----[Please read http://ercoupers.com/disclaimer.htm before following any advice in this forum.]----
Greg made a very good analysis. May I add this: Find out the working speeds of YOUR airplane with YOUR airspeed indicator. No airpseed numbers given you by other people can be used without verification on YOUR plane. When I replaced my airspeed indicator, I got a 15% drop in INDICATED airspeed and was finally able to have an airspeed indicator that corresponded with rigorous gps and ground reference calibration. At altitude, find out what your minimum flying speed is power off, at various power settings and approaching full power. For normal approach, you can add 30% to the minimum flying speed. That's the old approach at 1.3 times stall speed rule we learned in training. This gives a fairly steep approach - about what I remember getting in a 172 with 30 degrees of flaps. This leaves about the right (to me) energy for a flare. Slowing down to lower speeds means you have little or no energy for a flare. You'd better be maintaining your flat approach by power. As Greg said and is true for all planes doing low-speed short-field approach, dragging it in with power, if the engine glitches you are in trouble. For a go-around in a Coupe with a Stromberg carb, you CANNOT jam in the throttle if you get in trouble. You MUST push it in slowly since there's no accelerator pump in a Stromberg carb. I practice moving the throttle to max over a four second period. I've practice it on the ground enough that in a go-around, it's a routine thing to count out loud ADDING POWER, THOUSAND 2, THOUSAND THREE, THOUSAND 4. In a true short-field approach, you have to be slow enough there's no energy left to float. This is a dangerous regime. You have to be maintaining a pretty flat approach by keeping up a lot of power to overcome the low-airspeed sink that short wing planes like. AND, you'll never be able to take off out of a field as short as you can land a Coupe in. I've practiced the short field landing when we had a lot of mud at mid-field and had to land in 30-40% of the runway. Your G model with an O-200 should be pretty good on short field take offs. My 415-D with a very flat climb prop always got off the ground in 800-1000 feet (at 1000' msl) though I'd say the 50' obstacle distance was way longer. You'll do better. Get used to the working speeds of YOUR airplane by testing is the best advice. Summary: The Coupe is a fairly good short-field plane by modern standards. If you only go to places you can take off from safely, you don't need to worry much about the landings (other than doing them skillfully). Ed Burkhead -----Original Message----- From: Greg Bullough [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2002 5:46 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [COUPERS] Short Field Coupe Landings ----[Please read http://ercoupers.com/disclaimer.htm before following any advice in this forum.]---- At 10:46 PM 3/2/02 -0700, David Marshall wrote: >I would imagine the "G" would have the same V-speeds as the "D". If >that's the case, Vx is 50-60 MPH. >Vy is 70 MPH at sea level and 60 MPH at 10,000 ft. These numbers were >gleaned from the yellow POH. Most POHs are pretty good but there are more than a few pilots here who'll tell you to add 5-10MPH to those numbers. Especially the Vx number. Take your coupe up and see for yourself how well she (doesn't ) climbs at 50. Then figure out if that's what you'd like to see while looking at terrain. Same with Vy. Every coupe I've flown or flown in has fairly narrow band between 80 and 85 MPH IAS where the rate of climb comes up rather sharply. Several MPH either side of that, and you lose a couple hundred FPM. As for short field landings, the trick is getting slowed down without sinking You do that by carrying power. The number I've heard batted around is 1400 RPM. At that, you can get down to 72MPH or even less without sinking. Power off, you'd be falling like a stone. Just carry on over the threshold like that and when your ready to touch down start to flare first, then cut the power. You should settle slow and soft. Chop the power too soon, and the flare won't flare. You'll set it on the nosewheel. Too late, you balloon. And of course, if your engine dies on final in this mode, you're going right into the corn. This method will get you down and stopped on a football-field. If you do this, make sure you know how to recognize what sink looks like out the front window. The airspeed indicator isn't helping you at this point... ...the line is too fine and varies by temperature and humidity and load. If you can't *see* what sink looks like, don't try this. And be ready with the power, because you can't land out of a bad case of the sink. Only power will fix it. On the other hand if you are just a little careful, keep the pattern tight and don't carry extra altitude, you can get your 415 down in four or five hundred feet, zero wind. Without being in a spot where a dead engine leaves you short. So maybe the short field technique is 'practice.' Greg ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?aVxiLm.aVzvvT Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
<<attachment: winmail.dat>>
