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Just now, Shadrach said:

I’m probably is tired posting this video as Mooneyspace veterans are of it being posted. Nevertheless...

That looks like a fully stalled landing but more "flat nose up flare" variety than "20deg nose up flare" variety? 

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6 minutes ago, Ibra said:

That looks like a fully stalled landing but more "flat nose up flare" variety than "20deg nose up flare" variety? 

It’s very much nose high. It may not look nose high in the video because the nose gear link is fully extended. 

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Yes, Ross, wheelies are fun. Mine are usually made with some power, while I land power off--not the same thing. Smooth landings are easy, greasers are difficult, but most of my landings, even the smooth ones, the nose comes down almost immediately. Whenever I am successful holding it off long enough to notice, I congratulate myself, but it's not often.

This is also an old video, shot without my knowledge [I thought my wife was taking pictures!]

 

The audio is just whatever the camera heard, so the stall horn is noticeable in the flare. Field is 3000' long, you'll notice me adding power to level off at 100'agl to clear the trees, then it's throttle to idle and glide to the runway.

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My landings by myself are usually terrible, absolute embarrassment's.  However, I recently shuttled my mechanic and an ex Navy instructor pilot into a 3000 foot field and made the sweetest, smoothest landing of all time.  I got the accolades, but I was also really worried about firetrucking it up.  No sense to me.

   

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On 3/18/2020 at 11:26 AM, Hank said:

@Blue moon, when you learn the secret to regularly holding the nose wheel up after touchdown, please share it with us! I'd certainly like to know, I only have a little over 800 hours in my Mooney . . . . .

Simple, more speed. My CFI asked me to demonstrated a soft field landing and the criteria was to hold the nose wheel off as long as I could. It was simple to come in nice and flat with a little more speed than usual. Put the mains down, but kept the nose wheel off and rode the wheelie for somewhere between 3000 and 4000 feet, then rolled on the power and lifted off again. Like Ross's video, the nose wheel never touched down. 

Although it might be rare to find a soft runway that is 6000 feet long... I have landed on one such runway more than a dozen times...  88NV (Burning Man).

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A very wise instructor taught me that as the mains touch down, the aircraft’s nose is naturally going to want to settle/drop.  As I understood it there are several principles at work, but the main one is: visualize as the mains they touch down, they act similar to a fulcrum with the heavy end (engine a prop) wanting to continue the decent.  A second, is similar to when you apply a slowing motion (like brakes) in a car, the nose wants to dive.  In this case, it’s not about decent rate, it’s about a connected mass wanting to continue a direction of least resistance ( in this case, stopping force , tires and brakes, versus chassis, engine transmission....). The similar force in a plane is the friction and slowing motion of touching down (even before you apply brakes). Please note, this gets aggravated if you’re landing with just a little pressure on the brakes.  Also, it was pointed out to me, that most of our focus on landing is touching down the mains and often we almost automatically stop piloting and the result is a nose that’s left to simply fall.    I am definitely not an engineer nor a cfi,  but this made sense to me.  So, I was taught to maintain back pressure (maybe add just a little) as the mains touchdown and then slowly relax the back pressure to lower the nose.  This is, obviously,  known information.  It was the visuals the instructor laid out that helped a lot.  

 

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Interesting thoughts on landings which is always a fun topic. I don't think Mooneys are any more difficult to land than other single engine airplanes and the OP stated that he got pretty good at it in about 20 landings. That was likely because he was already good at landing airplanes. The original question was about the nose wheel coming down a bit hard after the mains have touched down. This is a commonly noticed characteristic of Mooneys and is due to the position of the mains relative to the CG (the effect is more pronounced with forward CG) and amplified by the stiff nose wheel suspension system.

Airplanes can be safely landed at a wide range of speeds as Ross @Shadrach noted. The important criteria for a successful landing are proper attitude (nose high so that the mains touch first), minimum sink rate, aligned with the runway centerline, and no side drift. This is true for any tricycle gear airplane: Mooney or 737. The current Private Pilot ACS states the requirement for acceptable landings (meaning you pass your practical test) as:

"Touch down at a proper pitch attitude, within 400 feet beyond or on the specified point, with no side drift, and with the airplane’s longitudinal axis aligned with and over the runway center/landing path."

So what about full stall landings? These came about with conventional gear light airplanes since the gear geometry was such that a full stall landing resulted in a 3- point touchdown -- the hallmark of a good aviator at the time. When larger, heavier airliners like the DC-3 came into being, wheel landings were typically preferred. Wheel landings are performed at speeds well above stall giving greater control throughout the landing maneuver. Even in smaller airplanes, wheel landings were preferred if there were gusty winds or crosswinds. So, why were we all taught to do full stall landings in tricycle gear airplanes? I can't speak for other instructors, but I always taught them in Cessnas and Pipers because I wanted the student to learn to fully control the airplane all the way through flare and touchdown, and flying all the way to a stall is the only way I could really know that they had learned to do that. Besides, they're fun. But, they aren't necessary to make a good landing.

