Landing SportCruiser

[FastEddieB]

Glad we could help out!

No matter how long you fly, there will still be landings that get your attention. The important thing is to have the skills to save the ones that are not going as planned. And to never bounce more than twice!

Keep up the good work.

[drseti]

never bounce more than twice!.

I tell my primary students they get one bounce for free. At that point, they have the option of trying to salvage the landing, or going around. If they get a second bounce, it's an automatic go-around. (This is just flight school policy, definitely not in the FARs.) Because you can easily get 180 degrees out of sync with the plane, there's a very good likelihood of a divergent oscillation, causing every additional bounce to be worse than the one before, until you break something.

[CharlieTango]

never bounce more than twice = automatic go around after 2nd bounce

you are both saying the same thing.

[drseti]

you are both saying the same thing.

Correct. I was just elaborating.

[FastEddieB]

you are both saying the same thing.

Correct. I was just elaborating.

Darn it!!!

I came here for an argument!

[drseti]

Sorry to disappoint, Eddie. Don't dispair; I'll rise to the occasion some other time.

[designrs]

Are you guys talking about an actual bounce (as in hard contact with the ground)? Or a balloon (over correcting and going up again)? Or kind of a "ground touch" / light bouce and repeat?

[FastEddieB]

I'm talking about getting back in the air after landing either too soon/too fast/too flat, but the exact reason has been discussed elsewhere. The plane seems to "skip" back into the air.

In any event, in a nosewheel airplane, with the CG ahead of the main gear, touching down main wheels first should normally cause a nose down moment - what Cessna used to advertise as "Land-o-Matic". This was seen to make landings easier than tailwheels, where the CG aft of the mains would cause a nose up moment in the same scenario.

So, most bounces come the pilot aggravating the matter a bit, continuing back on the stick after ground contact. There may be some real "bounce" involved as well, since most of the planes we fly have zero damping in the main gear. And we've all probably seen what happens when a plane touches down slightly nosewheel first - the mains drop on, the angle of attack increases, and if there's still flying speed the plane "bounces" back into the air.

YouTube has plenty of bounced landings for your viewing pleasure. Most of the ones that end up with crunched planes have the crunching occur well after one or two bounces as the pilot gets out of phase with what's going on. I'm with the Professor - after one small bounce there may be time to regroup and ease back into a normal landing sequence. But if the plane bounces a second time, it's time to get clear of the ground and rethink things - if you couldn't make a good landing out of a stabilized approach in the first place, your chances of making one while porpoising down the runway becomes vanishingly small, and the odds of bending or breaking something increase dramatically.

[designrs]

Bounce video here:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x5ZzktAFJK4

Educational video here:
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=PGSJruFk ... re=related

[FastEddieB]

Thanks!

In the first, looks like it could have been saved with a go around right up until that FIFTH bounce!

Looks like a tire blew on that one, if not worse!

I've seen that second one before - good one to point every student towards.

[FastEddieB]

I count 7 or 8 on this one...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMmHYWjE ... ata_player

[designrs]

What's interesting about that video Eddie is that the bounce itself doesn't really look that bad. The plane is not bouncing high off the ground, the suspension is working, but the forces are increasing until the nosewheel finally collapses.