Landing in high winds

john smith wrote
The Arrow has a healthy sink rate the requires some extra speed
initially to keep the sink rate below 500 fpm.

Sink rate (and rate of climb) is a function of power not
airspeed. Excess power...you go up, more excess power
and you go up faster. Same for a deficiency of power, the
greater the deficiency, the faster you go down. A 500 fpm
rate of descent can be flown at "almost" any airspeed by
using an appropriate power setting.

Bob Moore

On Sat, 16 Aug 2003 23:49:11 GMT, Dave Stadt wrote:
If you have effective brakes differential braking works if the tailwheel is
free to caster or locked.

The trouble is the wind was so strong, I'd have needed so much brake
it would have taken almost takeoff power to taxi :-)

Much easier to have two eager linemen grab a strut each g

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 19:29:14 GMT, john smith
wrote:

Snowbird wrote:
AFAIK, I fly a plane whose stall speed is *higher* than an Arrow's.
90 mph sounds quite high for normal final approach esp. w/ just you
in the plane, assuming your stall speed is similar to or lower than
mine.
I target final approach at 80 mph, 75 if it's just me and partial
fuel. I add 1/2 the gust factor as a rule of thumb ie 17 g 27
would add ~5 kts.
JMO, but I don't think it adds to safety to put on too much extra
speed. If it's really nasty and swirly near the ground, it just
extends the time you have to spend in ground effect bleeding off
extra speed.
Why do you feel it's necessary, or safer, to add 10 to 15 kts to
an approach speed which already sounds rather fast?

Note thaty the original poster stated airspeed in MILES PER HOUR not
knots.
90 MPH is about 75 kts, which is okay.

That's still faster than I land a Bonanza or Debonair.
and I think its considerably faster than I used to Land the Cherokee
180. And I did make the distinction between knots and MPH.

The Arrow has a healthy sink rate the requires some extra speed
initially to keep the sink rate below 500 fpm.

OK...why do you want to keep the sink rate below 500 fpm? I'm used to
seeing 800 in the Deb and can easily manage a descent up to 1100 fpm.
Actually I can come down a lot faster than that, but I can do a more
or less normal descent at 1100.

"As I recall" power off in the old Cherokee 180 was also around 800
with full flaps.

As a comparison, a power off "best glide" in a Glasair III is about
1500 fpm.

Roger Halstead (K8RI EN73 & ARRL Life Member)
www.rogerhalstead.com
N833R World's oldest Debonair? (S# CD-2)

john smith wrote in message ...
Snowbird wrote:
AFAIK, I fly a plane whose stall speed is *higher* than an Arrow's.
90 mph
....
I target final approach at 80 mph, 75 if it's just me and partial
fuel.

Note thaty the original poster stated airspeed in MILES PER HOUR not
knots.

Yes. Note that so did I.

90 MPH is about 75 kts, which is okay.

Well, I've never flown an Arrow -- as I said up-front.

I calculate 90 MPH as 78 kts.

What is Vso in a Hershey-bar Arrow? www.risingup.com gives
one 180 hp model as 53 kts. Using the 1.3xVso rule of thumb,
that suggests an approach speed of 69 kts or about 80 mph,
which is my target.

Note that the original poster also said he was adding 10-15 *kts*
of extra speed to compensate for 10 kt gust.

The Arrow has a healthy sink rate the requires some extra speed
initially to keep the sink rate below 500 fpm.

Well, like I said, I've never flown one, but it looked to me
like it had the same wing as the comparable PA28-180 or Archer
of its year. Why would it have such a high sink rate vs. these
planes?

Cheers,
Sydney

On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 20:38:02 GMT, Robert Moore
wrote:

john smith wrote
The Arrow has a healthy sink rate the requires some extra speed
initially to keep the sink rate below 500 fpm.

Sink rate (and rate of climb) is a function of power not
airspeed. Excess power...you go up, more excess power
and you go up faster. Same for a deficiency of power, the
greater the deficiency, the faster you go down. A 500 fpm
rate of descent can be flown at "almost" any airspeed by
using an appropriate power setting.

Bob Moore

Ahh, words of wisdom from a fellow Naval Aviator.

(They don't seem to teach that anywhere else, Bob.)

vince norris

John,

Your words sound overly confident enough to remind me of an
acquaintance who bragged about handling strong winds in his Cherokee
as opposed to high wing nose gear airplanes. He forgot that the
extensive dihedral makes up for the very minor difference in vertical
center of gravity between the airplanes, did not use aileron
deflection on a gusty day and his wonderful low wing Cherokee got
flipped.

All airplanes are subject to upset in very high winds. Appropriate
aileron technique when taxiing, taking off and landing is far more
important than where the wing is mounted or the width of the gear.
Your 172 bobbed in the wind more than your Cherokee because of the
spring steel gear on the 172 having more "give" to it than the oleo
stuts on the Cherokee. They provide you with what can be a false
sense of security.

All the best,
Rick

(John Galban) wrote in message . com...
(Dylan Smith) wrote in message ...

If you compare a C172 with a Cherokee, you'll find the gear track is
actually pretty similar. There's nothing to grab hold of on a low
wing so they just leave you to it.
snip

The gear track sure looks a lot wider on my Cherokee. I believe
it's close to 20 ft. Actually my point was that the combination of
the wider track, and more importantly, the lower CG means there's no
need for anyone to grab hold of anything. Where my topheavy 172 used
to start rocking on its wheels turning into a stiff crosswind, the
Cherokee doesn't even budge.

John Galban=====N4BQ (PA28-180)

As such, Bob's comments were right on the money.

I was just quibbling about his comment about airspeed being unrelated
to excess power. That was indeed wrong, and if it went unchallenged,
some readers might think it was right.

However you slice it, the original comment ("The Arrow has a healthy
sink rate the requires some extra speed initially to keep the sink
rate below 500 fpm") is just plain wrong.

True.

rethinking previous postings...
with power...
- fly the numbers or faster with shallower approach
without power...
- fly the numbers with normal rate of descent
- fly faster with steeper rate of descent