My friend Dan owns 2/3 share of a Mooney Executive 21, and offered to fly me to Santa Fe for lunch yesterday. Of course I took him up on it.
I really like flying in small aircraft; I should get a pilot's license. The flight to Santa Fe Airport only takes about 15 minutes. Unfortunately, while we were in the Blue Corn Cafe, one of Los Alamos' patented afternoon storms descended on town. So when we flew back, we couldn't land. We had to orbit Espanola for about an hour waiting for the electrical storm to move off. Once the lightning had moved on past White Rock, we went ahead and landed despite the high crosswind, turbulence, and rain. It was a fun landing. Add to this that Los Alamos is one of the more difficult short-field airports to land at, and suffice to say there was adrenaline. I took a video of the landing with my camera:
Oh man, Mooneys are the r0ckz0r. That landing seemed damned low, though.
Gah, I really need to just get out and finish my license.
Yeah he was way low on the approach. He came in low from the out-set because of the storm above. But in the last 50' or so before the beginning of the strip, he dropped to about 5', presumably at the behest of unfavorable air currents. You can't quite tell in the video but he cranks the throttle right at the end to avoid putting it in the dirt just east of the runway.
And yeah, the Mooney is definitely an awesome plane. Much more fun to fly in than the 172 I flew in last year.
And I thought the flight into ALB was bad. :/
Yeah--I noticed the throttle-up at the very end. I've had a similar experience with a Katana at ... stall speed about 100ft short of the threshold at Double Eagle II.
Thanks to an instructor with quick reflexes, I'm not a big splat all over the runway lights.
That is seriously insane! Was it the camera or the plane that pitched down upon touchdown? How can the pilot have any confidence that he can safely land the plane when it is pitching all over the place while up in the air? Are the air currents different near the ground?
Both the air currents and the aerodynamics get funky near the ground. That is why landing is the hardest part of flying. The currents are disrupted by local obstacles, making them unreliable. At Los Alamos, a cross wind means the air is swirling around the end of the mesa. I doubt the aerodynamics changes are as great for a little plane as for a big jet (they mostly relate to compressing the air under the wings between the plane and the ground), but the effects of random air currents are greater since the small plane has less momentum going for it.
The pitch down on landing was just my hand. It was a reasonably rough landing, but nothing to worry about. I was just holding the camera up with my hand, so a lot of the turbulence bumps seem magnified in the video.
It's heartening to see that I'm not the only one who fiddles with the power all the way in at that airport.
Los Alamos isn't really a shortfield airport. The runway is ~1 mile long, and slopes upwards as you land. That makes it easy. Los Alamos invariably has a crosswind from the south. It's usually pretty constant but tends to disturb passengers.
What's really exciting is when there is a quartering tailwind. In most airports, there is another runway that could be used to land into the wind. Since Los Alamos doesn't have that you always have to land the same way. (to the west)
Those are the ones the landings that make me pee my pants.