{"id":37542,"date":"2026-08-14T07:22:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T14:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=37542"},"modified":"2026-08-14T07:22:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T14:22:34","slug":"air-minded-greasing-it-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=37542","title":{"rendered":"Air-Minded: Greasing It On"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You may want to turn your speaker volume down before clicking this video:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WMlSARmltCk?si=VR5DWllxO7xRpxYf\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The first time I landed an F-15 Eagle, from the front of a two-seater family model at Luke AFB, Arizona, I was amazed at how softly it touched down. I barely felt the tires make contact. I started to let the nose down and step on the brakes when the instructor in back said &#8220;Hold it up, but don&#8217;t exceed 12 degrees nose high.&#8221; I did as I was told, and amazingly the Eagle&#8217;s nose stayed up all the way down to 70 knots, then gently came down by itself. I had done my first aerobrake, using the plane&#8217;s drag to slow us to a low speed before having to use wheel brakes. Everything about that first landing was so smooth!<\/p>\n<p>So was everything about my second landing, my third, and 1,600-some touchdowns later, my last.<\/p>\n<p>Is there something about the Eagle that instantly improves a mediocre pilot&#8217;s landing skill? Actually there is. As you land, ground effect provides a cushioning effect close to the runway. The more wing you have \u2014 and the Eagle has a lot of wing, plus a flat and aerodynamic belly \u2014 the greater the cushioning effect and thus the smoothness of the touchdown. Then, once the mains are in contact and rolling down the runway, holding the nose up turns your cushion of air into a barn door&#8217;s worth of drag, slowing you almost as effectively as the drag chutes used on earlier generations of fast jets.<\/p>\n<p>You can land hard if you need to: the procedure for landing on a short, wet runway is to touch down firmly, then lower the nose straightaway and apply wheel brakes. Ditto landing in strong crosswinds, There&#8217;s a hydraulic malfunction that results in loss of wheel braking; when it happens the only way to stop the jet is to lower the hook and take the cable, definitely not a time for smooth landings and protracted aerobraking.<\/p>\n<p>Normally, though, you can shine your ass for anyone watching with perfect touchdowns and awesome aerobraking. Just don&#8217;t get carried away \u2014 if you pull the nose too high during aerobraking you&#8217;ll scrape the tailcones. In the early days of the Eagle, tailcones were hollow and easily repaired, but as the jet evolved tailcones were adapted to hold antennas and sensors, making tailscrapes costly events. To help pilots maintain the right nose-up angle during aerobraking, a symbol on the head-up display begins to flash at 12 degrees nose high \u2014 if you ignore it and pull the nose up to 13 degrees (which the Eagle&#8217;s only too happy to let you do), you&#8217;re scraping the tail.<\/p>\n<p>You might think that after flying the Eagle a pilot would be able to grease the landing in any old airplane. You&#8217;d be wrong. Not all airplanes have big wings and aerodynamic bellies. Most airliners, for instance. The Southwest pilot who smacked onto the runway so hard on your last flight might have flown Eagles before, but the ground effect cushion of a 737 is far less than that of an F-15, and smooth touchdowns are rare in the airline industry \u2014 as any frequent flyer can attest.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?page_id=14450\"><strong> back to the Air-Minded Index<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first time I landed an F-15 Eagle, from the front of a two-seater family model at Luke AFB, Arizona, I was amazed at how softly it touched down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1960,3,14],"tags":[4922,4507,124,4921,4923],"class_list":["post-37542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-minded","category-flying","category-military","tag-aerobraking","tag-airminded-2","tag-f-15-eagle","tag-ground-effect","tag-sierra-hotel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37542"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37548,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37542\/revisions\/37548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}