Wheel Landing - By The Numbers

"BillWhiteInsurance" wrote
in message ...

(Portion taken from Bill's Blog)

For all of you diehard pilots who prefer the 3 Point Full Stall landing
technique, stay with it since that's what you know best. The following
explanation of a specific wheel landing technique is for the pilots who
were never taught correctly, or for you 3 pointers with a curiosity.
This IS the BEST way to land a C180/185 for most situations, in my
opinion.

This specific WHEEL LANDING technique is so good, I've used it on short
800' Idaho dirt strips and in gusty crosswind situations - basically
everything except a really soft surface that calls for a 3 point
landing. And even if you only fly 20 hours a year, it's easy to maintain
proficiency with this technique, provided you learn..it. correctly. For
me, it is the most consistent, reliable way to land a C180/185. Why is
it the BEST way to land? Because your cockpit workload is MUCH LOWER
compared to the 3 point/stall method. ** WHAT CAN GET A PILOT INTO
TROUBLE LANDING A TAIL WHEEL AIRPLANE? Poor approach, or flair technique
at touchdown, and/or loss of focus on the rollout, in other words, high
workload.

TOO MANY VARIABLES in your landing procedure (or routine) makes every 3
Point Full Stall landing a unique event. During a 3 Point Full Stall
landing you have to recognize, adapt and overcome many potential
problems, make quick decisions and constant adjustments. A few of these
variables might be: a varying rate of descent just prior to touchdown,
height above the runway, airspeed bleed off prior to the stall,
crosswind drift in a stalled nose, high attitude at touch down,
floating, bouncing, limited forward vision due to a nose high flare,
drifting on rollout, and possible impaired directional control when you
only have the side windows on rollout.

Why do all that, and fight a 600 pound tail with its own mind? With this
technique you ELIMINATE most of these problems. You eliminate changing
speeds on final, eliminate stalling, eliminate floating, completely
eliminate nose high forward vision problems, minimize and view any drift
tendencies immediately, and you can view the touchdown area all the way
to touchdown.

Continue reading this blog at http://tinyurl.com/85lv5zo
Bill (Comments greatly appreciated)
--
BillWhiteInsurance

I don't know. All those work intensive obsticles you mention - It's my
opinion that any tailwheel pilot with maybe 50 hours in type makes all these
corrections without even being aware of it. An exception might be a
crosswind gust trying to swing the tail around, but that's one thing
individual wheel brakes are for. Not if only the mains are down though. I've
never experienced it, but I think this condition would be a bear during a
wheel landing. Full throttle immediately?

In a stalled landing, the wheels are planted solidly on the ground at less
than flying speed..

Pilots have been making three pointers since before WWI.