Landing a J -- nose wheel bounce

[PT20J]

1 minute ago, MikeOH said:

@PT20J

Thanks for your post; makes me feel a little better about my smooth landings  I still think I've become a little sloppy on speed control lately.  So, this thread is a good reminder.

The trick about speed control is to know what speed you want and be able to fly it precisely. It's not always the lowest possible speed. 

[M20F-1968]

What made a huge difference in my landings is to naturally be aware of speed control, but also have a solid appreciation of your vertical descent, particularly objectively knowing when you are 1-2 feet above the runway.

I installed the LHS lasar system, and the 2-foot and 1-foot call-outs are a great help.  Come over the numbers at 70 kts.  Bleed off speed.  Generally use full flaps unless there is a reason not to do so.  Once in the mid-60's speed range, keep bleeding off speed, and when you hear 2-foot and 1-foot you can comfortably pull the nose up further, and slow further.  The stall warning generally will go off in the 1-2-foot warning range.  The airplane will then no longer be carrying excessive energy and will settle in upon landing.

With strong crosswinds, I will sometimes land with speed brakes.  The same airspeeds are used, but the airplane feels heavier and more stable.  I do not do this often, but some of my best landings have been with speedbrakes deployed.

John Breda

[Jose Jo]

On 7/8/2024 at 12:59 AM, PT20J said:

Part of it is some peculiarities of the Mooney landing gear design. The laminar flow airfoil places the thickest section where the wing spar is located farther back than other airfoils. This places the main gear, which is attached aft of the main spar, fairly far aft. Then also the gear design is a trailing link which moves the axels even farther aft. This means that there is more distance between the CG and the main wheels than on some other airplanes. Some call it nose heavy, but that's not really the problem. The problem is that the instant before you touch down there is a certain tail down force and the distance between the tail and the CG combined with this force creates a certain moment that has the airplane in longitudinal balance. But the instant the mains touch, the pivot point changes from the CG to the mains which have a shorter arm to the tail. The tail down force hasn't changed, but the moment arm has shortened so there is effectively a pitch down moment. If you try to catch it and yank back when the nose drops, you will usually be too late and over pull and may lift off again or cause a second nose wheel bounce. Part of the over control tendency is that we are used to airplanes where the controls forces diminish as the airplane slows. But the Mooney's trim bungees add force as the deflection increases and so the elevators get heavy in the flare.

The best way to softly land a Mooney that I've found is to get it slow before you get in ground effect (because the drag is higher out of ground effect) certainly by 50' AGL and carry a slight amount of power into the flare and then aim to reduce power to idle in the flare with the yoke still coming back as the wheels touch. 

thank you for your valuable insights

I am new to your community but I might be soon one of you as I am in the dealing process for an Ovation.

I am also a newbie to high performance (I come from an Archer) and recently got my Embark for Cirrus so I am not explaining anything here about landing in short fields but about my struggles with short fields. If you live in Europe, mainly in the south, you will find out that general aviation is a constant struggle against the system. We don't have your privileges or your airfields. Airfields are scarce and politically designed without ever asking pilots or experts. In short this means many of our airfields are very short and placed in difficult areas.

My airfield is 600m, 1980Ft with obstacles. Several Cirrus and Lancair land there not without difficulties. My instructor took me there In an SR22 G2 and said 75Kts. That's all. It's below POH and maybe inadequate for a beginner with only a handful of hours. I nailed the numbers but I was instructed to kill the throttle over the threshold and in the flare the speed collapsed rapidly. Tanks were full 81USG and we had some extra load as well. The result is that it was a hard landing without any bounce and the plane stopped in less than 800ft (maybe 1000ft from the threshold) as it had no energy left. I still don't know why he didn't tell me to go around (he was very busy yelling at me ha ha !). So lesson learnt by myself and what I do now is to come in with the POH (77Kts) and keep a tiny bit of power in the flare which works well. The runway has some obstacles so the amount of energy lost in a steep approach is huge and could lead to a stall and damage to the aircraft.

Handling an Ovation in this scenario might be quite different, I know it can be done at 65-70Kts when light and hopefully I will have the right instructor.

[Fly Boomer]

39 minutes ago, Jose Jo said:

hopefully I will have the right instructor.

Find the instructor with the most long-body Mooney experience.  Even if you have to import someone.

[NickG]

1 hour ago, Jose Jo said:

hopefully I will have the right instructor.

Jose,

I have about 500 hours and an IR, previously owned a Cherokee 235 and have completed Cirrus Transition training. I purchased an Ovation about 2 months ago. 

