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0 votes
asked by (75 points)
Every time i do a flight, right before i flare the plane and land there is a gust of tail wind that hits the plane. This causes the landing to be pretty bad due to it being very unexpected. How do i fix this?

1 Answer

0 votes
answered by (26 points)
That's not wind; you are stalling because you are too slow or flaring too early. If you nail your landing speeds correctly, you can land pretty smoothly; even with a lot of wind. It actually becomes easy. If you come in too fast, you'll just float down the runway a bit longer.

For example with the default cessna 172, you want to approach at flaps 1, 70-75 knots and then slow it down to about 60-65 with full flaps. Faster than that and you will overshoot significantly. However, you should still be above 60 when you go into the flare. If you are not, you will slow down and stall as soon as you pull up to flare and you will slam down.

With tail draggers & STOL planes when you are doing a three point landing the trick is stabilizing the approach in the right attitude so you don't need to flare as much. In that kind of plane it is critical to manage vertical speed with the throttle; as soon as you go to idle, you will slam down. This is also important for many other aircraft (e.g. the baron). You typically reduce throttle during the flare to settle down but only go to idle after touchdown.

You manage your forward speed with pitch. If you pull up to manage vertical speed, you will also slow down. Practicing landings with throttle to idle, forces you to learn this and it takes throttle management out of the equation as well which means you can focus on your speeds and attitude.
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