Are you chasing your airspeed down final? Dropping it on too hard? Bouncing? Or perhaps floating too far? The way to improve your landings is to get back to basics. Whether you’re just getting started learning to fly, or an experienced pilot, or a flight sim ace, mastering the full stall landing is the place to start.
Full Stall Landings
By Chapman Flying, June 11, 2022
Description of the full stall landing technique, which is commonly taught to new pilots learning landings for the first time.
No clip references- all clips used in this video are my own.
Transcript
A full stall Landing is a landing where the aircraft is flown as close as possible to the runway and then stalled. This causes it to drop onto the runway in a nose high attitude without enough energy to porpoise or significantly bounce.
Landings in general are divided into four stages: the approach, the round-out, the touchdown, and the roll-out.
During the approach the objective is energy management.
Energy Management
Energy management is getting the aircraft to a particular point on the runway at a particular speed called the approach speed. To do this we select an aim point about 400 ft ahead of our intended touchdown point. And as the name implies, fly the airplane toward that aim point during the approach phase of flight.
A common expression is: pitch for airspeed, power for altitude. This means that air speed is controlled with the elevator. If we see that the airspeed is too low we push forward to increase the space between the nose and the horizon. If we see that the airspeed is too high we pull back. If we find that the aircraft is descending below our intended glide path we add power to pull the airplane closer to the runway.
Round Out
We start the round-out phase when we reach the selected aim point. The goal of the round-out is to drain off the remaining airspeed while slowly letting the aircraft descend to less than one foot above the ground.
A common mistake during the round-out is to over control. If you pull back on the elevator before the airspeed is low enough you’ll balloon the airplane back into the air, causing it to get high and slow.
The trick to a successful round-out is to level the aircraft off at 5 ft above the ground then allow the aircraft to mush toward the runway very slowly. When you think that the wheels are about to touch the runway, use the elevator to try to hold the airplane in the air as long as possible.
When you start getting stall cues, and most importantly when the elevator starts to feel mushy, ballooning is no longer aerodynamically possible. At this point you can feel confident pulling the elevator all the way back to the stops to finish out the full stall.
It’s usually pretty easy to tell what kind of landing you’re going to get before the wheels touch the ground. If you’re getting stall cues above 5 ft it’s going to be hard. If you’re getting them below one foot it’s going to be good. And if you never get them at all it’s going to be flat.
The trick to judging your height above the runway is to focus your gaze about four runway stripes ahead. If you focus too close it’ll feel like the runway is rushing up at you causing you to overcorrect and balloon. If you focus too far away you may be surprised when the wheels touch the ground.
The length of time that the round-out takes is determined by your airspeed. If you approach too fast you may find yourself floating all the way down the runway. If you approach too slow you might find yourself with very little elevator authority during the round-out, causing you to strike the runway harder and sooner than you intended.
Drift and Yaw
During the round-out you may find yourself struggling to manage drift and yaw, especially if the round-out is taking longer than you expected.
Drift is controlled using the ailerons by banking left and right, and yaw is managed with rudder.
Find a visual reference point on the aircraft’s cowling and use your feet to keep that reference point aligned with the runway centreline. Ailerons and rudder are used completely independently for this purpose. Using them together like we do at altitude is definitely not the goal and causes a side load on the landing gear if done during a crosswind.
After touchdown hold the stick all the way back throughout the roll-out. This helps get you stopped in two ways: While the nose wheel is still off the ground the wings are still at a high angle of attack and generating a lot of lift. This lift creates drag and that drag is called aerodynamic breaking. Once the nose wheel has come down continue to hold back because this increases the weight on the main wheels. The main wheels are where the brakes are, so having additional weight on them will decrease the possibility of skidding.
Summary
To sum it all up:
We use pitch for airspeed and power for altitude to fly the airplane toward an aim point on the runway at approach speed.
We round-out at 5 ft above the ground and then allow the aircraft to mush down toward the runway surface while draining off airspeed.
Then just above the runway we hold the airplane off and wait for stall cues until it’s time to move the stick all the way back to the stops.
During the roll-out we keep the stick back to maximise aerodynamic braking and to maximise friction on the runway surface.
Soiurce: Chapman Flying
If you liked Improve Your Landings by Getting Back to Basics also see VFR Flight Simulator Tutorial
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