Is this thing ever gonna stop flying?

Clark1961

Clark1961

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Touch and go at Walden (33V) today. Walden has a 5,900 runway and an elevation of 8,153 feet. The darn thing wanted to float forever even though I was on speed until roundout. It was cold so that was probably the cause but I'm just not used to the Dakota floating when I'm as slow as I was today.

Although Walden was smooth it was really bumpy on the way in and out. Along with the bumps I had 300 to 500 fpm altitude changes. Winds aloft were all over the place from 15 kts to 36 kts. It was a good day to test operating limits, but it would have been a bad day to take a new passenger up to show them the mountains.

No pictures...the batteries died on the first shot and I didn't feel much like digging through the flight bag while bouncing around at 1,000 agl.

Final gripe: denied Bravo clearance. Okay, they were a little busy but not horrible. Oh well, I sucked it up and made sure I was well under the shelves.

Landing 26 was fun with winds 360 @ 10 G 25. The darn thing weathervaned on me pretty good after touchdown and some rollout. Gusts are just loverly things.
 
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Clark1961 said:
Touch and go at Walden (33V) today. Walden has a 5,900 runway and an elevation of 8,153 feet. The darn thing wanted to float forever even though I was on speed until roundout. It was cold so that was probably the cause but I'm just not used to the Dakota floating when I'm as slow as I was today.

Although Walden was smooth it was really bumpy on the way in and out. Along with the bumps I had 300 to 500 fpm altitude changes. Winds aloft were all over the place from 15 kts to 36 kts. It was a good day to test operating limits, but it would have been a bad day to take a new passenger up to show them the mountains.

No pictures...the batteries died on the first shot and I didn't feel much like digging through the flight bag while bouncing around at 1,000 agl.

Final gripe: denied Bravo clearance. Okay, they were a little busy but not horrible. Oh well, I sucked it up and made sure I was well under the shelves.

Landing 26 was fun with winds 360 @ 10 G 25. The darn thing weathervaned on me pretty good after touchdown and some rollout. Gusts are just loverly things.
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Unless the wind kept increasing during your flare or your engine was producing more than idle power, an extended float always means you came into the flare with too much energy. Common causes of that are:

1) Flying the approach too fast because the controls feel more responsive
2) Using the wrong target airspeed on final
3) Starting the final too high and failing to eliminate the extra energy with a slip

Air temp does have a considerable effect on takeoff and climb but other than a nearly insignificant increase in idle power the only effect (lower TAS for the same IAS) actually shortens the landing. You say you were "on speed" on final, but what was the basis of that speed? Ideally you should take your indicated stalling speed for the weight you're at, convert this to calibrated speed, multiply by 1.3 (1.2 on short final) and convert back to indicated speed. In some planes the difference between indicated and calibrated is small enough to ignore but some have fairly large errors (your POH should have a table or graph on this). Compensation for weight can be made on the stalling speed or on the approach speed, either way it will be the speed for max weight times the square root of the actual/max. Alternatively with most light airplanes you can just subtract 1 Kt for every 100 lbs and be pretty close but I'd run a few examples using the actual math to confirm that for a specific airplane. IME Dakotas aren't going to float significantly unless your speed is at least 5 Kt too fast.
 
I say the float was due to the tailwind. The A/FD lists the Rwy as 22, not 26. With the wind at 360/10, the tailwind component would be 7.7 kts. At 25 kts., the tailwind component would be 19.2 kts.!
 
Everskyward said:
Interesting destination. Practicing up for Wyoming? :D
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Partly, one goal is to land at all the public airports in Colorado so this trip put Walden in the bag. I also wanted to check out a "passless" route into the mountains.

The route I took was the lowest possible altitude route into north central Colorado and south central Wyoming. I heard about it from a guy at the Steamboat airport and wanted to check it out. It's pretty simple, just fly north of Denver sort of along I-25 until the big powerline south of Cheyenne and then follow the power line. The trip can be done below 10,000 feet.

kkoran said:
I say the float was due to the tailwind. The A/FD lists the Rwy as 22, not 26. With the wind at 360/10, the tailwind component would be 7.7 kts. At 25 kts., the tailwind component would be 19.2 kts.!
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Sorry I wasn't clear. The landing on 26 was FTG. I landed runway 4 at 33V.

For Lance, I know how the Dakota lands and what speeds to fly. The float was unusually long. Maybe it was just rising air off the black runway surface on a sunny day.
 
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"For Lance, I know how the Dakota lands and what speeds to fly. The float was unusually long. Maybe it was just rising air off the black runway surface on a sunny day."

