Short field landing aerodynamic braking

That's more or less how I do it in my Tiger (less the reverse thrust part), although not quite as much nose-up. Below stall speed, holding the nose up plants more weight on the mains, increasing braking effectiveness. Just make sure you don't skag the tail while you do it, although if you land as slow as you should for short field, it's hard to skag the tail on a Grumman.
 
That rocks.

I wonder, will Lance make that much dust and stuff when he brings the Lear or Falcon into Gaston's next year?
 
Ron Levy said:
Just make sure you don't skag the tail while you do it, although if you land as slow as you should for short field, it's hard to skag the tail on a Grumman.
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It looked like he had tail contact during the extreme part of the flare? Deliberate? If its a one way trip to be a museum guardian and you landed a little long with a bounce, haul back on it till it scuffs?
 
If it was going to the museum. I guess he was not worried about throwing all that dirt into the engines with reverse thrust.
 
Ron Levy said:
That's more or less how I do it in my Tiger (less the reverse thrust part), although not quite as much nose-up. Below stall speed, holding the nose up plants more weight on the mains, increasing braking effectiveness. Just make sure you don't skag the tail while you do it, although if you land as slow as you should for short field, it's hard to skag the tail on a Grumman.
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Holding the nose up below stall speed reduces the weight on the mains. The stall is a function of angle of attack. The wing is lifting and reducing the weight of the mains anytime there's airflow over it at an AoA above the zero-lift AoA. It just can't lift the airplane off the ground below stall speed. Few airplanes can get their noses high enough while on the wheels to stall the wing, and even if they could the wing would still be generating some lift. Stall does not mean total loss of lift, just a large reduction.

We teach short-field technique like so: Hold the nose up for a bit, since aerodynamic braking is better than wheel brakes when the speed is still high, then lower the nose and apply heavy braking, using full up elevator while doing so. The elevator prevents the airplane's nosediving and shifting too much weight onto the nosewheel, which reduces the weight on the mains and will let them skid sooner.

In taildraggers I can get the most effective braking with the tail way up to kill off the lift by reducing the AoA to as low a figure as safely possible. Heavy braking while controlling the attitude with elevator can be fun indeed.

Dan
 
I dunno, the 727 landing at Meigs was more impressive.
 
smigaldi said:

I like how the reversers were being deployed before the nose wheel was even close to being set down.
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Not an uncommon practice. The 727 tends to want to raise the nose when the TR's are deployed and with the nose up it takes more down elevator when deploying the TR's this way.

It's recommended not to deploy the TR's until the nosewheel is down in case a pod TR doesn't deploy and an asymmetric condition could occur.

I've taken an old 727-100 empty and light fuel and landed in 2000 ft. Vref was something like 105kts.

One of our Old Captains (now long retired) flew B-47's for the AF. He taught me how to land the B727 using aerodynamic braking. We would land, hold the nosewheel off, deploy the speedbrakes and bring the reversers to the idle detent. Keep holding the nose up and let it fall smoothly to the pavement as the speed decreased. It was a very gracefull landing.
 
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