Cessna 182 or 182RG tips?

Centurion wrote:
Cessnas as a general rule glide better than Pipers. I generally chop the
throttle on final when I'm still a couple of hundred feed shy of the
threshold... something I wait a while longer to do when I fly Cherokees.

Eeek. Try that little "throttle-chop" manoeuvre in a heavily loaded C206 or
C210 or even a C208B If your idea of a smooth, controlled landing
involves folding the undercarriage, then go for it.


Huh? I've got a couple of hundred hours in C-210s and only crashed one on
once... and that was after an engine failure! With proper airspeed control and
judging your flair accurately, it's possible to make soft landings with idle
power consistently. And trust me, if I was flying the 210, it was heavy!

Many trips to the Bahamas with six souls and scuba gear....


I've never flown any aircraft at the manufacturer's numbers and had good
results from "chopping" the throttle on short final unless I'm either hot
or high (or both)


My first chief pilot insisted on making every landing a short field landing.
That way, when I really had to stuff one in, it was just a normal day at the
office. I always flew a steep power off approach in Cessnas (except the twins).
And screw the manufacturer's numbers... they're really just a guide to one
aspect of handling the aircraft. There's generally more than one way to
accomplish the same.

In the C-210, I'd come in at 80 knots on final and bleed off from there on short
final. I have no idea what the touchdown speed is since my eyes are outside the
cockpit at that point. Steep approach, touchdown on the numbers or immediately
after, and soft landings so there's no bitching from the cheap seats....


But, in the event of an engine failure (in a single), I'd rather be in a
Cessna over a Piper, and I'd rather be in a Piper over a Socata
TB-series :P


Never had an engine failure in a Socata (never even flown one) but I absolutely
agree with your statement of Cessna vs Piper... and I'm speaking from direct
experience. I've crashed twice in my career... the first a C-210 (no injuries):
clean, it came down at 700fpm. The second crash was a straight tailed Lance and
it damn near killed me. Clean, it glided like a brick.... 1100 fpm sink rate.
And as I think about it, the Cessna was heavier with six of us on board as
opposed to only two in the Lance and no baggage.

I had a Lance 135 checkride after I recovered and I still couldn't reach the
preferred emergency touchdown point in the simulated engine out. Definitely a
lead sled....



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN

VE

Mortimer Schnerd, RN wrote:

My first chief pilot insisted on making every landing a short field landing.
That way, when I really had to stuff one in, it was just a normal day at the
office. I always flew a steep power off approach in Cessnas (except the twins).
And screw the manufacturer's numbers... they're really just a guide to one
aspect of handling the aircraft. There's generally more than one way to
accomplish the same.

Your chief pilot sounds like my primary instructor. Pretty much every
landing was virtually a short-field landing. Well, not really as his
technique for a short-field landing scares me to this day, even though I
was once proficient at it in the 150. We came in with power on, the
nose in the air and the stall horn occasionally making a weak bleat.
Then once over the threshold, cut the power to idle, drop the nose just
a second to get near the ground, then haul back into a serious flare.
The idea was to get the elevator full aft with full stall horn prior to
touchdown. Your timing had to be pretty good to avoid a bounce, but
executed correctly this resulted in an impressively short landing.

When I was learning at N38, prior to the airport expansion, they had
something like 1900' of pavement and about 400' of grass on either end
of the runway, one end terminating in tall trees. We practiced this
mostly on runway 27 (now 28) which had a fairly clear approach. We used
the road at the end of 400' overrun as the threshold and if executed
properly, you could be down and stopped before reaching the paved
portion of the runway (this in a C-150). I was never completely
comfortable flying behind the power curve like that, but if you REALLY
had to land short, that seemed to be the way to do it and Dick was
completely comfortably flying that way and teaching that. Then again,
I've never flown with any instructor since who knew the envelope of the
airplane and of his own skill with the precision that Dick did.

Matt