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Old 02-02-2011 | 09:01 AM
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ram3500-RCU
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From: n. canton, OH
Default RE: Wing Loading

Am I missing something here? Is there a question, or just making an observation?

Yes, wing loading is a major key to your landing procedure. But, and this has been covered thoroughly in the other thread, a plane with higher wing loading CAN still be landed very slow and gentile. How you get there is the difference. You can not do a shallow long glide to a prolonged flair, as with a lightly loaded airplane like an Edge 540. Your entire landing procedure changes. You make a steeper final approach, little or no throttle, and a well timed short flair to a main wheel first touchdown. Your speed is via gravity not the prop, so when you flair, the plane slows immediately. The speed can still be very slow at touch down. You have full flaps, the gear, and you prop all doing breaking form you.

With aerobatic planes, I can put the tail on the ground and let aerodynamic breaking stall the wing to the ground. Try this with a heavy war bird and your making major repairs.

I never had problems landing the giant scale AT-6, using the above procedure, but the smaller ones seem to be more prone to tip stalls, if you prolong the flair.

The closer you move toward the sport scale version of these planes (heavy on the sport), the lighter the wing loading, the larger the tail, and more forgiving you will find them to land.