On Mon, 09 Jul 2007 22:43:01 -0700, "Robert M. Gary"
wrote:

On Jul 9, 10:16 pm, "Aluckyguess" wrote:
I land without flaps all the time when I am buy my self. I think I land
smother. I have done this in my Cherokee 180, BE 35, A36 and a skipper I
trained in for a short time."Kobra" wrote in message

. ..



Aviators,

My wife and I flew to Williamsburg (JGG) in our 177RG on Sat. and stayed
until Sunday.

On base at Williamsburg I noticed that the airspeed was really high. I
raised the nose and pulled some power. I had 20 degrees of flaps in and
that is what I usually land with. On final the airspeed was just coming
out of the green and touching the white arc with only 15 inches manifold
pressure. On short final I dropped the last 10 degrees, but despite that,
man I came across the threshold like a bat-out-of-hell.

The runway was only 3000 feet, but somehow I got it down and stopped after
heavy brake burning. I just figured I used some really bad technique or
picked up a tailwind.

I looked at the wind sock and it was stone dead and limp.

On my pre-flight for the trip home I found out why all this happened.
Sometime after lift-off to JGG the flaps went TU. I had no flaps on
landing and I never noticed!! I can hardly believe I don't consciencely
or unconsciencely look to see if the flaps are deploying. Why didn't I
notice that the flap indicator didn't move or that the plane didn't change
pitch or that it didn't push me against the shoulder harness as usual. I
just didn't catch the fact that no flaps came out.

Now I had to get home. I called my mechanic and he said it could be many
things (it wasn't the breaker). He also said I was a complete wimp (he
used a different word that began with a p) if I couldn't land that plane
without the flaps on our 3,500 feet of runway.

I took off and started to ponder the situation:

No flaps
No daylight with 3 miles vis. in haze and mist (ASOS said 10 miles but no
way could you see more than 3 miles)
No landing light (it burned out two weeks ago)
No wind (so no headwind to help slow the airplane's ground speed on
landing)
and I've done a grand total of two no-flap landings in my life. One with
my primary CFI and one during my check out when I bought the plane. Both
during the day with a headwind.

Well, obviously everything went fine and I exited on the second taxiway
off 19 at N14, my homebase. I landed as slow as I could, but the nose was
so high that seeing ahead of the airplane was almost impossible.

I used runway 19 because runway 1 has trees on the approach and I wanted
to come in as flat as possible.

That's why they teach slips.


Anyway...how many different things can cause this? Where should I start
looking?

I also recommend that everyone do some no flap landings each year.

Kobra- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

W/o flaps you will land in a more nose high attitude, which tends to
make for smoother landings, in my experience.

A Bo landed properly (landed, not flown on) with no flaps is so nose
high the only view you have of the airport is out the side windows.
In the past I'd practice them every few weeks. A no flap landing is
much faster than a proper landing and can easily use twice as much
runway as well. It also adds new meaning to the word, "float".

We had a DE here on the field who used to say, "anyone can fly one on
but it takes a pilot to land one".

'
-Robert, CFII