Monthly Archives: August 2014

Landing Secrets Revealed

Aviation,

A catchy title for Dan Dyer‘s seminar at the San Carlos Flight Center. He is a CFI and shared his observations and insights on improving landings.

  1. A good pilot is constantly improving his/her landings.
  2. Goal is a repeatable way to land the plane.
  3. Everything in a pattern is based on relative terms to the runway – not based on landmarks because those landmarks do not exist in any other place but this one.
  4. Spend half the time looking out at the runway. If somebody comes in with experience in flight simulators, first thing is to cover up all the instruments. It is all about the nose, horizon and the runway.
  5. Stabilized approach = Stabilized Pitch + Stabilized Power. (Stable nose / stable noise)
  6. Very important to look good. The stability of your approach on final is viewable from the ground. Students from your school are holding short of the runway.
  7. A small change made early is better than a big change made late.
  8. Glide slope indicators are only for IFR
    • the slope is more gentle than what VFR pilots can do with good visibility
    • they don’t provide trend information.
    • doesn’t exist at all airports
    • touchdown is well past the numbers whereas VFR pilots go for the numbers
  9. Roundout is performed with only one control – elevator control aft
  10. The flare is meant to get rid of excess speed. Savor the ground effect and flare. Flare for as long as is necessary to burn off excess energy.
  11. Your job as a pilot is all about setting the plane in the right attitude. The plane lands itself.
  12. First half of the flare is to control with pitch to bring the plane into the right nose up attitude. The second half is to use the throttle to bring the plane down to inches off the ground.
  13. The time between wheels touchdown indicates the quality of landing. Safer landing is more time between wheels touchdown.
  14. Tips for improving landings
    • Nose play with horizon. Box the horizon. Be able to freeze the nose anywhere and maintain it there
    • Mindful taxiing to stay centered and master the rudder pedals
    • Low long passes. Float over the runway
    • Fun landing games (eg. touchdown only on the main wheels, don’t set nose wheel, then do a go-around)
    • slow long low power takeoffs

More Landings

Aviation, ,

Trying to make up for the last month when we couldn’t schedule even a single lesson.  This week is turning out to be all about landings. It is Srinath’s turn to fly today. Flight service gave us a bird advisory in the Livermore airport vicinity – first time I’ve heard this. We flew south of R-2531 after a left downwind departure from Livermore since the restricted area was in effect today being a weekday. This time we looked for landmarks that we had studied in the sectional chart last sunday.

A the end of two attempts at slow flight, we were at 3000′ and the aircraft and almost right above the New Jerusalem runway. So Srinath put the engine in idle, looked for 65kts glide speed and we circled once to lose altitude before going in for the first landing. On the second landing, Srinath took his hands off the throttle so Steve immediately put in full power for a go-around. Srinath did a total of 5 landings and one go-around at New Jerusalem, Steve did one landing to show Srinath. Then Srinath did a 6th straight-in landing back at Livermore.

[Aug 14] Steve and I both have a hard stop in the morning so we decide to shoot landings at Livermore airport itself. We start at 7:30am and get 13 landings in an hour before calling it a day.

9 Landings

Aviation,

We traveled to see the Grand Canyon NP right after the previous flying lesson. By the time we came back, Steve was on vacation for a week. The following week he was in town but we couldn’t arrange a suitable time with him. Then he went to the EAA’s OshKosh Airventure for a week. We finally managed to fly again today after just over a month since the last lesson.

First for some refresher on the charts (Section and TAC). The plan was to fly to New Jerusalem and practice landings. Steve told us how to find New Jerusalem based on the charts and then he pointed out a restricted area R-2531 just to the southwest of Tracy airport. The landmarks were a tall tower on the east side of the restricted area and a road that runs to the south of the area. They didn’t operate the restricted area on weekends so it was OK if we inadvertently few over it – well, OK we did it on purpose, not inadvertently.

Steve didn’t want me getting too comfortable with right downwind departures from KLVK so this time we decided to take off from 25R on a left downwind departure. A few minutes into the flight, the controller announced there was another airplane at 11 O’clock heading towards us at 3800′. We were at around 3000′. By the time we spotted, it was a couple of hundred feet above us. Since we were climbing, I temporarily leveled the plane until we crossed each other before resuming the climb.

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There was nobody at the New Jerusalem airport where we headed for touch and go’s. I did 8 landings of which I pulled off one of them without Steve having to touch the controls. In general, the landings were hard because I haven’t figured out how high I’m above the runway. When I thought I was inches above, I turned out to be about 10 feet above. We then returned to Livermore for the 9th landing of the day which was a straight-in approach.