In Stick and Rudder, Wolfgang Langewiesche went so far at to call 3-point (full stall in the taildraggers he was addressing) landings unsafe:

"It is essentially an unsafe and unbeautiful maneuver, for it requires that the ship be flown near the stall or actually into a stall, that is, that the pilot throw the airplane deliberately out of control -- and near the ground at that."

Now, I would not call full stall landings unbeautiful (especially in a taildragger) but they certainly can be unsafe in strong and gusty crosswinds. 

Once we get past flying trainers and move into higher performance airplanes, full stall landings become less useful. Higher performance airplanes have higher wing loading, perhaps laminar flow airfoils, maybe multiple engines. The higher wing loading and advanced airfoils tend to have a sharper stall break with maybe less aerodynamic warning. With multi-engined airplanes you don't want to be in the air below Vmca. The full stall landing puts us in a precarious position of momentarily being at the mercy of a gust, the extra time in the air floating in ground effect waiting for the final loss of lift burns up runway and lengthens the landing, and as noted, the higher the nose wheel the more carefully it has to be lowered.

Now, sometimes, on a calm day, I still do full stall landings in my M20J. It's a skill maintenance thing. I like to maintain the capability to fly confidently over the largest envelope that the airplane is capable of safely operating. But, in the normal course of flying I cross the threshold at 65 KIAS with a little power, fly down close to the runway, smoothly pitch up to a nose high attitude while simultaneously reducing the power to idle and let the plane settle onto the mains. Sometimes I might hear the stall horn; sometimes not. But, that's not how I judge the quality of the landing.

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1) Magically, putting somebody in the back seat... or a few pounds in the baggage compartment...

2) Moves the Cg a bit aft...

3) Do the WnB calcs to find out where the easy landing range is...

4) Use it....

5) The right speed range is a memory trick... or an AOAi piece of hardware...

6) Currency, leads to feel, Leads to great control over the plane...

7) Ross’ and Hanks videos both demonstrate excellent energy control... great to watch... over and over... :)

8) Lots of up trim... not the same as adjusting the B...

9) full flaps vs. T/O flaps... not the same either... one requires more up trim... and comes with lots of drag too... making energy control more of a challenge...

PP thoughts only, not a CFI...

Best regards,

-a-

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2 hours ago, carusoam said:

3) Do the WnB calcs to find out where the easy landing range is...

Can I claim that on WnB calcs with 1SOB my landings are smooth as silk and the nose gear goes down slowly down like those two videos 

On WnB with 2SOB (especially weight of another CFI) my landings have more chances to be rough :lol:

Sometimes just the weight of GoPro moves my GC position too much froward...

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1 hour ago, Ibra said:

Can I claim that on WnB calcs with 1SOB my landings are smooth as silk and the nose gear goes down slowly down like those two videos 

My video above is hardly what I would call "the nose gear goes down slowly." Chirp #3 must be a whole half-a-second after Main #2 . . . In a Slowhawk, it's easy to delay it by 4-6 whole seconds, but it's so very rare in my Mooney to even reach 2 seconds . . . . Or to exceed one second . . . . .

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You can easily raise the nose wheel of a Skyhawk by pushing down on the tail (be careful, you have to do it at a tailcone bulkhead — C-172s have developed stabilizer spar cracks from repeatedly manhandling the stabilizer to maneuver the plane on the ground). Not so with the Mooney - there is a lot more weight on the nose wheel.

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1 minute ago, PT20J said:

You can easily raise the nose wheel of a Skyhawk by pushing down on the tail (be careful, you have to do it at a tailcone bulkhead — C-172s have developed stabilizer spar cracks from repeatedly manhandling the stabilizer to maneuver the plane on the ground). Not so with the Mooney - there is a lot more weight on the nose wheel.

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I find it difficult to do either while slowing down immediately after touchdown 

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Thought I would share my Mooney landing experiences...... my initial flight instructor (a long, long time ago, in a land far away) hammered into me, keep that nose wheel off, you’re going to brake the strut off, he’d say.  Ouch!!  We trained in a C150 and C152.  I wasn’t always good at it, so he’d let me have it !!  

So, with this, my goal each landing is to keep the nose off upon touchdown.  Admittedly, I’ve not always been successful, and especially when I first got the Ovation, yikes!!  I did eventually improve.  I did purchase Don Kaye’s landing video.  Most helpful.

These days, I try to make each landing, holding the nose off for as long as possible.  I really enjoy doing it with passengers aboard......impresses them..LOL .

I think it’s fun, and it’s a little challenge I present to myself each time.  For myself, I don’t find it particularly difficult to execute.  Not always successfull though! 

And I think it looks cool too!  Sometimes, while parked near the touchdown point at SBP, watching planes come and go, I always take note of how terrific it looks when the regional jets lower that nose so gently once the mains touchdown.

 

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 Sometimes, while parked near the touchdown point at SBP, watching planes come and go, I always take note of how terrific it looks when the regional jets lower that nose so gently once the mains touchdown.
 


I’m glad it looks that way from the outside, from the inside it sure can sound quite “slam-dunky”!
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12 minutes ago, N9201A said:

 


I’m glad it looks that way from the outside, from the inside it sure can sound quite “slam-dunky”!

