Landing a Mooney

Don't forget that, as with any airplane, stall speed and thus approach speed
vary with weight. If 70 knots works well on short final at max gross weight,

then to get the same flare and float characteristics, you must be slower at
lighter weights. If the plane is 20% below max gross, then approach speed
should be 10% less.

A couple of other things that might be a bit more 'advanced', or at least are
not in the POH but are worth considering.

When you're deep in the flare, flip your flaps to up. Stall speed goes up, the
airplane will stay down when it touches down.

If there's a serious cross wind and the runway is wide -- say 100 feet or so --
you can take 4 or so degrees off the crosswind component by planing your touch
down near the downwind side of the runway, aiming towards the upwide side. If
you cross say 50 feet of runway -- 25 feet from the downwind edge to within 25
feet of the upwind edge in say 750 feet you'll have changed the effective
runway heading about 4 degrees. It's often enough to give you a little more
rudder authority (in my M20J at least I run out of rudder in strong cross winds
-- I like to touch down pretty slowly).

I generally take 5 knots off everything in my Mooney when I'm light.


"Barry" wrote in message ...
Don't forget that, as with any airplane, stall speed and thus approach
speed
vary with weight. If 70 knots works well on short final at max gross
weight,
then to get the same flare and float characteristics, you must be slower
at
lighter weights. If the plane is 20% below max gross, then approach speed
should be 10% less.

Don't flare a Mooney.

What you know as a flare will cause nothing but trouble.

Instead of the "flare" do a "round out". If you have good electric trim,
use it instead of back pressure. Also, don't chop the power, remove it
SLOOOOWWWWLLLY. The plane can land before idle.You want a slow transition
from nose down to nose wheel just a bit higher. Let the plane fly down the
runway while the speed bleeds. Worry about spot landings after you have
practiced smooth ones. Once you have the site pictures and techniques, you
can move it to the numbers.

What others have said about airspeed and stabilized approach are more
important than what I just said, but if you got them right this is the next
step.




"Jon Kraus" wrote in message
...
We just purchased a'79 M20J 4443H. I am in the middle of getting my 10
hours with a CFI for Insurance purposes and I have to tell you that this
thing is a lot different to land than a Skyhawk. So far I am glad that
my CFI has been with me because 75 percent of the landings have not been
pretty. They are safe (mostly) but nothing you'd want the wife to film
with the video camera. I've got the speeds down good (100 on downwind,
90 on base and 80 on final) but getting it to the runway smoothly has
been a challange.

I've never flown a low wing plane before the Mooney and I am having a
problem with the sight picture working out for me. Is this a pretty
common issue in transitioning to these planes or should I just resign to
the fact that I'm not going to get as nice a landings in my Mooney as I
did in the Skyhawk .

Right now any stories would help out tremendously!! Thanks.

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
Student Mooney Owner
'79 M20J 4443H @ TYQ

Until you get your visual sight picture down you might try reducing power to
idle at about 50' and just flying it onto the runway with a controlled
smooth descent, making sure you don't land nosegear first. Then when you
have that down you could use the "normal" procedure of holding it just off
the runway until it plays out and lands. With a low wing you have a little
more ground effect near touchdown.

--

Darrell R. Schmidt
B-58 Hustler History: http://members.cox.net/dschmidt1/
-

"Jon Kraus" wrote in message
...
We just purchased a'79 M20J 4443H. I am in the middle of getting my 10
hours with a CFI for Insurance purposes and I have to tell you that this
thing is a lot different to land than a Skyhawk. So far I am glad that
my CFI has been with me because 75 percent of the landings have not been
pretty. They are safe (mostly) but nothing you'd want the wife to film
with the video camera. I've got the speeds down good (100 on downwind,
90 on base and 80 on final) but getting it to the runway smoothly has
been a challange.

I've never flown a low wing plane before the Mooney and I am having a
problem with the sight picture working out for me. Is this a pretty
common issue in transitioning to these planes or should I just resign to
the fact that I'm not going to get as nice a landings in my Mooney as I
did in the Skyhawk .

