Sport Pilot Talk

Please take a look at this landing and provide you best constructive assesment of what went wrong and how it could have been avoided or recovered. I was looking at this plane and knew it suffered nose damage. Again please be constructive in your assessment.

https://youtu.be/EDH1ztack6Y

In my estimation, the plane landed flat, touching down a little harder than I’d like. It seemed to go through a minor oscillation after touchdown, right before the nose gear failure.

But I would suspect a design or maintenance issue, or prior damage to the nose gear. That landing wasn’t great, but far better than many I’ve seen - and been involved with - that did not come anywhere near overloading the nose gear. I would love to see the point of failure on this plane.

As an aside, I try to have the stick or yoke nearly all the way back at touchdown*, and then gently lower the nosewheel on rollout. That pretty much precludes both oscillatory behavior or otherwise overloading the nosewheel. Landing fast and flat is a bad habit, but one that all too many pilots seem to pick up.


*Conditions permitting, of course.

Great response. So for the new guy (me) flat is all 3 at the same time, right? Thos is an Arion lightning. I love the looks of this plane but it might be a little out of my league skillls wise. Talking to actual pilots of it say it is a numbers plane. Get your speeds right and it is very easy to fly. Go to fast and the controls are sensitive. It is right on the edge of LSA performance. I think for a firat plane it would be like giving a 16 yo a viper for thier first car. Technically nothing should be different if they drive it like a Camry...but its a Viper.

I had a few landings like that where I was a bit flat and the nose bounced once or twice ( but with the mains hitting the ground first and staying there ) which is , as FastEddieB mentioned, rather ugly but it is NOT the same as hitting the ground first with your front gear , which is usually what causes prop strikes ...

Yes, “flat” would be all 3 wheels touching at about the same time.

Landing like that, slightly misjudging can touch the nosewheel down first. Bad because...

1) It puts the full weight of the plane (less remaining lift) on the nosewheel, which is not designed to support.

2) If springy, it can bounce you back in the air, possibly beginning pilot-induced-oscillations, also known as porpoising.

3) It means the plane is touching down with a lot more energy than if held off until at or near the stall. If something does go wrong, energy to dissipate is higher by the square of the increase in speed.

All that said, I doubt there’s anything with the Arion Lightning that a few hours with the right instructor couldn’t handle. I would, however, investigate if such nose gear failures are common in that particular plane, and if so, why.

I watched the video, and I am not in agreement with Eddie. I stopped the frame and to me it appears that the airplane touched main wheels first, not in a flat attitude. What it looks like to me is a dropped in landing due to the runway width illusion. I think it was a full stall landing, but he was still 6 feet in the air. It dropped on the main gear. Because of the center of weight being ahead of the main gear and being dropped it put more stress on the nose gear than it was designed to take as it came down, causing the failure.

There's a thread about this incident FWIW.
http://www.sportpilottalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5135

Scooper wrote:There's a thread about this incident FWIW.
http://www.sportpilottalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5135

I thought it looked familiar.

I’ll stand by my assessment for now.

To my eye, the pitch attitude is level enough that I’m not thinking “stall”. Still looks to me like he had plenty of speed going into the flare. And it still doesn’t look to me like it hit that hard.

Leading up to the 9 second mark the airplane has leveled off above the ground and appears to be slowing down. From the 9 to 11 second time frame, and it might be closer to 1 second, the airplane drops pretty abruptly. I would say it dropped from somewhere between 6 and 10 feet. The runway is 150 feet wide for comparison.

In my eyes it seems clear to me that he put the plane down just fine on the mains, followed by the nose quickly thereafter. I believe the pilot quickly let up on his back pressure after the touchdown with a bit too much airspeed, causing the aircraft to become airborne and oscillate back into the runway.

I saw this behavior often in the right seat of the SportCruiser when students relaxed their back pressure at higher speeds on the runway. Just my observations.

Atrosa:

I actually had a very similar landing quite recently - ended on my mains but I didn't hold the stick back nearly enough and ended up bouncing my front gear just like the guy in that Arion. The difference though was that I didn't really drop the plane and my ground speed was around 43 mph when I let the nose down too early.
https://youtu.be/vocQ5PlxswM

What I should have done was to hold off the nose as long as possible , more like in this landing:
https://youtu.be/9AXHo99Ig0w

Still a bit too early but much better.

I guess the lesson is , no matter what happens .... even if you stall it 6 feet above the runway and for whatever reason forget to cushion it with some power and drop it on the runway , keep the stick back ... it can only help.