Stall speed and approaches

[midlifeflyer]

The manual claims the airplane should be trimmed to a speed of 85MPH with the flaps up during approach. This is kind of confusing because my instructor has been using 2 notches of flaps. We have never approached/landed in a clean configuration.

Not really confusing. The manual is just giving you a recommended approach speed for a no-flaps approach. It assumes you have enough knowledge to know how to appropriately reduce that speed based on the amount of flaps you actually use.

In addition to the lack of some definitely useful information, older manuals made more assumptions about a pilot's knowledge of how to fly and general aircraft systems in simple airplanes than today's manuals do. I used to have access to a manual for an old Mooney Ranger. As I recall, the only "emergency procedure" checklist was one for the gear. They assumed that you =knew= what to do it the engine quit or if there was an engine fire.

BTW, for my money, you should be practicing landing that Cherokee in every flap configuration it is capable of, from none to full.

 

[UA-RESURRECTED]

Just got back from about 8 touch-&-goes, and so far things have been going much better. I'm still using about 80mph on final, but what I have been doing is cutting the power a bit further back from the runway than usual. I'm also pulling the nose up just a little to bleed down to about 70mph by the time I'm over the numbers. As a result, the landings have been much shorter, and much more controlled. I'm also landing on the center-line now too. Hopefully this has been all I had to do......slow down.

Thanks for all the information.

 

[Metro752]

just dial 800 mix-a-lot

 

[DJRobbioRobbio]

For light aircraft, is there any general rule about how far above stall-speed you should be on approach to land? This is assuming no wind/gusting conditions.

For example, the Cherokee probably stalls somewhere in the neighborhood 58MPH with partial flaps. (Yes MPH, this aircraft was built in 1965).

I want to experiment with making slower approaches to land, because I've been using 80MPH, and I still seem to float just a little too much and this generally results in poor landings. How slow can I get this aircraft on final approach, and still be safe???

What does your POH say? And if your airplane doesn't have the one that originally came with the airplane, go buy one for yourself

 

[Immelman]

Not related to your airspeed question UA, but just more of a practice I've grown to WRT power: I really prefer to fly my approaches, in light GA aircraft, VFR, power off. This gets you in the habit of eyeballing what the airplane will do and will, in my opinion, prepare you for things like engine failures quite a bit. It also reduceds your time in the pattern when doing landing practice

 

[DGdaPilot]

Remember, the point of practicing stalls is not so you can say "yeah, I can stall an airplane". It's too teach you the signs (ie: the physical and visual clues) of a stall. Lessons learned from this should be applied to your landing techniques. As you gain more experience, you'll notice that airspeed and the stall warning horn (or light) will mean nothing to you. That is because you'll always know where that stall limit is purely by feel. Of course, this really only safely applies to light aircraft and a pilot with a few hundred hours under their belt. When it finally "clicks", you'll know what I was talking about.