It has been 35+ hours of transition training and I'm still not that comfortable landing, although my last 10 or so have been really quite good. Having said that, the shortest runway I've dealt with is around 3,000 ft and right now I wouldn't even consider anything smaller. Landing these birds properly is a lot more challenging than I imagined and I'm estimating another 5-10 hours of instruction before I feel confident. I'm lucky in that I have a couple of excellent Mooney CFI's that I've been working with, both with lots of long body experience. Also, please note, the O doesn't have cowl flaps so it's a little slicker than its turbo brethren on landing. 

Make sure you have the instructors lined up. Your short runways are going to be challenging.

Best of luck!

[PT20J]

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the Archer. It’s really well designed and was a nice step up from a C-172. It has the most benign stall of any airplane I have flown and is easy to land smoothly and short. I flew them a lot years ago and also did a fair bit of instruction in them. 

[hubcap]

1 hour ago, Jose Jo said:

My airfield is 600m, 1980Ft with obstacles. Several Cirrus and Lancair land there not without difficulties. My instructor took me there In an SR22 G2 and said 75Kts. That's all. It's below POH and maybe inadequate for a beginner with only a handful of hours. I nailed the numbers but I was instructed to kill the throttle over the threshold and in the flare the speed collapsed rapidly. Tanks were full 81USG and we had some extra load as well. The result is that it was a hard landing without any bounce and the plane stopped in less than 800ft (maybe 1000ft from the threshold) as it had no energy left. I still don't know why he didn't tell me to go around (he was very busy yelling at me ha ha !). So lesson learnt by myself and what I do now is to come in with the POH (77Kts) and keep a tiny bit of power in the flare which works well. The runway has some obstacles so the amount of energy lost in a steep approach is huge and could lead to a stall and damage to the aircraft.

Handling an Ovation in this scenario might be quite different, I know it can be done at 65-70Kts when light and hopefully I will have the right instructor.

I have an M20K and my personal minimums on an unfamiliar runway is 3000'. I have a little over 400 hours in my Mooney, but I wouldn't intentionally take my plane into a 2000' runway under anything except emergency circumstances.

[201Mooniac]

9 minutes ago, hubcap said:

I have an M20K and my personal minimums on an unfamiliar runway is 3000'. I have a little over 400 hours in my Mooney, but I wouldn't intentionally take my plane into a 2000' runway under anything except emergency circumstances.

I used to occasionally fly an M20K out of KPAO which was 2400'.  It required paying attention wasn't wasn't particularly challenging.  I did have trouble trying to land an M20M there though.  In my J the shortest I've landed on was 2100' and again with clear approaches it isn't too bad.  I only have 1 landing in an Ovation but if it is anything like the Bravo, I would think a less than 2000' runway would take some practice.

[hubcap]

49 minutes ago, 201Mooniac said:

I used to occasionally fly an M20K out of KPAO which was 2400'.  It required paying attention wasn't wasn't particularly challenging.  I did have trouble trying to land an M20M there though.  In my J the shortest I've landed on was 2100' and again with clear approaches it isn't too bad.  I only have 1 landing in an Ovation but if it is anything like the Bravo, I would think a less than 2000' runway would take some practice.

The first taxiway is about 1800' from the end of Runway 18 where I am based. I have made the turn off there many times, but if you aren't on the top of your game, you aren't going to make the first turn off.

[jetdriven]

If you cant turn off in 900' in a J, keep practicing until you can.  You can even do it with no airspeed indicator @cnoe

[N201MKTurbo]

You can tell how good your landings are, by how long your tires last.

[Ragsf15e]

17 minutes ago, N201MKTurbo said:

You can tell how good your landings are, by how long your tires last.

This might not be fair since im in a hangar and in Washington (vs AZ sun), but my tires are the ones I bought it with (they were pretty new then)… june 2014.  820 hours ago!

[Jose Jo]

4 hours ago, NickG said:

Jose,

I have about 500 hours and an IR, previously owned a Cherokee 235 and have completed Cirrus Transition training. I purchased an Ovation about 2 months ago. 

It has been 35+ hours of transition training and I'm still not that comfortable landing, although my last 10 or so have been really quite good. Having said that, the shortest runway I've dealt with is around 3,000 ft and right now I wouldn't even consider anything smaller. Landing these birds properly is a lot more challenging than I imagined and I'm estimating another 5-10 hours of instruction before I feel confident. I'm lucky in that I have a couple of excellent Mooney CFI's that I've been working with, both with lots of long body experience. Also, please note, the O doesn't have cowl flaps so it's a little slicker than its turbo brethren on landing. 

Make sure you have the instructors lined up. Your short runways are going to be challenging.

Best of luck!

 

4 hours ago, PT20J said:

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the Archer. It’s really well designed and was a nice step up from a C-172. It has the most benign stall of any airplane I have flown and is easy to land smoothly and short. I flew them a lot years ago and also did a fair bit of instruction in them. 

