Is every touchdown a stall?

cjcampbell wrote:


If you can't stall it, you can't spin it.
It also had the rudder connected to the aileron controls, so you "steer"
it like a car. If I recall correctly, it had no rudder pedals.

Depends on the year and manufacturer.

It's not so much the linked ailerons and rudders that made it hard
to spin, it's the fact you don't have enough elevator authority to
stall it.

Don't forget CG. A rearward CG tends to make planes easier to spin...
loading aft of the limit can obviously cause behavior outside of the
envelope.

cjcampbell wrote:

It might be possible to force the Ercoupe to spin by really yanking on
the controls in turbulent air and doing everything you could to force
it beyond its stall limitations, but I suspect that you have to be
deliberately trying to crash it.

The NTSB database attributes some Ecroupe accidents to "stall," but the
Ercoupe definitely has different stall characteristics than other
aircraft. Ercoupe fans deny that they are stalls at all. The way pilots
kill themselves on final in Ercoupes is they get real slow and a little
high, so they try to slow some more. The Ercoupe does not stall,
exactly, but it doesn't like that sort of treatment, either. It begins
to descend very rapidly and it takes some time to recover to a normal
rate of descent.

IIRC there have even been a couple of fatalities from spins in
Ercoupes, but control failures were a factor in these. Overall, the
Ercoupe has a *worse* than average fatality rate, which is something
that I doubt Langewische expected. It does show that Langewische was
wrong when he thought that the accident rate would be lowered
significantly if you made it impossible to stall an airplane. All it
really showed was that pilots who were likely to kill themselves in
stalls had to find some other method of committing suicide and murder.

Peter Duniho writes:

Neil's original statement was simply "if the aircraft is flying, it is not
landing". This is not true. As near as I can tell from the quoted thread,
this was the point Mxsmanic was addressing. There is nothing fundamentally
incorrect about the statement "If the aircraft is flying and descending, it
is landing" (assuming we're talking about airplane flight near a runway,
which seems like a reasonable inference in this context...obviously aircraft
fly and descend without landing all the time in other contexts).

Yes.

You don't need to stall the aircraft to descend. It can fly and
descend at the same time. If you do this above a runway, you end up
landing. If the rate of descent is gentle, you land very gently.

I'm unclear as to the official definition of "with good flying speed up your
sleeve", the phrase you use.

I'm not sure what that means, either, but in my case, "flying speed"
means perhaps five or eight knots above stall, depending on many
things. I'm not talking about high-altitude cruise speeds, but a
speed high enough to avoid an accidental or deliberate stall above the
runway.

As I understand it, a stall is a sudden change in the aerodynamics of
the aircraft. It doesn't sound like something you'd want when you are
only a few feet above the runway. This would be all the more true
under rough landing conditions, when you need to have precise control
of the aircraft at all times. Yes, I can see how you'd need a longer
runway, but if you're in a small aircraft, very often you have runway
to spare, anyway.

I don't know if my techniques are valid, but I seem to be having more
luck with safe landings since I started watching airspeed carefully to
avoid anything like a stall.

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Dave Doe writes:

While the poster can probably put the C182 in MSFS on the ground at
100kts, or even 75kts - this doesn't happen in the real world.

I'm certain that it can be done in the real world. Are you saying
that a C182 cannot be made to descend at 100 kts? That the only
directions it can go at that speed are straight ahead or up? I find
that hard to believe.

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Neil Gould writes:

Wrong.

I've already demonstrated that this works.

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Dylan Smith writes:

There's more than one way to land an aircraft, though. Take, for
example, a tailwheel aircraft. You can land it in the 'three point'
attitude (the mains and tailwheel touching down pretty much
simultaneously) - which is often called a 'stall landing'. You're not
quite actually stalled when this happens - the three point attitude in
all the tailwheel planes I've flown has been slightly below the stall
angle of attack.

It sounds very difficult. I take it this is where the expression
"three-point landing" for a difficult task successfully accomplished
came from?

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"Dave Doe" wrote in message
. nz...
The original point was ('in reply to'txt also shown):
"
2) The descent rate depends on many factors, but if the aircraft is
flying, it is not landing.

If the aircraft is flying and descending, it is landing.
"

It was my aim to point out that this is not correct - in the sense and
context that I read it (which is that the plane has good flying speed
(is well above stall)).

You inferred quite a lot in the point to which you replied that simply
wasn't there, IMHO. No one said anything about the plane's airspeed being
"well above stall".

While the poster can probably put the C182 in MSFS on the ground at
100kts, or even 75kts - this doesn't happen in the real world.

BTW, most of your post, Pete, was totally unecessary and well off topic.

Even if one accepts your obviously strict concept of "on topic", the only
reason you think my reply was "off topic" is that you didn't understand the
original statement to which you were replying.

However you read it the way you like, just don't expect another reply
ok.

Why would I expect another reply? Frankly, I'm always surprised at how deep
other people feel it necessary to dig their holes. Fewer replies would be a
blessing.

Pete

On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 18:34:05 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:

Dave Doe writes:

While the poster can probably put the C182 in MSFS on the ground at
100kts, or even 75kts - this doesn't happen in the real world.

I'm certain that it can be done in the real world. Are you saying
that a C182 cannot be made to descend at 100 kts? That the only
directions it can go at that speed are straight ahead or up? I find
that hard to believe.

Of course you can put the airplane on the runway at 100 knots. It's
just bad practice. Tires and brakes are expensive. Excess stress on
the landing gear can cause expensive damage. Some runways are not as
long as might be desired. When you're barrelling down the runway at
100, the airplane is going to take longer to slow down. Maybe
especially because of ground effect. The tires get shredded from
touching down so fast. The brakes get burned up trying to stop. And
you may have that much farther to taxi back to the ramp. Some pilots
have touched down going so fast that they couldn't get stopped before
running off the end of the runway, damaging a perfectly good airplane.

It's generally better to touch down as slowly as practicable. And
what's the slowest speed you can touch down? While touchdown speed may
need to be adjusted slightly for conditions such as wind or
turbulence, it's generally better to do your slowing down while on
approach instead of carrying so much energy all the way to the runway.
A good reference is the aircraft's POH, or the guidance of an
instructor. But then, you don't get either of those with a simulator,
do you?

RK Henry

Recently, Mxsmanic posted:

Neil Gould writes:

Wrong.

I've already demonstrated that this works.

You have "demonstrated" nothing at all. It's irrelevant that it might work
in your sim.

Neil

Recently, Peter Duniho posted:

"Dave Doe" wrote in message
. nz...
The original point was ('in reply to'txt also shown):
"
2) The descent rate depends on many factors, but if the aircraft is
flying, it is not landing.

If the aircraft is flying and descending, it is landing.
"

It was my aim to point out that this is not correct - in the sense
and context that I read it (which is that the plane has good flying
speed (is well above stall)).

You inferred quite a lot in the point to which you replied that simply
wasn't there, IMHO. No one said anything about the plane's airspeed
being "well above stall".

If the stall warning horn is not sounding (a precondition from earlier
posts), it can be presumed that the aircraft is "well above stall" speed.
"Descending" is uninformative about the actual attitude or speed of the
aircraft, and whether one is landing or crashing depends at least to some
degree on those other factors. It's valuable to read the entire thread if
you wish to object to some response to it.

Neil