Scudrunners

The power handling discussions are interesting so I thought I would start another one.


Do you use power all the way to touch down or do you land with zero power?


I almost always close the throttles fifty feet above the planned touch down point.




I think I probably got into that habit from my DC3 flying days doing off airport landings, so it just naturaslly morphed into all my landings including on the water unless the surface is calm.

Only one aircraft (except for floats and glassy water, gusty conditions always pulled the power entering the gust.) that I landed with power on and that is a CV58 -- if you pulled the power off those big paddle blades would stop you in mid air and you dropped in like a rock. The 640 with the darts and the 440 piston did not have that issue. 

I like to close the throttles on short final, unless I'm doing the pretend soft field landing they ask for sometimes. Other than to prove you can control the throttle while doing it, I don't see why they ask you to do those, they don't want you to go anywhere off pavement. I don't mind doing them though, so I don't question it.

In the Cherokee I almost always carry some power to touch down. It gets very draggy when it gets slow (and I like to land slow) and the stabilator lacks authority especially at forward CG. It's much happier with a touch of power all the way down.

Some aircraft (eg fixed pitch props) have little drag when the power
is off, so pulling it doesn't make much difference.


Some aircraft (eg constant speed props) can have tremendous
drag when the power is off.  The 300/400 series Cessnas are
like that.  So is the Pitts with the 3-blade constant-speed prop.


But that doesn't mean you can't do a power-off approach - it
just means that you have to come in very steeply with the
power off and lots of drag, to maintain airspeed.


While this comes naturally in an aerobatic airplane, your
pax would cry like children in a twin if you tried that.


Note that in my Pitts landing video, it's 20 seconds from power
off to idle on downwind abeam the numbers, to touchdown.

I flew with one of the space shuttle pilots and he was really good at power off landings.

Airbus: sort of. I'd say 50' I bring the power back.
Stinson: mix of both. I usually don't carry enough energy to do a power off wheel landing, so I have about 10-1200rpm.
Blackhawk. Always power on, otherwise it's called an Autorotation.  >:D


I'll report back once I start flying my latest toy. (Another month)

I like to follow the manufacturers recommendations:-

This is for large jets.

So it's flare first then reduce the thrust to idle. The nice thing about doing this is that the thrust is above idle until just prior to touchdown giving you close to instant response if you need thrust for any reason.

Reducing the thrust to idle too soon will delay the time to achieve full thrust and increases the risk of asymmetric thrust leading to control problems.

Eric:

Don't know your background, but did you ever get a chance to fly the T-Bird?  Idled at around 30 percent.  The fuel control unit was rudimentary and the throttle basically controlled a spigot somewhere in the fuel system.  Open it too fast and the engine complained.  Ignore the complaint, and metal started melting.  (;>0)

Jet engines today are much more civilized.

Remember the guy a couple years back that planted a T-bird 800 feet
short of an 8,000 foot runway at CYHM?

I'm sure TC loved him, but he obviously had no idea what he was doing.