A Sundowner is the easiest and most stable plane you will likely ever fly.
There is one thing that really makes it a delight. When you are landing,
dial in 75 kts on final using the trim. The trim will maintain the
airspeed. Use the throttle for altitude. When you are in ground effect,
slow up and pull back slowly until the runway disappears, and hold the yoke
back in your lap. If you use full flaps, you can stop in a few hundred
feet.

Thr thing about porpoising is related to landing too fast, and then letting
the nose slam down while you are peering out over the nose looking for the
runway. It's not the plane's fault, it still thinks it's flying.

One nice thing that is rarely discussed is that it is almost immune to
crosswinds. It's big and heavy, and doesn't get blown around much. The
demonstrated cross wind is not that high, but I think it can be landed
safely with a considerably greater crosswind.

You won't break many speed records, and headwinds can be frustrating. I
think if Beech put a bigger engine in the Sundowner, like they did with the
earlier Super Musketeers, they could sell them today.


"A Lieberman" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 5 Feb 2006 12:28:18 -0500, Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe wrote:

Wow, that's news to me - I flew a Beech Sport for a while. The only
problem
I has with landings was that I had a hard time getting the hang of the
flap
thingies (I was too used to slipping in with no flaps in a Cessna 120).

Don't recall any problem with bouncing once I got it to the runway.
Perhaps
I just didn't know that it was supposed to be hard? Or perhaps, the
reputation exceeds the reality.

I *think* the porpoising tendencies started with the Sundowner / Sierra
series?

More weight in front with 180HP vs the sport 150HP would be my hypothesis.

Allen