Captains,

I had some fun in the 727-100F the other night and used Action! to record in 1080p that I will post to Youtube.

I took the Old FedEx bird from Denver to Los Angeles and executed some practice approaches once there.  Something that bothered me was bouncing the landing.  The first landing was a greaser and I took off to make my first practice approach.  I pulled the power on that old 100 that had a full payload and hit firmly on the runway, pulled back a bit and then achieved a second landing. The third approach i was learned a bit more and hadn't hit so hard but I still bounced.

I realized i should mever pull power until in the flare and noticed i was out of elevator movement when truing to flare because I pulled the power too soon resulting in a hard landing.  I find the 727 really needs to be stuck at approach speed right until wheels touch... just love the bird and love flying it even more.

Being on speed is important in any aircraft. Too fast and you'll float down the runway wasting valuable ground. Too slow and you'll tend to hit hard or drag the tail.

Try this...

At around 100 feet AGL, start looking down towards the far end of the runway. This will give you a better sense of sink rate and altitude as you start the flare. In the real plane (727) you would flare first to arrest the sink then slowly close the throttles. The 727 had a high wing loading so closing the throttle first would result in a firm or hard landing.

Lou