Wheel Langing Question, Please

[Bill Greenwood]

Can someone who normally makes wheel landings give me few pointers?

I am trying to help a young pilot get his checkout in a tailwheel Citabria. I am not a CFI and he is flying with another person; and thinks he is having some difficulty. He is a pretty good new pilot, complex and multi rated, but he sort of has a mental block and thinks this is supposed to be hard. He took 3 flights with a young, low time CFI and it was not good so he will be switching airports and CFIs.

I have a good amount of tailwheel time, including some in a Citabria/Decathlon, but my normal landing is 3 point. I just rarely do a wheel landing, but have and can do them when asked to, ok I guess. And I am not seeing him fly, sort of trying to give him general help by phone

The GFI wants him to do all wheel landings, because "they are easier" or so he says.
My friend says he is having trouble with bouncing the landing and then correcting .The CFI would not let him do a go around from one bad touchdown.

My guess, as best I can tell is that he is forcing the main wheels onto the ground with TOO LITTLE FLARE so that he hasn't really stopped that descent, thus the rebound bounce. And again, my best guess is that when he does bounce, (if it is a small one) that he should add a little back pressure and let is slowly touch down on the mains, and not try to force it on with forward pressure.

I know that when I am not going to make a real full stall 3 point landing, what I really do is a tail low touchdown and I don't use forward pressure on the stick, so that I still try to touch gently and not force the wheels on.

Anybody who has experience with this, I'd like to know, am I on the right track telling him to hold off and with a little more flare before touchdown?

This is good weather, no crosswind factor now. And of course, as most always, money is tight and he can't afford to go to some out of town place, has to make do here.

Thanks

[dusterpilot]

Practice flying down the runway 6 inches off the ground. Do it repeatedly. That builds the sight picture and helps with rudder control, as well. Once he can do that, go for 3 inches. Let the main gear touch and chop the power.

[WLIU]

A CFI who says that wheel landings are easier is showing his inexperience. I am sure that he knows the FAA guidance, but your friend will be better served with a CFI that has several hundred hours of tailwheel experience in a variety of airplanes.

First, as you likely know, three point landings allow the airplane to be placed on the runway at the slowest speed practical. So the usual syllabus starts with those. The student gets to see the visual picture of the 3 point attitude, learns how to make the airplane absolutely straight on the runway, and the airplane contacts with minimum energy, which means that it heads for the weeds more slowly when the student does not get it right. The last factor gives the instructor pilot more time to apply a correction before a disaster occurs. The flip side of that is that an instructor pilot sitting in the back has a much more restricted view of the action and so needs to really have a good seat of the pants feel for the airplane. The current CFI likely does not have that and so wants the tail up for a better view. Your CFI is likely using this visual crutch to justify his/her training approach.

Wheel landings require a higher speed touchdown. The airplane has more energy to bounce and dive for the weeds. This makes it harder, not easier, for the new tailwheel pilot.

When I do wheel landings, my mental image is of "painting" the wheels onto the runway. As mentioned above, you can try to fly down the runway and not touch the main wheels. Try to find the slowest speed that allows this. Should be about 10mph above your normal 3 point landing speed.

Crosswinds complicate everything. So start out on days with the wind as closely aligned with the runway as possible. As you know, the fuselage has to be straight down the centerline of the runway and a wing must be dipped so that there is zero sideways drift. This is true for both 3 point and wheel landings. Once you get the hang of wheel landings it can be fun to roll on the upwind wheel for a while before lowering the tail.

In a wheel landing, many airplanes will need just a little (emphasize little) forward stick to hold the wheels on the ground. You are at an airspeed that has the airplane still flying with its wheels on the ground. You let the airplane slow and then fly the tail down to the ground. If you start to lower the tail at too high a speed you will lift off and be flying again.

Why do we do wheel landings? On really windy days, we need the rudder to keep straight on the runway. In the 3 point attitude the fuselage blanks some of the rudder and we have less control. Plus, the slower we are, the more we are affected by gusts. So if we have enough runway, we fly a higher airspeed on approach and touch down because we know that the wind is lowering our ground speed and we keep the tail up so that we have as much rudder control as the airplane can give us. My personal rule is the higher the wind, the higher my tail is on touchdown.

A long time ago, a Provincetown-Boston Airlines (PBA) DC-3 took a couple of tries to get the main wheels down onto the runway at Provincetown on a really really windy day. As the pilot rolled down the runway with his tail in the air, he realized that it was too windy to put the tail down and successfully taxi to the terminal. Pushed the throttles forward and hopped over to Boston.

Hope this helps. If you can find a CFI with 4 digits of tailwheel time in his or her logbook, your friend should move up the learning curve much faster.

Best of luck,

Wes
N78PS

[FlyingRon]

I think the CFI is an idiot if he won't let the student go around, especially in a light tail dragger. For most planes, wheel landings are neither easier nor preferred. In some it actually is easier to wheel land, but I have no clue what the instructor is talking about with regard to wear. It doesn't take more than a second to convert a hideous bounce into controlled flight again. Better that than balling up the plane. He'll eventually get better on the landings.

Forcing the wheels down is not going to work, it's a guaranteed bounce. The usual problem is people want to carry excess airspeed which *IS* not required for a wheel landing. It's all about energy. The key is maintaining just enough power while keeping the airspeed appropriate. Dusterpilot's drill is a good one if he maintains the target airspeed as part of the drill. Otherwise he's just making low passes that you can't land out of.

