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Landing
When landing, the forward-loaded air- plane will require more control force to flare. Fail to give it the input it needs, and you risk landing hard on the nosewheel, making directional control on the runway difficult and possibly overloading the gear to the point of failure.
The more critical – and typical – situa- tion is when the airplane is loaded toward the aft end of its envelope. If the pilot applies the same amount of aft elevator control he/she is conditioned to add, the result will be a greater nose-up pitch and a higher angle of attack. The airplane will tend to flare high; it may stall and “drop in” for a hard landing.
Such a flare often results in one of three outcomes:
1. The airplane hits hard on the main landing gear, possibly blowing the tires or damaging the gear and caus- ing the airplane to go out of control on the runway.
2. The stall occurs high enough above the ground that the nose drops far enough the nose gear hits the ground first. The nose gear collapses, and the pilot may or may not lose directional control.
3. Either attempting to correct for the stall or after initial impact with the ground, the pilot enters a PIO (Pilot- Induced Oscillation) that is exacer- bated by the stability effects of aft CG and quickly increases in amplitude
until the nose gear collapses or the pilot loses directional control.
To be sure, wing and power loading have an impact on airplane stability, per- formance, and control. But within the weight range even of twin and turbine- powered airplanes, the changes that re- sult from the center of gravity location are even greater.
Stability Training
Most flight training occurs with two persons on board and somewhere be- tween half-full and full fuel tanks. Unless you’re in a much smaller airplane, this is a fairly lightweight and the center of gravity is near the forward edge of the envelope. Consequently, your experience with takeoffs, landings, go-arounds, stalls and other high-angle of attack maneuvers is usually under the best conditions of stability and handling your aircraft can provide. If the airplane has a high useful load or a wide center of gravity range, the airplane’s stability and control response in common accident scenarios may be very different than what you encounter in training.
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