Boeing airliners are designed to have the nose wheel firmly
on the ground, some even have a brake. But no airplane is
designed to have the nose forced/slammed down except maybe a
carrier based fighter.

But back to the GA aircraft and effective nose wheel
steering... steering works with the weight on the main
landing gear and the nose wheel applies force to move the
nose. If you apply forward elevator you'll be loading the
nose wheel and shifting the pivot point [fulcrum] to the
nose wheel, this will cause the airplane to weathervane even
more and result in loss of directional control.



wrote in message
oups.com...

Matt Whiting wrote:
Dan wrote:
All,

When touching down in a crosswind, after the mains and
the nosewheel
have all touched down firmly and are rolling, would it
be proper
procedure to apply slight forward pressure to get better
steering from
the nosewheel? Often, noseweel steering seems
ineffective, and this
seems to have helped my control on rollout.

Any cautions? I have heard about "wheelbarrowing" but
is that more of
a takeoff issue than landing issue? Under what
circumstances would
"wheelbarrowing" occur?

--Dan


I was taught to basically use neutral elevator during the
roll-out. You
really shouldn't need to add forward pressure to get solid
steering.
Wheelbarrowing is a possibility if you apply aggresive
nose down
elevator right after landing when you speed is high, but
as you slow
down the ability to do this obviously decreases.

What are your symptoms of ineffective nosewheel steering?
Are you not
able to hold the airplane on the centerline? Are you
rolling in aileron
into the wind as you slow down such that you have full
aileron into the
crosswind as you get to taxi speed?

I happened to bump into this:-
http://www.aaib.dft.gov.uk/cms_resou...pdf_507740.pdf

It discusses forward pressure immideately after landing
says:-

Boeing 757-2T7, G-MONC
Nature of Damage: Structural damage to forward
fuselage in area of nose landing gear
.....
Having developed an incorrect landing technique, it is
possible
that it was simply a matter of time
before the timing in the application of full nose-down
elevator caused an incident
.....
Over the ensuing 1.125 seconds, the elevator position
changed
from 15.6degrees nose up at touchdown to
full nose down (20degrees) and the pitch attitude
began to reduce rapidly. The aircraft became light on the
main landing gear oleos but not enough to register
a change of state of the air / ground logic. The
right reverser indicated in transit just before the
(almost simultaneous) main landing gear recompression
and nose gear ground contact. A normal acceleration
of +1.6g was recorded during the
re-compression of the main landing gear. The rate of
derotation at nose gear oleo compression was
calculated to be 10degrees/second. This figure was
confirmed by the aircraft manufacturer who also stated
the design limit value to be 7°/second.