Mxsmanic wrote:
Listening to the radio transmissions of a VFR pilot who had a panic
attack in a cloud of IMC, I heard him mention to a controller that
"the stall horn goes off every time I land." I thought that was
bizarre. Is a touchdown supposed to be a stall? My stall horn
doesn't sound on landing.

I gather you are using a toy flight simulator.

Okay, in a real airplane the stall warning horn does not go off every
time, either, but many pilots consider it the ideal. It means that you
are landing at the slowest possible speed. Or it at least is supposed
to.

My opinion, that of most manufacturers, and of many commercial pilots,
is that the stall warning horn is a very poor indicator of proper
landing speed. Cessna does not say in their operating handbooks to land
with the stall warning horn blaring. It does not say it on their
checklists. Cessna says to land at, say, 50 KIAS. No mention is made of
the stall warning horn except in the section on stalls. There. I said
it. I know it goes against the deepest heart of hearts of some people
here, including those I greatly respect or even admire, but there it
is. They are wrong. And we would have a lot fewer Cessnas and other
airplanes with broken tail cones if they would admit it. You would not
believe the number of tail strikes I have seen generated by these guys.

And I also think Langewische was wrong about some things. He was not
God. Some of the things he asserts in "Stick and Rudder" are downright
idiotic. Among other things, he advocates a "stall-proof" airplane,
which may not be possible and which certainly is not desirable. He
perpetuates certain myths about the cause of lift. I simply cannot
recommend this book for the student pilot, although it is a step above
"Junior Birdman" kits. Langewische should be used judiciously by flight
instructors who have a thorough grounding in the principles of flight,
if at all.

The ONLY time you should consider it absolutely necessary to land at
the slowest possible airspeed is when you are performing short field
landings. Higher airspeeds are helpful, and possibly even necessary, in
crosswinds, gusty conditions, soft field operations, or when you just
want an especially gentle landing and you have a long runway.

The best speed at which to land the airplane is the one recommended
(adjusted for local conditions) by the manufacturer, who presumably
knows something about the airplane's envelope. The manufacturer, after
all, designed the plane, did the engineering, and flew the
certification tests. The manufacturer knows what angle of attack will
cause you to bang the tail on the runway. The manufacturer knows what
rate of descent will smash the gear. The manufacturer knows what angle
of attack will lift the nose enough to keep you from banging the nose
wheel.