Of tow hooks and wheel brakes

SoaringXCellence wrote, On 6/9/2013 5:14 PM:
Another element I have observed is that many pilot wait until the end
of the run to try the brakes.

At that point the elevator has no authority to keep the tail down.
Better to hold aft stick with braking while you still have control of
the pitch, earlier in the ground roll. This allows you to keep the
tail down.

I know that with the ships I fly that are "tail draggers" the sooner
you get rid of energy the easier the end of the ground roll.

It's a different approach than most pilots seem to use but it works
well.

On my ASW 20 C, I would put the flaps in negative after touching down
and hold the stick back, allowing full braking power with no chance of
going up on the nose. Wait to end, the elevator wasn't very effective at
holding the tail down, reducing the braking force I could apply without
the nose going down - like Xcellence said.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Feb/2010" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm
http://tinyurl.com/yb3xywl