The last fifty feet.

[Trey Kule]

[font=Verdana]"What are your preferences when the snow is blowing across the runway, creating a false sense of drift or the vis is 3/8 or so?"[/font]

[font=Verdana]I am not sure your question is really relevant to the discussion, but[/font]

[font=Verdana]1. If the snow is drifting across to the point you do not have visual reference on the runway centre or centerline, common sense might dictate it is time to add power and go somewhere else.  If you have the centre or centre line , you use it as a reference. Not a big deal.[/font]
[font=Verdana]2.  When the vis gets to 3/8, it is below a cat 1 limit , and again you should not be landing.  In general , when the vis is low you will pitch up , typically on a small aircraft about 5 degrees. And maintain descent and speed with power until you make contact.  The pitch up will not put you on the backside of the curve if your approach speed was correct, or cause ballooning. Similar to a glassy water landing in a float plane...but as CS pointed out...give yourself lots of runway.[/font]

[font=Verdana]But again, your examples are extreme, and really not relevant to Chuck's original post, which I believe, was how to manage the transition from a descent to a flare and then touchdown.[/font]

[font=Verdana]One of the things I ran into was landing a plane that you could not see over the nose at landing.  The procedure was apparently to look straight ahead and use your peripheral vision. I never got on to that well, instead trying to peak around the cowling, or looking at one side. Or using the cowl itself as a reference to the runway edges.  Worked out well for me, and as I dont expect to ever fly one of those types again, I can forget about it.  But those procedures are also limited to very few aircraft and not relevant either.[/font]

[Slick Goodlin]

I've been thinking about how I land a plane and what all I'm looking at and I realized... I have no idea.  At this point it's like asking how I balance when I walk: beats me, it just happens.

[Liquid Charlie]

I'm with slick on this one -- I have no fucking idea how I do it all I know is "hit the target" put the wheels where you want them and another successful arrival has been achieved. Some are prettier than others but beats the shit out of running out of runway.  >:D