Mi son letto un paio di volte questo; hei Walty, quando si riparte?
At least to begin with, start your landing approach well out from the end of the runway. Try to get about about 12 to 1 glide slope set up (approximately one runway length for every 100m/300ft above runway altitude) and get your speed down early. Lower flaps and let the aircraft settle in, then trim for approach speed. If Rudder and Aileron trim are available, set them up for a power setting lower than required to maintain the glide slope to minimise the correction required when you pull power off at touch down. Don’t forget to lower landing gear.
As you approach the runway, watch the near end of the runway in your windscreen. If it’s moving up your screen, you’re descending too quickly and will need a touch more power. If it’s moving down, you’re going to overshoot and will need to reduce power. After making power adjustments your speed will want to vary a little, but it should settle back down to your selected approach speed in a few seconds as the glide slope adjusts.
Keep an eye on your speed too. You’ll want to be approaching stall speed in the last stages of the approach. If you’ve got to wash off too much speed in the flare the aircraft will not want to settle on the runway. While not that critical on the big land based runways, this will result in missing the wire or missing the whole deck on a carrier. You don’t want to be washing off more than 5-10mph (8-16km/h) in the final flare and touch down.
Because you’re flying so slowly you need to be very careful with the controls. When you’re this close to stall, any large rudder, or aileron movement is likely to make one wing stall. You’ll need a fair chunk of control input to get responses, but even the slightest amount of overcontrol will cause disaster.
Similarly, large changes in power at this speed are going to cause big roll and yaw responses. Be careful correcting these and as far as possible use mainly rudder to control them. Again, overcorrecting is as bad as or worse than undercorrecting.
Just before touch down pull the nose back and ease the power off. This should be time so that the wheels touch the ground just as the aircraft stalls. The pull back and throttle down needs to be smooth, not sudden or our gyroscopic forces and torque are going to bite us. If you pull back too suddenly the aircraft will yaw, almost certainly causing one wing to stall at this low speed. Even pulling back gently you may need a touch of rudder to keep the nose straight.
Likewise with throttle, if you yank the power off you’ll find wing wants to drop. A smidgeon of rudder and a smooth reduction in power will generally keep the wings level, though you may also need the slightest touch of aileron in some aircraft.
If you’re in a tail dragger and you’ve done it right, you’ll achieve a three point landing. For tricycle landing gear aircraft, the main wheels should touch first. In either configuration, if you get the landing attitude right and you’re too fast the aircraft will float above the runway or even climb. If you’ve not pulled the nose up far enough and you’re too fast you’ll touch down but bounce. If you’re too slow or too early you’ll stall before touch down and either bounce or break something.
If you do bounce on a land airfield, don’t push the stick forward. Ease a touch of power back in (very carefully and not much) to prevent the aircraft stalling before the second touch and maintain a slightly nose high attitude. Unless you’ve really made a botch of things in a major way, this should allow the aircraft to settle moderately gently back onto the runway.
If you bounce on a carrier you’ll either miss the wires or if you catch a wire you’re likely to break your landing gear on the second touch, so do your best not to bounce too much on a carrier landing. If you’re going a bit fast or slow and you’re not too badly damaged on a carrier approach, go around and start over. Make your decision to abort early, particularly if you’re too slow.
Once the wheels are on the ground, forget the ailerons even exist. Keep the stick back and gently dab at the brakes to bring the speed down. If your landing has been a bit rough and the aircraft is rocking around, use rudder to bring it back into line. Remember that left/right brake balance is linked to rudder and try not to get too enthusiastic with the rudder while the brakes are applied Wink.