Right now any stories would help out tremendously!! Thanks.

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
Student Mooney Owner
'79 M20J 4443H @ TYQ

Hard to resist this thread. I was on the Mooney listserver for a couple of
years and there is an 'unlimited' number of landing notes for you. Every
model, vintage, condition. If you aren't on it, you should be. Don't have
the details though.

The various models apparently have different speeds, challenges, and
techniques. I flew a '61 model 21 with the Johnson bar. I fell in love
with landing it, and I'm a high wing guy too. Airspeed as always was the
key.

The thing I liked the most though, was doing short field landings at 65mph
as I remember. At a very specific airspeed (68 I think at our weight), you
apparently fell out of laminar flow mode and the descent angle would
significantly steepen. If you held 65 and pulled the power 2 wingspans up,
it was automatic spot landing. Neat. I think someone else mentioned that
effect (pitch up and slow 5 knots and the descent rate goes up).

Apparently that is a lot trickier on the later heavier models. Have fun!

"Jon Kraus" wrote in message
...
We just purchased a'79 M20J 4443H. I am in the middle of getting my 10
hours with a CFI for Insurance purposes and I have to tell you that this
thing is a lot different to land than a Skyhawk. So far I am glad that
my CFI has been with me because 75 percent of the landings have not been
pretty. They are safe (mostly) but nothing you'd want the wife to film
with the video camera. I've got the speeds down good (100 on downwind,
90 on base and 80 on final) but getting it to the runway smoothly has
been a challange.

I've never flown a low wing plane before the Mooney and I am having a
problem with the sight picture working out for me. Is this a pretty
common issue in transitioning to these planes or should I just resign to
the fact that I'm not going to get as nice a landings in my Mooney as I
did in the Skyhawk .

Right now any stories would help out tremendously!! Thanks.

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
Student Mooney Owner
'79 M20J 4443H @ TYQ

I also do my short field landings like that when I'm in Mexico with my
Mooney. As you slow the Mooney down below around 70 knots the rate of decent
goes up a lot. You can drag it in on the prop and drop it one a spot easily.
If you run the trim all the way back you can also raise the nose up on take
off and accelerate on the mains. Tricky though, check out a CFI first.

BTW: If you are flying an older Mooney just substitute knots for mph. So the
older Mooneys approach at 75-80mpg, the newer one use 75-80 knots. Same
thing with over the fence speed (should be 5 mph less than your approach
speed). Kinda neat that it works out that way.

-Robert

"Maule Driver" wrote in message
om...
Hard to resist this thread. I was on the Mooney listserver for a couple
of
years and there is an 'unlimited' number of landing notes for you. Every
model, vintage, condition. If you aren't on it, you should be. Don't
have
the details though.

The various models apparently have different speeds, challenges, and
techniques. I flew a '61 model 21 with the Johnson bar. I fell in love
with landing it, and I'm a high wing guy too. Airspeed as always was the
key.

The thing I liked the most though, was doing short field landings at
65mph
as I remember. At a very specific airspeed (68 I think at our weight), you
apparently fell out of laminar flow mode and the descent angle would
significantly steepen. If you held 65 and pulled the power 2 wingspans
up,
it was automatic spot landing. Neat. I think someone else mentioned that
effect (pitch up and slow 5 knots and the descent rate goes up).

Apparently that is a lot trickier on the later heavier models. Have fun!

"Jon Kraus" wrote in message
...
We just purchased a'79 M20J 4443H. I am in the middle of getting my 10
hours with a CFI for Insurance purposes and I have to tell you that this
thing is a lot different to land than a Skyhawk. So far I am glad that
my CFI has been with me because 75 percent of the landings have not been
pretty. They are safe (mostly) but nothing you'd want the wife to film
with the video camera. I've got the speeds down good (100 on downwind,
90 on base and 80 on final) but getting it to the runway smoothly has
been a challange.

