Scudrunners

Aerobatics is beautiful type of flying but STOL, for some reason just draws me a lot. I can watch these guys do this all day. I want to try it.

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As long as you don't do it with the brakes!

Brakes on a little airplane are not like
brakes on a car.

You reduce landing distance by

1) minimizing kinetic energy
2) touching down at the correct point

Sure, headwind and uphill helps too, but
that's just gravy and you can't count on it.

I land on a grass strip near Portland, Ont
which is sloped, so you always land uphill
and take off downhill, regardless of wind.

Speaking of that, has anyone flown into
Baker Valley Air Park recently?  Just
north of Arden, Ont ... it's paved, and
quite interesting.

Anyways, back to level fields.  We have
"two four right" at my little airport, which
is a 1200 foot grass strip parallel to the
paved runway.  I keep it mowed like a
putting green.  With a breath of wind
out of the west, I can stop in 500 feet
on it, in just about any light single engine
trainer.  Don't need brakes.

And it goes without saying that fishing
for a greaser just isn't happening with
a short strip landing.  You drop it on
firmly.

It's pretty cool to fly a GA airplane and have it stop in 500-1200 feet regularly... that's the way its suppose to be, right?

Not only GA airplanes are capable of short landings, we regularly landed and stopped the DC3's and Twin Otters in 1000 to 1200 feet with some real heavy loads.

The Twin Otter could be landed and stopped even shorter.

Caitlyn E.

If you look in the CPL flight test guide, there's a formula for approach speed in final. Figure it out using your AFM/POH.. Make sure you use CAS and IAS properly!
Fly the approach with the speed you just figured out aiming slightly short of the threshold especially if you're flying the Floaty McFloatsalot Cessna 172. Flare and touch down like you would a normal landing but because you have the proper amount of kinetic energy, you will land quickly. Once landed, clean up the flaps, pull back on the stick and apply light braking to stop in well under 1000 feet!

Try it out every time you go flying and landing on so called short fields will be a breeze!

That's a pretty impressive display of the physics at play! Thanks for sharing Caitlyn!

When you get used to the Colonel and me giving advice about flying the common theme you will find is we both try and point out that flying an airplane is really not all that exotic.

However a lot of the schools and flight instructors make it seem exotic.

And that is just plain stupid because if they were to teach it as it is.....just another machine designed to be operated by the average person.... flight training would turn out a superior product rather than people who are intimidated by B.S.

Caitlyn E.

how else are brakes on a plane different then brakes on a car?

The brakes on a light single engine
trainer are toys.  Appropriate for a
wagon belonging to a small child.

They don't do very much, except
allow the pilot to damage the tires
by flat-spotting them, if the pilot
panics and tries to apply them when
the aircraft is going too quickly, and
the wing is developing significant lift,
and there is no downforce on the tire.



Brakes on a little airplane should not
really be used to stop it during the
landing rollout.  If you need to use
them for that, you're doing something
seriously wrong.

Brakes on a little airplane are used
to hold it during the runup, and to
turn out of wind.  During taxi ops.

I flew a little taildragger recently,
it had no brakes.  That was no big
deal, except the tailwheel steering
was broken, so I had to take it apart,
figure out how it worked, fix it and
put it back together.  I was happy to
fly it with tailwheel steering and no
brakes.

I flew another taildragger recently,
it shimmied so badly it opened up
the spring clips and blew off both
of the little horn springs on both
sides, so the tailwheel was freely
castering like a shopping cart tire.
In that instance, I tapped the brakes
a little, but if I didn't have them,
it wouldn't have been the end of
the world.

I was happy to
fly it with tailwheel steering and no
brakes.

It is all about directional control before it becomes a problem.

To bad we don't have that training expert from the other site here that likes to give the impression he is one of aviation's best instructors.......and openly states he will not train in the Fleet Canuck one of the best basic trainers ever built because there are no brakes on the right hand side.

He won't come here though because he needs anonymity.

Caitlyn E.

directional control before it becomes a problem

Exactly.  You can objectively rate the
quality of a tailwheel landing by the
number of degrees of yaw during the
touchdown and rollout.

A perfect tailwheel landing will occur
with the aircraft precisely lined up with
the direction of travel.  If the pilot does
nothing, it will remain that way, modulo
strong crosswind gusts during the rollout.

While this is merely a nice display of skill
in a small taildragger, it becomes more
and more important as the weight of the
taildragger increases.

PS  You probably won't believe me, but
Mike Mangold told me about a former F-16
driver and current Southwest B737 pilot,
that managed to blow an L39 tire during
landing with side loading.  Despite the tactical
background, this dilbert is a true four-bars.
A crosswind was a mystery to him.

landed and stopped the DC3's and Twin Otters in 1000 to 1200 feet

I might point out to the young'uns
that a very short field landing in a
multi-engine aircraft just might
require approaching slower than
blue line (Vyse) and perhaps even
than red line (Vmc) depending upon
the circumstances.

While some people might be comfortable
approaching in a multi-engine aircraft
below blue line (or red line), I might
point out that significant harrumphing
is to be expected from the white shirt
crowd about this practice.



Even daring to mention this might get
you banned, from other websites.  You
know, disrupting the requisite harmony
with discordant truths.

I might point out to the young'uns
that a very short field landing in a
multi-engine aircraft just might
require approaching slower than
blue line (Vyse) and perhaps even
than red line (Vmc) depending upon
the circumstances.

This miss-understanding of V speeds by the vast majority of today's pilots comes from the flight training industry.

Seems they can't figure out the difference between climbing and descending.

And that is why they need long runways.

Sad state of affairs really.