The club I learned at was almost entirely PA28s but used to have a couple of quite new (post-2000) C172s for hire.
I hired one once and was taken for a checkout by an instructor I think highly of. He truncated it into two circuits with a late go-around on the first one. He briefed that by saying there’s only one thing you need to know about this aircraft – what happens when you go to full power on final with full flap. He had me do it, watched me sweat for a moment, said “get the idea?” and that was it. Some learning points really stick, and that was one of them.
It is exaggerated by the fact that, for ease of landings, one really wants a fair bit of back trim on short final. Very early in my training I was struggling to land with any finesse and the instructor realised I was working against strong control forces in the flare. More back trim was the prescription, and the problem was solved.
I got my PPL in a 172. As far as I can remember it was 80 knots (mph?) on final and 80 knots on climb out. On final it was trimmed for this speed, and while a full power will get the nose high, I cannot remember it was anything like the nose high in that video. Could it be that he was “trimming” his flare? Or he had it trimmed way up “just in case”?
The C172 POH says 55-65 KIAS landing speed for a normal landing and specifies 60 KIAS for a short field landing.
I guess it depends what you mean by ‘landing speed’ – speed into the flare, over the hedge, or all the way down final. The POH does not specify. It seems unnecessarily slow to do that all the way down final, but of course as a student you’re given an approach speed and taught to establish that as soon as you’re on final.
80 knots is above a 172 full flap approach speed, 65 knots with 55 knots at the threshold
Actually these are for max landing weight. 55 at flare works well if just solo or 2 with la bit of fuel. 1.3Vs is 52kn…
You better refer to the POH of the exact variant of the 172 you are flying. The manual of the F172P I’m usually flying states stall speed at flaps 30 is 33. Also, at that speed IAS and CAS only have in common that they are both positive values, the difference between both can be almost 20 knots close to the stall.
Thinking of stalls in the 172 it actually makes me wonder why it came down with the nose first in the video. When I practiced them in the 172 it dropped neither the nose nor a wing.
Clipperstorch wrote:
Thinking of stalls in the 172 it actually makes me wonder why it came down with the nose first in the video. When I practiced them in the 172 it dropped neither the nose nor a wing.
If you stall a 172 with precision, it’ll mush and nose down wings level, because not all of the wing has stalled, just enough that between the two wings equally, they can no longer support the weight of the plane (this is where G becomes a factor too). The 172 in the video spun, so one wing suddenly lost all lift. That wing will then certainly drop, as will the nose.
