Is every touchdown a stall?

Peter Duniho writes:

Neil's original statement was simply "if the aircraft is flying, it is not
landing". This is not true. As near as I can tell from the quoted thread,
this was the point Mxsmanic was addressing. There is nothing fundamentally
incorrect about the statement "If the aircraft is flying and descending, it
is landing" (assuming we're talking about airplane flight near a runway,
which seems like a reasonable inference in this context...obviously aircraft
fly and descend without landing all the time in other contexts).

Yes.

You don't need to stall the aircraft to descend. It can fly and
descend at the same time. If you do this above a runway, you end up
landing. If the rate of descent is gentle, you land very gently.

I'm unclear as to the official definition of "with good flying speed up your
sleeve", the phrase you use.

I'm not sure what that means, either, but in my case, "flying speed"
means perhaps five or eight knots above stall, depending on many
things. I'm not talking about high-altitude cruise speeds, but a
speed high enough to avoid an accidental or deliberate stall above the
runway.

As I understand it, a stall is a sudden change in the aerodynamics of
the aircraft. It doesn't sound like something you'd want when you are
only a few feet above the runway. This would be all the more true
under rough landing conditions, when you need to have precise control
of the aircraft at all times. Yes, I can see how you'd need a longer
runway, but if you're in a small aircraft, very often you have runway
to spare, anyway.

I don't know if my techniques are valid, but I seem to be having more
luck with safe landings since I started watching airspeed carefully to
avoid anything like a stall.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.