Scudrunners

Surprising absolutely no one, it's time for
another Venn diagram.

Two circles.  One circle represents the group
of people who have the money to fly interesting
airplanes.  Tom Cruise and Harry Ford come to
mind.

http://www.airsafe.com/events/celebs/ford.htm

The other circle is the group of people who can
actually [i]fly[/i] interesting airplanes, without
damaging them and killing themselves.  Steve
Hinton comes to mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Hinton

The overlap of these two circles is a depressingly
small sliver of people, like Kermit Weeks.

[quote] Landing with any tailwind adds to the wear and tear on the brakes and tires[/quote]

Compared to the other horrible things
pilots do to airplanes every day, a
downwind landing is pretty small beer,
if the circumstances require it.

[img]http://cdn.avweb.com/media/newspics//19 ... e_skid.jpg[/img]

I see private pilots dragging the brakes
when they are taxiing, locking the brakes
up during landing, refusing to lean the
mixture and fouling bottom plugs, trying
to blow the exhaust off by turning the
mags off and on at 1700 RPM, overspeeding
the flaps, overspeeding the gear, trying
to pound the nosewheel into the pavement,
trying to crack the cylinders in the descent
with rich mixture, trying to detune the
crankshaft counter weights, etc, etc, etc. 

The list goes on and on and on.

I might land downwind occasionally,
but I'm a lot easier on the hardware
than almost any PPL or four-bar.  It's
like they hate the airplane.

One of my engines, which don't make
any metal, don't crack cylinders and
have the best compressions on the field:

[img][/img]

Contrast with the poor 421 engines that
were both trashed in a year by the four-bars.
They managed to spin the bearings so bad,
they trashed the clamshells.

You can always tell a four-bars, but you
sure can't tell them anything.

With perspective, one realizes that today's
ham-fisted PPL is tomorrow's four-bars.

[quote author=Colonel link=topic=588.msg2370#msg2370 date=1439167490]
Compared to the other horrible things pilots do to airplanes every day, a
downwind landing is pretty small beer, if the circumstances require it...
[/quote]

I guess that's where I'm coming from, though, is "if the circumstances require it" (and I'm not talking about inexperienced PPL who make various other mistakes).  I think sometimes it can be easy to get into the mindset of doing something a certain way because you can, and not weighing the long term maintenance costs.  Like landing with a tailwind to shorten the taxi, etc.

An example that comes to mind is when ATC asks you to keep the speed up, but also to clear the runway ASAP (or hold short of another runway).  I remember discussing it with a co-pilot because he certainly could do it, but he was practically standing on the brakes. It wasn't a case of tearing the tire or getting a flat (i.e. excessive braking causing damage), but it was additional wear.  I made the point that while we should do our best to help ATC with traffic flow, we still should be kind to our machine, and it wasn't ATC paying the maintenance bills.

As a side note, I also set personal limits based on my own state at the time.  If I've just done a night shift and am really tired, instead of taking whatever runway I'm pointed at, I may invest that extra effort to come around to the into wind runway, to get that little extra buffer in case my fatigue affects my performance.

I'm a huge fan of cost vs. benefit analysis - not too hard to do as a simple 2 part question of "What do I save by doing this; what is the added risk or potential loss if it goes wrong?"

[quote]if the circumstances require it[/quote]

This is slippery and subjective.

For example, while I would NOT recommend
that a newbie taildragger pilot take a quartering
tailwind ....

Sometimes at my tiny airport, at sunset, we
have virtually zero wind with our paved east/
west runway. 

There might be ONE knot of wind of tailwind
out of the west, if one was to choose to land
with the setting sun at your back, to the east,
instead of squinting through a dirty, cracked
windshield while landing to the west, into the
setting sun.  Mostly it's just a matter of where
the windsocks came to rest when the wind died.

However, you should hear the honking and
squealing from the PPL's if I suggest that
we take the ONE KNOT tailwind, and land
with the sun at our backs.

The damage they do to the tires by landing
far too fast, generally in a crab (hey, they're
flying nosewheel, why not land badly) far
exceeds the incremental wear of a ONE
KNOT tailwind.

Penny wise and pound foolish, as the saying
goes.

PPL's and four-bars alike are fond of blowing
tires in their nosewheel aircraft, sideloading
the tires in a crab.  Examples abound: 172's,
L39s, Boeings:

[img][/img]

You can't tell me that the incremental tire
wear of a ONE KNOT tailwind is worse than
blowing the tire.

Back to your example: I have had ATC ask
me to do many silly things outside the capability
of the aircraft, even with Chuck Yeager at
the controls.

"Unable"

They're allowed to ask.  You don't have to do
what ATC wants.  This is really important for
pilots to learn.  ATC just suggests things.  It's
up to you to decide if you should do it, or not.

Even their name (ATC) is an oxymoron.  They
control nothing, and are responsible for nothing.

Right now I can do it 600 AGL, below that it straight for the weeds

Some good discussion here.

Just to clarify - I do land with tailwinds from time to time. Some examples from the "4 Bar" World:-

- Large CB on the approach to the other runway.
- Landing into the wind requires a circling approach in a valley at night with unlighted terrain.
- Landing into the wind involves flying an offset VOR/DME approach which leaves you high and offset close to the runway at minimums. ILS with tailwind is the better option.
- Save the company time and fuel with minimal extra wear on brakes and tires.
- Traffic flow at neighbouring airports dictates which runway is in use.

In the "4 Bar" World our aircraft have tailwind limits - normally 10 knots but 15 knots is available as an option. We have detailed landing distance information that allows us to calculate how much runway we need.

At my previous company it was also encouraged to land with less than full flap as this saved 40kg of fuel/landing.

There were no guidelines issued when and when not to do this.

This resulted in an A330 landing downwind. They landed long then decided they wanted to make an earlier turn off instead of letting it roll to the end so they slammed on the brakes. The aircraft was parked and the crew went home.

All the fuse plugs in the tires melted and they welded the fixed and moving parts of the brakes together by setting the parking brake. Costs were over $2 million dollars. That's a lot of $40 full flap landings!

The Captain (local) lost his Instructor designation. If I had done this they would have fired me on the spot.

I've come up with my own guidelines for reduced flap and tailwind landings.

No tailwind landing when:-

- Runway is wet
- Runway is contaminated.
- Runway length is less than twice the calculated landing distance required*

(* this may not always be an option but I am aware that we need to be careful).

I use the same guidelines for take-off (3rd point is not applicable) and add a no tailwind note if we are getting close to Maximum take-off weight or Performance Limiting weights.

For quite a few years I operated a large 4 Engine jet off an 11000' runway at Maximum Take-off Weight at +30C. Ground roll was close to 10000' and we would be at 75' at the end of the runway with a climb rate of 1400ft/min.

The centreline lights really are alternating red/white with 2000' to go and all red with 1000' to go!

For a reduced flap landing (which I don't normally do) - no tailwind.