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When a solid body impacts a liquid, an air cushion can be trapped between the liquid and solid surface. This leads to inconsistencies in coating or uneven cooling. A duralumin conus (diameter of 180 mm) with different dead-rise angles β (2, 3, 4 and 5) impacts a deep liquid (2.5% butanol-water solution BWS or distilled water) pool at a speed varying from 1.3 to 19.0 cm/s. Depending of the impact speed and dead-rise angle the resulting air cushion can be of four types: one bubble in the conus center, multiple bubbles very close to the conus center, a trail of bubbles left during the retraction and a ring of bubbles for liquid contacts close to the edge and in the conus center. With a total internal reflection set-up [1] and an image treatment the air cushion external and internal radii are estimated for each frame. The external (internal) radius increases (decreases) in time following linear (exponential [2]) law. The initial radius of the annular touchdown area is defined as the intersection between the two former fittings. In the studied range of parameters, the initial radius obeys an universal scaling law which follows from the air–water lubrication–inertial balance (adapted from [3]).