Well, some are much better than other, that's for sure.  Honestly, not too many are smoothies, so when I see one that is, it's quite impressive.  I try to emulate........... LOL !

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Everyone knows being on speed is the key to a good landing. If you have an AOA indicator that helps tremendously without having to even think about it. As a bonus, I too have found that holding the nose off as long as possible impresses your passengers greatly as people tend not to notice much when the mains touch, but when you hold off and just barely tap the nose gear down, you get 5 star landing ratings from them,  and makes almost every landing a great one. And I think it saves your brakes as if you do it right, you bleed off lots of airspeed holding the nose off as long as possible, as if I'm on speed, and hold nose up, I can usually make that first exit without much braking at all. Of course this doesn't apply to gusty or large crosswind landings, but every other time, its fun to do.

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On 3/18/2020 at 11:16 PM, PT20J said:

Things that help:

Be on speed, in trim.

Flare just enough so that the nose wheel is clear but don't try to land in a nose high, full stall. (Actually, this is the best way to land any high performance airplane. Ever see a 737 do a full stall landing?).

Some people roll in nose up trim during the flare, but I don't like this as it makes a go around difficult. Power causes a pitch up and flying out of ground effect causes a pitch up, and if you also have the trim nose up, you have a handful.

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On my IFR check ride- I  was waaay cool, established, stable descent with a lot of trim under the hood.  All was great until the DPE said "go missed".   Throttle in, and boy did I have my work cut out for me then!  Pushing really hard on the column with my left arm while turning that itty-bitty trim wheel as fast as I could with my right hand.   I can imagine he must have had a grin on his face...

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23 hours ago, Stan said:

Skip, Maybe a repost of the "I'm not a loser!" would be good here.

Retired Alaska Airlines training captain and warbird check pilot Carter Teeters swears that landings improve if you repeat three times, out loud, on short final: "I'm not a loser."

I hear some of the warbird guys swear by, "I don't want to take it home on a trailer."

:)

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On 3/18/2020 at 9:14 PM, Culver LFA said:

@Hank A successful technique that worked for me I started a few years ago. I just remind myself on short final how expensive all those little parts on the nose gear mechanism cost to overhaul and suddenly I developed the ability to touch down lightly on the mains and carry the nose wheel off the runway until full elevator will no longer hold it off!

Start shoving $100 bills in the seat back pocket every time you have a ‘firm’ landing, it’s amazing how fast bad habits will change!

The secret to any good landing is no secret, correct speed and trim, then try to hold it off the runway when you are down to the last inches of flight (don’t let the airplane settle by releasing back pressure and then drop).

This is how i do it too!! I learned to fly using the full stall landing technique -- when appropriate i.e. no or little crosswind -- just be ready to add a bit of power if you are about to drop it in  from more than about a foot.

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Anyone who feels that all planes land the same is crazy....I’ve put 500 hours and probably 1,500 landings on my M20J...there is a heightened awareness mixed with apprehension with every landing I make...and I’ve gotten good at doing them...back in the 1970s I flew C150s and they were so easy to land...a much lighter plane with tons of lift and a remarkably low stall speed...the improved view of a wing over plane!   to keep it interesting, my goal was to land within the length of the numbers at BWI...which was the home base of Flight Training, Inc...And when I had a decent headwind I was successful.

i have found by using a little bit of power and flying the plane into a soft landing has really helped me a lot with Mooney

 

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On 3/19/2020 at 3:07 PM, gsxrpilot said:

Simple, more speed. My CFI asked me to demonstrated a soft field landing and the criteria was to hold the nose wheel off as long as I could. It was simple to come in nice and flat with a little more speed than usual. Put the mains down, but kept the nose wheel off and rode the wheelie for somewhere between 3000 and 4000 feet, then rolled on the power and lifted off again. Like Ross's video, the nose wheel never touched down. 

Although it might be rare to find a soft runway that is 6000 feet long... I have landed on one such runway more than a dozen times...  88NV (Burning Man).

This is definitely something I learned the first few landings.  Everyone is always harping about landing with too much airspeed in a Mooney but coming in with not enough results in you plunking the nose wheel down.  @Blue moon Here are my two cents that you have already probably figured out by now and reiterates what people have already mentioned.  My experience comes from my M20R and not sure how it applies to the rest of the fleet but I imagine it's not too far off.

1) If you use full flaps you should be almost fully nose up trimmed by the time you land.  You'll notice those flaps will point you right at the ground without it.

2) I don't stall on the landing and don't yank the yoke all the way back.  I trained on a  Cessna 172 like most people so my first few landings I was pulling back farther on the yoke, hearing the stall horn, and really trying to hold  the nose wheel off the ground.  You can't unless you have more speed and as you have experienced when stalled it will just plunk down.  With a little more speed and less nose high attitude she will come down on the mains and the nose won't drop 5 feet to the ground.

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My best landings are the ones where I am talking out loud to myself throughout the landing. I find that if I am announcing what I am doing along with saying my airspeed and power settings out loud it keeps me focused and on point.

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