Will it Land

[ccsial]

A Cessna 150 is on short final for a 3000 foot runway. There is a magic fan blowing a headwind up the runway at 100 MPH.

The question is:

Will it land.

 

[MrJimi]

YES

Jim

 

[chh]

One thing I learned while taking lessons to get my pilots certificate was that a plane will always land one way or the other. In your senario though, No the relative speed winds speeds would stop forward motion. In fact 100 mph is near full throttle for a Cessna 150. Of course to increase speed you could trade altitude for airspeed(dive), but that sure wouldn't be a pretty "landing".

 

[Egon]

In some areas of southern Alberta there will be no need for the "Magic Fan". That is just the normal afternoon Breeze.

As for the Cessna; it's gonna land, sooner or later. Just don't know where or when!

 

[Runner]

It depends on the temperature, and pressure altitude of the runway. According to the pilot operating handbook for the 1978 C152 (close enough) it will do 110 knots true air speed at sea level. This is about 126 miles per hour, so it could theoretically land and you'd be doing about 26 mph down the runway.

This airspeed requires the optional "speed fairings" on the wheels which gives you about 5mph more airspeed. (and you thought they were just for looks...)

 

[Z-Michigan]

As an aside I got my pilot's license in a plane (Diamond DA20A1 Katana) with a stall speed of about 37kts with flaps / 41kts clean. And the stall is so gentle and gradual you can fly just a few kts above that with ease. One day in winter I was flying and winds at just 2500ft AGL were in the 50kt range. I had some fun hovering, and even flying backward relative to the ground. Fortunately the DA20 has about 110kt max cruise so I had no problem returning to the airport. Fuel consumption per mile would not have been good for that little flight!

As for your question, I would think you would fly the pattern offset about 2-3 miles from the airport, and then land in reverse. This would be incredibly difficult to do and I don't know if the landing gear would survive reverse loads like that, but at least you could (theoretically) land at a reasonable groundspeed and without running out of runway. A downwind landing would also work if you had, say, a 12,000 foot runway, though the tires probably aren't designed for landing speeds of 150mph. As a practical matter, of course, you would simply look for an airport with lesser winds. I don't know a C152's crosswind limit but I'm guessing it's more like 15kts than 100mph!

 

[Runner]

This is all totally theoretical, of course. You'd have to be Bob Hoover to be able to actually perform a maneuver like that, and once you "flew" the thing onto the ground, you couldn't actually stop or park it or anything. If you tried to actually stop or turn to taxi, the wind would just blow the aircraft away.

 

[MrJimi]

Before this thread turns into a 850 plus thread, His only question was

will it land

 

[Tig]

As long as we have gravity, all planes will land in one way or another.

 

[MrJimi]

As long as we have gravity, all planes will land in one way or another.

Thats exactly correct Shh and that is all he asked