whilst over the threshold. We went around, without touching, and I got an earful until I needed to call downwind :uhoh:

I wonder if the problem is not what is being taught (although I'm sure the quality of this varies) but the complacency that comes when people start to feel competent (long before they really are) and try to mange the balloon/fast/generally crap approach rather than go around?

Surely just like sailing the most dangerous time is when inexperienced people are qualified to go off on their own without supervision or debriefs? Whilst this is essential to build the experience that will prevent disasters there's an element of luck, combined with the right attitude, in getting the experiences in before needing to call on them to avert a disaster (or bent nose wheel). The attitude thing is a whole other story: the old adage that "some people have thousands of hours/miles whilst others have the same hour/mile thousands of times" holds true on boats too.

[Big Pistons Forever]

TomNH

It sounds like when in deciding which instructor of yours was a keeper, you chose wisely :ok:

I too cover up the airspeed indicator on final, a practice that unfortunately doesn't seem very common, but is a great way to force students to fly attitude and not just chase the ASI.

I think your comment about complacency is interesting. While I think there is some element of that I think the deeper issue is the failure of instructors to inculcate the automatic instinctual response to the danger areas in flying.

So for the landing case, for me, that is to


1) At 200 feet AGL do a sanity check on how the approach is going. It doesn't take a lot of experience to know when things are not going well and the habit of a automatic verbalized late final re-assessment helps break the potential accident chain for those gradually going from bad to worse approaches.

2) never push the control wheel when the aircraft is close to the ground

3) for new pilots to go around if an inadvertant nosewheel first touchdown occurs.

Anyway it is great to get an opinion from the students point of view. A few of us old farts do tend to get wrapped up in esoteric theoretical discussions that while interesting to us, are probably are less so to the majority of the readers of this thread :O

[Gertrude the Wombat]

I too cover up the airspeed indicator on final, a practice that unfortunately doesn't seem very common
No instructor ever did that to me, until I asked one to, many years after getting my licence, having read yet another report of someone killing themselves following an ASI failure. And this was before AF 447.

[Pace]

A few of us old farts do tend to get wrapped up in esoteric theoretical discussions that while interesting to us, are probably are less so to the majority of the readers of this thread

Tom

The above is true we like to challenge each other and also established principals.
There are some very experienced and knowledgable Pilots! You mentioned Pilot Dar BPF and MJ who all have very sound advice ignore the Pace guy on your list! very suspect character with dubious flying methods ;)

Pace

[mad_jock]

Sound more than competent to be debating for me :ok:

Sometimes a students perspective is what the debate actually needs.

Thats the good thing about people with outside avaition experence in both teaching and application. You can point to examples in your own field of experence which are more than valid for flying as well.

Pace does OK as well as long as you don't listen to him about stallling and holding the attitude :p

[lenhamlad]

Pace does OK as well as long as you don't listen to him about stallling and holding the attitude

Does that fall into the "fannying around" category?

[TomNH]

Thanks for the kind words. I should add that I, for one, find these debates enormously useful. They may help with the exams but will certainly help with my understanding.

Trying to get my head around this debate has made me think long and hard about AOA vs pitch attitude and even simply what landing really means. If the plane is in contact with the ground but has flying speed and enough kinetic energy to get back to 50' has it landed?

[Jan Olieslagers]

[[off-topic]](not that I can think of a trike biplane)
Then search for the world's only jet-powered biplane, the PZL M15. Closer to everyday reality, there's a Belgian designed microlight too: the Aviasud Mistral.

[Pilot DAR]

I, for one, find these debates enormously useful.

Me too. Though I don't always see eye to eye with some of the content, it is all important. It reminds us that we must always think for ourselves, and consider all the available infomation. Sometimes a post contains information I did not have, and it makes me think more.

[mad_jock]

There are some highly experenced pilots that maintain the plane hasn't landed until you have shut down.

Most conditions this is a bit over kill but in some you are flying the aircraft using into wind control inputs depending on which way you are pointing etc while taxing.

One of the common mistakes on landing is to stop flying even though the aircraft is on the ground. Which leads to a sudden lose of directional controll as the into wind roll is released to early and the aircraft weather cocks into wind.

[India Four Two]

No instructor ever did that to me, until I asked one to, many years after getting my licence, having read yet another report of someone killing themselves following an ASI failure. And this was before AF 447.

Gertrude,
A very prudent practice. I've had two real ASI failures (one due to a mud-wasp nest in the pitot and the other due to water in the pitot) and neither was a big deal since I had practiced it before.

Most conditions this is a bit over kill but in some you are flying the aircraft using into wind control inputs depending on which way you are pointing etc while taxing.

mad_jock,
I agree. With nearly a 1000 glider-tows under my belt, a Scout nearly bit me one day when a cross-wind gust lifted one of the main wheels a foot off the ground near the end if the landing run. However, I was still "flying" the aircraft and managed to get the wing down again, without having to resort to a go-around.

[Pace]

A very prudent practice. I've had two real ASI failures (one due to a mud-wasp nest in the pitot and the other due to water in the pitot) and neither was a big deal since I had practiced it before.

I have also had two failures! A small tip which might help and which maybe overlooked is to use the GPS ground speed.
Ok it won't be 100 % reliable as you will need to know the wind component and that will change slightly but it's a good reference should the ASI fail as well as the usual stuff for ASI fail

Pace

[Genghis the Engineer]

I'd regard GPS groundspeed as potentially dangerously misleading for a variety of reasons. Wind being the biggest, effects of slope being the next.

Pitch attitude is your best friend - using the AI if IMC, or the real horizon once VMC, which would be a good idea to be.