[WLIU]

I just remembered that the Citabrias have spring gear. So having flown them (a long time ago) and also having spent some time in C-180's and 185's, you have to know that all of the energy that you put onto the ground will be returned by the spring gear as a bounce. So the emphasis on flying the tires right to a gentle touchdown is very important. A lot of pilots are taught to flare and wait for the touchdown (or impact). That teaches them to become a passenger temporarily until the airplane finds the ground. A wheel landing is an active process where the pilot actively rolls the wheels onto the runway with as close to zero vertical energy as practical.

In truth, the situations where wheel landing in a Citabria is required are rare. But at the risk of derailing this discussion, I will suggest that a pilot who thinks that there is no need to wheel land an airplane needs more experience. The larger tailwheel airplanes all get more consistently smooth landings when landed on the mains, which keeps the paying passengers happy and coming back. But most pilots these days don't get to have that kind of experience.

Best of luck,

Wes
N78PS

[ssmdive]

I have a Citabria, but am not a CFI...... So give this as little or as much consideration as you wish.

1. "....but he sort of has a mental block and thinks this is supposed to be hard". Thats the problem right there. Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them. If an idiot like me can do them, ANYONE can.

2. "The CFI would not let him do a go around from one bad touchdown." That seems stupid, IMO. When learning to fly I was always told that if you want to take a go around... Take it. Of course, we are getting third hand information. It may not have been 'bad' and the CFI might have told him he could make it and not forbid him from doing a GA.

3. You can't teach a guy over the phone.... So his best course of action is to find a CFI that he gels with.

But since I have a Citabria, I'll tell you what I do. My normal pattern is flown at 80MPH on the DW and I drop to 70MPH on the final. When I am going for a three point, when I know the runway is made and I am at an altitude I am not afraid of dropping from I start to let the speed drop (making sure I stay above 60) and I put the plane into a three point attitude and let my altitude and speed drop.

But for a wheel landing, I keep the speed at 70MPH and add a bit of power ~1200-1400RPM. I don't have to add the power, but when learning I found it MUCH easier to learn this way... I basically treat it like a glassy water landing. Like Wes said, I try to 'paint' the gear on.... I call it a kiss. I think about flying the plane to the ground. As the mains touch, I add forward stick to 'stick' the landing and not allow the tail to drop causing a high AOA on the wing.

If you have a high decent rate, the mains will hit the ground and stop but the tail will continue to go down since it has not hit the ground. When that happens, the plane goes tail down and the AOA of the wing increases and the plane jumps back into the air. It, IMO as a non-CFI, is not so much the bounce of the tires as much as the increase of AOA that causes the plane to jump back into the air.

If you flare, it just makes this worse. The tail drops and the plane bounces back into the air.

Anyway long story short, I *think* about slowing my decent with power and prevent the bounce with AOA. When I do it right, I stay at the same AOA until the mains touch and then I drop the nose just a bit as the mains touch to glue myself on the runway. I can feel the wheels touch and then get pushed into the runway just a bit.

I have 'taught' several non TW CFI's this to get them ready for their endorsements. Seems to work on them.

[Bob Dingley]

Good ideas. The "kiss it on" method works. Just remember that wheel landings are for the bad days with adverse winds. Good luck with the kissing. My own experiences began on a grass runway in a Cub. Did OK untill I tried it on pavement. Then the richochets began.


Suggest that the pilot practice on a grass RW that is ready to be mowed. You can feel/hear/sense the tires "kissing" the grass. Also, watch a sailplane pilot do a normal landing. About the same thing.

[lnuss]

To add another viewpoint (I've taught a fair amount in Citabrias, Cubs, C-170/180, and others), it seems best to very gently roll the mains on and, just as you touch add a VERY slight amount of forward pressure -- adding it prior to touchdown is likely to speed you up a little, not quite letting you touch and/or to make you bounce, while adding pressure too late will bounce. Adding too much forward pressure will spread the gear and potentially get the prop (a student did that to me once -- props aren't cheap, nor are engine inspections).

But the key is adding that pressure just at touchdown -- the timing takes practice -- and adding the right amount. This often (depending on the aircraft, your speed at touchdown, and a few other things) you may be tail slightly low or tail slightly high at touchdown, emphasis on slight. The sole purpose of this slight forward pressure is to keep the aircraft on the ground, rather than letting the remaining "lift" in the wings get you airborne again.

[Rick Rademacher]

This is how I land my Cub when not on grass. Record the landings for a review!

[Frank Giger]

For me wheel landings are for when I'm a bit hot or there's a lot of crosswind.

Champs on pavement are fun; I actually find it easier than on grass - but it does make things interesting at times.

Wheel landings were a big bear for me until my very good CFI clued me in that it's really a soft three pointer that gets the stick forward when the mains make contact instead of back.

By "soft three pointer" I mean that one is in basic configuration for it, but the tail isn't below the mains (I've flown with a pilot that actually gently brushes the ground with it and then comes gently to the mains). Come on down gently, and keep the flare gentle as well. When the mains contact, stick moves forward to "stick" them to the ground.

In a Champ one can go full forward stick without a problem, which is what I do once the mains are firmly on the ground. Throttle to idle and let the tail fall.

The thing is that I'm always ready for either; I let the situation dictate. I've had what I thought would be a wheel landing resolve to a nice three pointer, and a three pointer turn into a wheel landing based on conditions (particularly if it's gusting). And I've had a three point bounce turn into a wheel landing after advancing the throttle, which is always exciting.

Then again I'm the pilot that establishes the baseline for average. Without guys like me nobody could be considered excellent!