Some poor airplane handling skills I have observed.

[Colonel]

[quote]find a small sleepy airport[/quote]

Exactly.  Some people say that if you don't learn
to fly at an International airport, you will never,
ever learn how to use the radio.

What a crock.  Such nonsense always seems to
come from people who spent far too much money
getting their PPL, and then trying to justify their
poor choice afterwards.

Don't do your ab initio training at YYZ, ORD or
ATL, ok?

First, learn to fly the aircraft.  You do that by
looking outside.  Once you have mastered the
basics - and ONLY after you have mastered
the basics - then move onto more advanced
stuff.

This is precisely why I tell people to spend
a season riding a dirtbike, offroad.  Only after
they spend a year riding a motorcycle, does
it become automatic enough that they can
safely ride in traffic, gyroscopic precession
of the front wheel notwithstanding.

From the simple, to the complex.

No one has even ever [i]heard[/i] of the FIG, let
alone ever read it.  And that includes TC, in
spades.

The USN does not start it's students out in
F4's at night, in cloud, landing on the carrier,
despite what the "experts" in Canadian flight
training will tell you.

[u]Today's Tip:[/u]

Learn to fly in a tube+fabric tailwheel aircraft,
with a stick in your right hand, throttle in your
left and your feet on the rudder pedals. 


[img width=500 height=245][/img]

The stick is your AOA indicator.  When it is all
the way back, you have a high AOA.  When it
is not, you don't.

This information is hoarded like the crown jewels
by the aviation establishment, for some reason.

The four-bars of Colgan 3407 and AF447 certainly
never bothered learning about it.  All of their pax
are dead now because they pulled all the way
back on the flight controls and kept them there. 

For 3.5 minutes, in the case of AF447.  Can you
hold your breath for 3.5 minutes?

With over [b]160 pounds[/b] of backpressure, in the
case of the four-bar Colgan 3407.  Think about that
for a second - could you go to the gym and curl a
160 pound freeweight?


[u]Tomorrow's Tip:[/u]

Let go of the controls.  The airplane will fly much
better when you stop torturing it.  As one of my
students so eloquently placarded his biplane:

[img][/img]


All of the four-bars, with their proud tens of
thousands of hours on board TransAsia Airways
Flight 235 (and their pax) would still be alive
today if they had [b]DONE NOTHING[/b]

[img width=500 height=375]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... _crash.png[/img]


Over and over and over again, we see the same thing.


There are no new causes of accidents.  And it really
hurts pilot's feelings when I tell them that they are
the weakest link, because they don't fly very well,
and actually, when they pee in the soup, it doesn't
improve the flavour.

[Colonel]

[quote]What if it's all the way forward? Wouldn't you have a high negative AOA?[/quote]

Welcome to my world  ;D

Not too many people half-roll inverted immediately
after takeoff.  Those that do, have to get the stick
forward for high negative alpha to create adequate
lift until the speed increases, and then the -ve AOA
can be reduced to remain level in inverted ground
effect.




The number of people that do that in Canada, I
can count on the fingers of one hand.  None of
us have ever bent an aircraft, that I know of.

Another way to put it:  what was the last accident
that you can think of, that was attributed to excessive
negative AOA?

Come to think of it, one of my best friends,
Freddy Cabanas (and a far better pilot than
I will ever be) is dead because he did NOT
maintain an adequate -ve AOA.  At least,
that was the beginning of the chain.  Or
towards the start of it.

As an engineer, I try to solve problems that exist.

The internet specializes in solving (and arguing
about) problems that do not exist.  This I find
to be churlish, annoying and tiresome.

I do not find problems that do not exist, very
interesting, and time spent solving them is
wasted.

Academics can spend their time solving problems
that do not exist, because their time isn't worth
anything.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

A lot of the problems can be found by simply looking at the clusterfuck TCCA started when they replaced the ANO's with the CAR's.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Leveling off procedure.



Lower the nose to the level attitude.

Wait for airspeed to increase to desired level flight speed before reducing the power to cruise power.

I trim as the airspeed increases and after power set and attitude is proven correct by noting it is not climbing or descending I make sure the trim will maintain level flight hands off.

Then and only then do I pick up my skin book and enjoy the rest of the flight.


Runway alignment is easy.......


Just keep the thing aligned with the center line from the time you are on final approach until you turn off the center line to exit the runway at the end of the roll out.

Judging the height to flare is a skill you learn right after attitudes and movements when you first start doing circuits.

If you have problems judging flare height your instructors also had the same problem or they would have taught you how to do it at the start of your training.

Of all the piss poor training skills I see in aviation the inability to teach exact height in the flare, hold off and touch down by instructors is the one that really depresses me.

If an instructor can not judge height above the runway accurately, especially below ten feet above the runway they should never be allowed to teach period.

When training students to land I teach accuracy within six inches of wheel contact before I let them solo.

[Eric Janson]

[quote author=HPC link=topic=1765.msg5972#msg5972 date=1453691262][size=1em]Well, lets assume I have some degree of accuracy  ;D , is there anything you can share that may help to improve? On the other hand, assume i'm incompetent -- is there anything you can add?


I'm guilty of having some lesser moments, but landing under normal conditions has always seemed like one of the easier parts of flying to me, in the Cessnas i've had a bunch of good ones  :P  ;D  :-[ [/size]
[/quote]

If you look at the runway on approach you will see three 3 things:-

- Runway moving "down" relative to a fixed reference point on the windshield. You will land beyond this area.
- Runway moving "up" relative to a fixed reference point on the windshield. You will land prior to this area.
- Runway not moving relative to a fixed reference point on the windshield. This is the point you will land.

I've heard this referred to as "flying the null".

By making small pitch changes on final you can control the location of your landing point.

Useful for landing at night especially on runways with no approach lights or PAPI/VASI. Also useful for landing on runways with an up or downslope or with different widths. Both can create optical illusions.

Good landings come from good approaches - correct speed/correct profile so as to touchdown at the desired point on the runway.
[b]
Don't try to salvage a bad approach[/b]. If it isn't working go-around, think about what you did incorrectly, and do it correctly next approach. Ideally you want a point at which to continue or go-around.

In the large jet world we operate to very stringent stabilised approach criteria.

At 1000' we need to be:-

In the final landing configuration.
Correct speed. (+10/-5 knots from target speed)
Thrust above idle.
Correct lateral and vertical profile.

Below 1000' we are limited to maximum 1000'/min rate of descent.

Any deviation from the above is a [b]mandatory[/b] go-around.

[JW Scud]

Check this guys lack of rudder pedal use on landing. Never learned after all these years.