If you know that in a given type the pitch attitude and power for a well flown approach, the ASI should, realistically, just be a "nice to have".

G

[Pace]

G

I did say not 100 % reliable Depends on being wind aware and as a backup to the normal failed ASI methods.
There was a near accident at my old airfield where a pilot accidentally knocked off the Pitot while flying IMC. The pitot froze and the airspeed started a fairly quick decline.
The pilot panicked and seeing the ASI head for the stall pushed the nose over into a high speed dive in IMC!
A quick glance at the GPS might of made him
Question the ASI indications!

Pace

[Genghis the Engineer]

Agreed, question the ASI's reliability where it doesn't match other indications.

But the GPS could have been misleading and supported his incorrect actions because it gives speed over the ground and a steep high speed dive wouldn't have given a particularly high speed.

Conversely a GPS could show below Vs in a climb, where for example the aeroplane's around Vx and into wind - a perfectly safe condition.

If the power is about right, and the altimeter / VSI show zero/low rate of climb or descent, even in IMC that's a pretty good indicator that the aeroplane's in a sensible flight condition, even if the ASI says otherwise. Those are standard instrument training of-course, but getting sidetracked from that to start using the GPS strikes me as potentially misleading.

G

[mad_jock]

Qualify that with unless in icing Genghis ;-)

And no lanhamlad Pace isn't the type to fanny around in the stall he flys a paricularly slippery machine for work which has a particualrly high thrust to mass ratio which there has been some discussion in the past on stall recovery in it. To be honest it may very well be the exception that proves the rule. But to all piston pilots apart from maybe the war bird drivers it distracts from the point that to unstall an aircraft you have to lower the AoA away from the critical before you unstall it.

[Pace]

d but has flying speed and enough kinetic energy to get back to 50' has it landed?

Just a clarification other than a massive up draught of air the only thing that will take the aircraft back up to 50 feet intentionally or otherwise is the pilot.
So it's his skills or lack of them which will determine whether the still flying aircraft with bags of potential energy inhand lands on a smooth runway or heads to 50 feet !

Pace

[Big Pistons Forever]

Just a clarification other than a massive up draught of air the only thing that will take the aircraft back up to 50 feet intentionally or otherwise is the pilot.
So it's his skills or lack of them which will determine whether the still flying aircraft with bags of potential energy inhand lands on a smooth runway or heads to 50 feet !

Pace

Or better yet uses their good judgement to avoid arriving at the runway with "bags of potential energy" in the first place :ok:

[Big Pistons Forever]

There are some highly experenced pilots that maintain the plane hasn't landed until you have shut down.

Most conditions this is a bit over kill but in some you are flying the aircraft using into wind control inputs depending on which way you are pointing etc while taxing.

One of the common mistakes on landing is to stop flying even though the aircraft is on the ground. Which leads to a sudden lose of directional controll as the into wind roll is released to early and the aircraft weather cocks into wind.

Also in high winds the landing roll can be the easy part. One of the worst flights I ever had involved landing a C 172 with a 30 + kt wind. The landing was not too hard as the wind was pretty much straight down the runway. The problem was the ramp was at the downwind end of the runway:uhoh:. To get to it I had to backtrack as there was no taxiways. I gave a lot of thought to how I was going to perform the into wind to downwind turn as the aircraft was going to be very vulnerable to an upset when it was part way around the turn. I ended up waiting about 10 minuites staring at the wind sock until there was a brief lull which allowed me to get around, back track the runway and make the turn onto the ramp. It was still pretty scary with the aircraft light on the tires the whole way:\

[Pace]

Or better yet uses their good judgement to avoid arriving at the runway with "bags of potential energy" in the first place

BFG

Here we go again : ) I can think of quite a few situations where I would be very greatful arriving with bags of potential energy but then I will leave the discussion in the name of peace and goodwill to all men : )

Pace

[Big Pistons Forever]

Pace

My reply was not meant as a personal criticism, but rather as a general observation, although rereading it I can now see it sounds like I am having a go at you.

I apologize as that was not my intent.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I just finished reading my e copy of "Pilot" magazine and saw that there was a report on a C 152 landing accident. I thought they where talking about the subject of this thread, but regrettably no, it is for a different earlier accident,

Sadly the theme is so familiar. A series of bounces occur with a major nosewheel first hit leading to a wrecked aircraft. At any time full power could have been applied and the aircraft would have naturally pitched up and then could be flown away :(

[DeltaV]

I gave a lot of thought to how I was going to perform the into wind to downwind turn as the aircraft was going to be very vulnerable to an upset when it was part way around the turn.
Too right. Long ago I broke a prop when I got the inputs for that out-of-wind turn wrong.

[mad_jock]

BPF had a similar situation in a tommy.

The controller had a fire engine sitting by the runway. And sent it down and it turned sideways to provide a windbreak and then taxied up my backside and then skillfully manged to stay abeam to the wind round the corners until I was parked in the lee of a building with ground anchor tie downs.

[Fuji Abound]

I can think of quite a few situations where I would be very greatful arriving with bags of potential energy

Could this be a slogan for a well known type of pill?

[Pace]

Fuji I don't need that stuff :E

One example though I would not recommend a pilot hanging with everything limp on the verge of a complete stall with huge down draughts around a bit of V+++++ in reserve might help the whole flight from becoming a flop and save the day as well as your pride :ok:

Pace

[Piper.Classique]

Been helped to taxi more than once by the fire crew......One on each strut. Never had them use the fire engine as a windbreak though. Cubs are great aircraft, but the brakes are a bit marginal, and downwind crosswind can be a real pain.
Usually involves taking them to the pub afterwards, as well (the fire crew, not the aircraft) :)