What about using only a small amount of energy, and correspondingly lighter equipment, to spin up the precious Bushwheels to landing speed before touching down. Less pavement anxiety and landing counting?

I used to work on a Citation jet that used bleed air to spool up the nose tire prior to touch down to help minimize damage to the engines from rocks thrown up by the tire. Also the tire had "chines" or ribs on the sidewalls that threw rocks, snow outward to again keep the engine from damage. There was a problem and somebody thought of a solution.

I have accomplished many things in my life and the first step is almost always dreaming, then doing. They go hand in hand as far as I can tell.

In regards to the OP I would first consider if it is necessary or desirable, if yes, then the only problem is to figure out the how. Where there is a will there is a way. I do enjoy when someone will be confident that something can't be done and then others will give immediate solutions that make the negativity simply disappear. Many of the technologies that we take for granted and understand completely, had not even been thought of by anybody as little as 100 years ago. Imagine explaining what you know today to folks that lived a century ago,

In doing some research I came across an old "channel wing" design. Dual pusher setup. But the cruise is not impressive. The fact that they could obtain an 11 mph controlled landing in a heavy touring sized plane is incredible. 5 seats!! The ideas that were on the table before going to different forms of thrust was incredible. They could just never make anything that did everything well in a prop configuration. That's not saying they didn't do extremely well in certain aspects. In the channel wing they used pusher props to pull air over the channeled wing section. Generating lift at a near stand still. Such a cool, and very ugly, concept. The more I dig the more impressed I am by the industry of yesteryear and what they were willing to try and build.

SkyLarkin wrote:I used to work on a Citation jet that used bleed air to spool up the nose tire prior to touch down to help minimize damage to the engines from rocks thrown up by the tire. Also the tire had "chines" or ribs on the sidewalls that threw rocks, snow outward to again keep the engine from damage. There was a problem and somebody thought of a solution.

You might be on to something there.
A very small motor could ride on the brake disk with a small rubber wheel (1/2" diameter) to spin the tire up just before landing and also stop it's rotation during flight but not engaged enough to affect taxi or braking.... Wheel speed could be determined by GPS which would be close enough to reduce tire wear.
The thing could weigh next to nothing and attach with a simple clamp on the gear leg since it's not transmitting any real load.

Might be worth it for folks that frequent asphalt with big soft tires.

Bagarre wrote:A very small motor could ride on the brake disk with a small rubber wheel (1/2" diameter) to spin the tire up just before landing and also stop it's rotation during flight but not engaged enough to affect taxi or braking

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040104305A1/
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20110297786A1/
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4061294A/

Many more...

Hey, I would be happy with the help of moving the plane across the gravel and up into the hangar when I was done flying for the day : )

Here's a little story for the OP. My pard and I bought one of the first TR182s that Cessna built. We'd had it for a few months, and he'd flown through his insurance-required dual with another instructor (he and I rarely clicked as instructor-student, although we flew together often). One day he announced that he wanted to have a Robertson STOL kit installed. Back then, in 1978, that was a $25,000 installation. In today's money, that would be $96,000. So I balked. His reasoning: he wanted to use some of the ranch strips of some of his patients, and he was having trouble getting down and stopped in less than 2000'.

I suggested that first he should learn to take advantage of what the stock airplane could do, before modifying it. I had flown with him, and I knew that he landed way too fast. I asked him why, and his answer was classic, "It's a fast airplane!" My retort was that it was really just a Skylane with folding feet. Anyhow, I offered to teach him how to land it much shorter, and we planned to get together the next day.

That evening, I practiced making slower and slower approaches. I learned that at relatively light weights, 55 knots indicated worked really well; 50 knots was too slow, because as soon as the mains touched, the nose would drop, and I couldn't hold it off even with timely back pressure.

The next day, with him in the left seat, we took off, and first we left the pattern for some slow flight practice. His idea of slow flight was not mine, so I told him to slow it until the stall warner was constantly blaring. Then I told him to turn 90 degrees either direction, and he made about a 5 degree bank. I said, "turn it--use a 30 degree bank." "No, it'll fall out of the sky!" "No, it won't." "Then you do it." So I did, and sure, I could feel the burble of an impending stall, but the airplane didn't fall out of the sky.

Then we headed back to Laramie for landings. His first approach was at 80 knots indicated! Even with heavy braking, we went way past the first turn off, which is at about 1500'. So I suggested that he should slow it way down for the next landing, and he did--to all of about 75 knots indicated, and once again, we went past the first turn off.

So I said to let me have it, and I started into final at 55 knots indicated. "You're going to kill us!" "No, we'll be fine." We landed and coasted to the first turn off, using only light braking to make the turn.

Shortening this up some, I finally got him to make his approaches at between 60 and 70 knots, and making that first turn off became easy. He had to use heavier braking than I did, but he could do it.

We then worked on his take offs. "Normal" 182 take offs are with 10 flaps. He'd never made a take off with 20 flaps, and he was amazed at how short the ground run was. Yet it's in the TR182 POH, and it's very doable.

The long and the short of it was that we didn't buy the Robertson kit, and he regularly flew the airplane into his patients' ranch strips. Later, he got the bug for a faster airplane still, and we bought a T210. Our partnership folded 8 months later--I couldn't afford it, and he became too possessive of the airplane, even when I already had it scheduled weeks earlier. We remained friends, just not partners. He still has that T210.

The moral is that many pilots don't take advantage of what their airplanes can do already. At your stage of training, you have so very much to learn yet. There are good instructors who can teach you how to make any airplane do what it's capable of doing, but you really don't need magic solutions in search of problems that don't exist.

Cary