I've never flown a low wing plane before the Mooney and I am having a
problem with the sight picture working out for me. Is this a pretty
common issue in transitioning to these planes or should I just resign to
the fact that I'm not going to get as nice a landings in my Mooney as I
did in the Skyhawk .

Right now any stories would help out tremendously!! Thanks.

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
Student Mooney Owner
'79 M20J 4443H @ TYQ

Years ago I did allot of flying in a M20C, they are fast and tend to float.
If I remember the key is to be right on the speed at flare or expect it to
balloon and float. It will get better with practice.

Ron Gardner

Jon Kraus wrote:

We just purchased a'79 M20J 4443H. I am in the middle of getting my 10
hours with a CFI for Insurance purposes and I have to tell you that this
thing is a lot different to land than a Skyhawk. So far I am glad that
my CFI has been with me because 75 percent of the landings have not been
pretty. They are safe (mostly) but nothing you'd want the wife to film
with the video camera. I've got the speeds down good (100 on downwind,
90 on base and 80 on final) but getting it to the runway smoothly has
been a challange.

I've never flown a low wing plane before the Mooney and I am having a
problem with the sight picture working out for me. Is this a pretty
common issue in transitioning to these planes or should I just resign to
the fact that I'm not going to get as nice a landings in my Mooney as I
did in the Skyhawk .

Right now any stories would help out tremendously!! Thanks.

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
Student Mooney Owner
'79 M20J 4443H @ TYQ

Key to a smooth landing ishave the flightpath to be parallel to the landing
surface as the plane touches. Consistent roundouts to land need good
consistent airspeed control. It s amater of timing.

Btw, is you engine a IO-360-A3B6 or still an IO-360-A1B6 ?

Kent Felkins
Tulsa

a

Jon Kraus wrote
We just purchased a'79 M20J 4443H. I am in the middle of getting my 10
hours with a CFI for Insurance purposes and I have to tell you that this
thing is a lot different to land than a Skyhawk.

Yes it is. It's also a lot different than other airplanes in its
class.

It's not really that it's harder to land - it's that it advertises
even your most minor mistakes to everyone watching. Some airplanes
make you look good even when you are sloppy - true of the C-172, and
also true of the Bonanza (and pretty much every Beech product I've
ever flown, though I admit I haven't flown and Beech taildraggers).
Some airplanes make you look bad if you do anything short of a perfect
job.

I've got the speeds down good (100 on downwind,
90 on base and 80 on final) but getting it to the runway smoothly has
been a challange.

Those speeds sound right. However, all the correct speed buys you is
a landing that is WHERE you want it. The Mooney gear has very little
shock absorption. In something like a Bonanza, you have long oleo
struts - so a few inches either way is no big deal. Three inches high
and you will never know it. In a Mooney, three inches high is very
noticeable. Those rubber donuts simply are not very good for shock
absorption. Bottom line - you're not just transitioning into an
airplane that lands differently, you're transitioning into one that
requires more skill to land well - not just airspeed control, but
judging your altitude and rate of descent in the flare precisely (and
I mean down to the inch).

I've never flown a low wing plane before the Mooney and I am having a
problem with the sight picture working out for me. Is this a pretty
common issue in transitioning to these planes or should I just resign to
the fact that I'm not going to get as nice a landings in my Mooney as I
did in the Skyhawk .

It's not a low wing vs. high wing issue - it's just that you are being
called upon to judge and control your altitude and rate of descent in
the flare more precisely than was ever necessary before. You are
extending your skills. So get a CFI experienced in Mooneys (not some
guy who has 10 hours in one, but someone who actually owns and flies a
Mooney) and practice man, practice. With time, it will come.

Michael

Michael wrote:

It's not really that it's harder to land - it's that it advertises
even your most minor mistakes to everyone watching.

Also advertises those mistakes to the pilot's rear. There's not much
give in those rubber biscuits.