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Old October 3rd 06, 02:09 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
Dylan Smith
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Posts: 530
Default Is every touchdown a stall?

On 2006-10-02, Mxsmanic wrote:
Dylan Smith writes:

There's more than one way to land an aircraft, though. Take, for
example, a tailwheel aircraft. You can land it in the 'three point'
attitude (the mains and tailwheel touching down pretty much
simultaneously) - which is often called a 'stall landing'. You're not
quite actually stalled when this happens - the three point attitude in
all the tailwheel planes I've flown has been slightly below the stall
angle of attack.


It sounds very difficult. I take it this is where the expression
"three-point landing" for a difficult task successfully accomplished
came from?


It's trivially easy, and back in the day when tailwheel aircraft were
used as primary trainers, it's how newly soloed pilots with 8 hours of
flight time did their landings.

Wheel landings tend to be more tricky, because you have to touch down
with virtually nil rate of descent, and add the little bit of forward
stick at just the right time. Get the timing wrong, and you bounce.
However, once mastered it's kind of like 'riding a bike'.

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