Tag Archives: San Carlos Flight Center

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

Staying Alive in the Plane with SOPs

Aviation, , , , ,

Attended an FAA Safety seminar at the San Carlos Flight Center, presented by Jason Miller of the finer points. Jason has been evangelizing safety standards for GA pilots since the accident rates in this community is almost 500x the accident rate of commercial airline pilots. He credits the success to the rigorous use of standard operating procedures (SOP) by commercial airline pilots. Some learnings from the seminar:

  • Review Part 91 accident reports and codify learnings into an SOP. GA community does not have a standardized way to disseminate the learnings across the community unlike commercial airlines.
  • Do a “final walk around” after all the passengers are buckled up and before starting the engine, as a redundant check against the preflight inspection. It is possible that during the preflight inspection the state of the aircraft may have been disturbed and the final walk around guards against that. On my very first demo flight, I failed to close the oil tank door on the cowling after checking the oil level. We didn’t notice it until after starting the engine and we were ready to taxi out of the hangar.
  • Abort takeoff if 70% of the rotation speed (Vr) has not been reached by the time you reach midpoint on the runway. While landing, if all the wheels haven’t touched down by the time you reach midpoint on the runway, immediately initiate a go-around. These will help eliminate preventable accidents.
  • Distinguish between a “do” list and a “check” list. It is OK to run a “do” list when you are on the ground and have no other distractions. You have the freedom to read off items on the “do” list and execute them. While in the air, perform a “flow” list followed by “check” list. The idea is to mentally define a visual flow over the dashboard and scan them. Then scan the “check” list to ensure everything was covered.
  • “Stay ahead of the aircraft”. Have a game plan for each stage of your flight. Run through the actions as you hit each stage of the flight and free up time to focus on flying the plane up to the next stage. Planning the actions after hitting the stage will leave less “downtime” to fly the plane and increase anxiety.
  • Pre-takeoff briefing. Have a game plan before you get to takeoff for the flight. Strike up an agreement with your CFI or co-pilot on emergency preparedness, what you will accomplish on this flight, route, roles and responsibilities etc.