I use a touch of power probably till about 10 feet off the runway. Maybe I should just wheel land, my 3 point sucked tonight. Thank god it was behind the trees so no one saw! (hopefully)

Don't sweat a bad landing, everyone does them from time to time.

cgzro wrote:The Decathlon is surprisingly easier to land that the Citabria which is much more floaty with the slightly bigger wing and flaps.

Most of my time was on a Citabria 7GCAA.......no flaps.

Cat Driver wrote:Short landings in some tail wheel airplanes are easier to perform by wheel landing and then lowering the nose to load the wheels for better braking. You can accurately touch down just below the stall speed and then lower the nose, works like a charm.

My shortest landings seemd to be three-pointers. C-180 and C-170 with the barn-door flaps landed very short with a full-stall three point landing and seemed shorter than the wheel landings I did by a significant amount. Plus brake application didn't risk a nose-over as much.

You can get very short landing distances 2 point by deaccellerating faster than in 3 point attitude because you can have full weight on the wheels (or more if you push hard). So with proper technique on a dry runway you might be able to outperform a 3 point distance but it requires hard push and very heavy braking so you beat the aerodynamic braking of the higher AOA 3 point.

On a slipery surface obviously this is not possible and its highly aircraft and technique dependent.