My Archer III runs on mogas, lands anywhere and is very cheap to run (compared to others), it has was, WX-500 and much more. It's close to perfect. Only thing time goes by and you look at new horizons. The weather here is terrible and I need much more range to get anywhere.

[Jose Jo]

5 hours ago, NickG said:

Jose,

I have about 500 hours and an IR, previously owned a Cherokee 235 and have completed Cirrus Transition training. I purchased an Ovation about 2 months ago. 

It has been 35+ hours of transition training and I'm still not that comfortable landing, although my last 10 or so have been really quite good. Having said that, the shortest runway I've dealt with is around 3,000 ft and right now I wouldn't even consider anything smaller. Landing these birds properly is a lot more challenging than I imagined and I'm estimating another 5-10 hours of instruction before I feel confident. I'm lucky in that I have a couple of excellent Mooney CFI's that I've been working with, both with lots of long body experience. Also, please note, the O doesn't have cowl flaps so it's a little slicker than its turbo brethren on landing. 

Make sure you have the instructors lined up. Your short runways are going to be challenging.

Best of luck!

couldn't agree more, thank you

[Jose Jo]

4 hours ago, hubcap said:

I have an M20K and my personal minimums on an unfamiliar runway is 3000'. I have a little over 400 hours in my Mooney, but I wouldn't intentionally take my plane into a 2000' runway under anything except emergency circumstances.

all Mooney instructors I met say its doable but with a lot of training. We have 3 Cirrus in the field and we manage, I can swear it is more difficult to land than a Mooney. Unfortunately this is Europe, no options in my area, you take it or quit aviation. My Archer III lands at 65 and uses less than 1000ft if I am alert.

[PT20J]

3 hours ago, jetdriven said:

If you cant turn off in 900' in a J, keep practicing until you can.  You can even do it with no airspeed indicator @cnoe

I’m based on a 3000’ strip with taxiways at 1000’ and 2000’. Unless there’s a gusty crosswind, I always make the 1000’ exit. 

[PT20J]

2 hours ago, Ragsf15e said:

This might not be fair since im in a hangar and in Washington (vs AZ sun), but my tires are the ones I bought it with (they were pretty new then)… june 2014.  820 hours ago!

What brand?

[Ragsf15e]

1 hour ago, PT20J said:

What brand?

They are Michelin Aviators.  Still good life left too except one is wearing a little more on the inside than the outside.  

[MikeOH]

My Goodyear Flight Custom IIs still look great after 6 years and 450 hours (hangared).

[skykrawler]

Assuming you are pretty close to landing speed in the flare and at the proper height,  close the throttle and use both hands on the wheel - this make it easier to get full elevator and control the attitude and hold the nose wheel off.    Extra stab trim as you flare will also help.

 

[McMooney]

I have an E so maybe a bit different, try take off flaps, i find it to be almost easy mode when landing the mooney.

for really short landings, final at somewhere around 75/80mph, pull power over threshold and just hold her off, you'll land and be off the runway well before 1000ft.

as for not bouncing, consciously hold that nose off when the mains touch, don't let go.   It may burble, your plopping down on a few hard rubber disc and a bouncy air-filled tire what can you do.

Edited July 11, 2024 by McMooney

[Pinecone]

The field I did my private at was 2000 feet.  There were a couple of Mooneys based there.

The same airport now has another, longer runway, but the original short on is still there  At least one J has operated off it recently, but it was a windy day so a nasty cross wind on the main runway, but a perfect head wind for the short one.

[jamicozzi]

On 7/7/2024 at 6:59 PM, PT20J said:

Part of it is some peculiarities of the Mooney landing gear design. The laminar flow airfoil places the thickest section where the wing spar is located farther back than other airfoils. This places the main gear, which is attached aft of the main spar, fairly far aft. Then also the gear design is a trailing link which moves the axels even farther aft. This means that there is more distance between the CG and the main wheels than on some other airplanes. Some call it nose heavy, but that's not really the problem. The problem is that the instant before you touch down there is a certain tail down force and the distance between the tail and the CG combined with this force creates a certain moment that has the airplane in longitudinal balance. But the instant the mains touch, the pivot point changes from the CG to the mains which have a shorter arm to the tail. The tail down force hasn't changed, but the moment arm has shortened so there is effectively a pitch down moment. If you try to catch it and yank back when the nose drops, you will usually be too late and over pull and may lift off again or cause a second nose wheel bounce. Part of the over control tendency is that we are used to airplanes where the controls forces diminish as the airplane slows. But the Mooney's trim bungees add force as the deflection increases and so the elevators get heavy in the flare.

The best way to softly land a Mooney that I've found is to get it slow before you get in ground effect (because the drag is higher out of ground effect) certainly by 50' AGL and carry a slight amount of power into the flare and then aim to reduce power to idle in the flare with the yoke still coming back as the wheels touch. 

Thank you for this! Well explained.