Just my meaningless $.02:
This quote brought back some memories. Years ago (1973) I started to train in a Grumman Trainer in Gainesville FL. On a hot summers day, with all the thermal energy rising off that runway, sometimes the plane would seem to never get down...it (and I) were pretty light and would literally float 2/3 the way at 40-45 kts and never get any closer to the touchdown. We used to practice going around in that condition just because we ran out of room to get the plane to actually touch the surface. LOL and sheesh it was hot as h*ll in that canopy! BTW didn't get my ticket until 2009...
 
It is amazing how the cold air effects performance. I have to relearn how to fly a couple times a year.
 
gismo said:
Unless the wind kept increasing during your flare or your engine was producing more than idle power, an extended float always means you came into the flare with too much energy. Common causes of that are:

1) Flying the approach too fast because the controls feel more responsive
2) Using the wrong target airspeed on final
3) Starting the final too high and failing to eliminate the extra energy with a slip
Click to expand...

And 4) Flaring too late. If the pilot maintains proper approach speeds right down final and flares suddenly at two feet above the surface, it will float. Proper technique is to get the power backed off and start the nose coming up at anywhere between 15 and 30 feet AGL so that the airplane arrives at the surface very close to stall speed. If it's gusty this can get hairy so a bit more caution is in order, but for the most part I see guys using up awesome runway length either because they flare late or because they're high and dive at the runway to get to the threshold. Diving just makes too much speed. There's another old saying: "To go up, pullback. Go go down, pull back more." Slowing the airplane to a little below approach speed will make it sink enough that a little power is sometimes necessary to reach the runway.

Dan
 
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Dan Thomas said:
Diving just makes too much speed.
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Yep -- which is why every small airplane pilot needs to be able to aggressively slip to lose those few extra feet of altitude without building up excessive speed.

It can mean surviving that engine out that ends up in the K-Mart parking lot...
 
dmccormack said:
I have to learn not to panic when the air warms up...

"Those trees look mighty close!"
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"Those cows have really gotten big!" Sorry, I live in Nebraska. :lol:

And to humor Trapper John, I do NOT mean our cheerleaders. :no:



:rofl:
 
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DutchessFlier said:
This quote brought back some memories. Years ago (1973) I started to train in a Grumman Trainer in Gainesville FL. On a hot summers day, with all the thermal energy rising off that runway, sometimes the plane would seem to never get down...it (and I) were pretty light and would literally float 2/3 the way at 40-45 kts and never get any closer to the touchdown.
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Had you adjusted your approach speed for the light weight?
LOL and sheesh it was hot as h*ll in that canopy!
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Why didn't you open it? Opening the canopy on the Grummans a couple of inches provides excellent ventilation in the traffic pattern on hot, sunny days.
 
Clark1961 said:
Partly, one goal is to land at all the public airports in Colorado so this trip put Walden in the bag. I also wanted to check out a "passless" route into the mountains.

The route I took was the lowest possible altitude route into north central Colorado and south central Wyoming. I heard about it from a guy at the Steamboat airport and wanted to check it out. It's pretty simple, just fly north of Denver sort of along I-25 until the big powerline south of Cheyenne and then follow the power line. The trip can be done below 10,000 feet.
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Yup - that's the route to SAA (Saratoga, WY), altho I think I did it at 10.5-11.5 (I'm not IFR) last time because I was a bit north of that route. I basically follow the state line west. I haven't been to Walden, may try it this weekend.
 
murphey said:
Yup - that's the route to SAA (Saratoga, WY), altho I think I did it at 10.5-11.5 (I'm not IFR) last time because I was a bit north of that route. I basically follow the state line west. I haven't been to Walden, may try it this weekend.
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The Walden runway seemed to be in moderately fair condition. Evidently it didn't get repaved like nearly every other Colorado runway. Well, ok, how 'bout like a lot of other Colorado runways. :)
 
steingar said:
And you guys gripe about my short field performance.
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Hey, at 5,900' of available length at -4 C even at 8,000' elevation I was going for a nice soft landing, not a short field.

If'n ya wanna see a nice short field arrival I'll be more than happy to oblige...:smilewinkgrin:
 
Ron Levy said:
Had you adjusted your approach speed for the light weight?
Why didn't you open it? Opening the canopy on the Grummans a couple of inches provides excellent ventilation in the traffic pattern on hot, sunny days.
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Ron the approach speed was right on the numbers! and yeah, even when we opened the canopy some, but damn it was like 95-98 degrees, humidity was up there (central florida) we were soaking wet when we got back!
 
DutchessFlier said:
Ron the approach speed was right on the numbers!
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Which numbers? The book figures are usually just for MGW, and don't tell you to adjust downward for lighter weights.
and yeah, even when we opened the canopy some, but damn it was like 95-98 degrees, humidity was up there (central florida) we were soaking wet when we got back!
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Based on my experience in such conditions, it would have been worse in a C-150/152.
 
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