From AOPA ePilot Flight Training Edition -- Vol. 4, Issue 13, March 26, 2004

Having trouble landing? It's a rite of passage for pilots. The day is coming when you can bring her to earth like a pro. But today, this is still a struggle. It looks so easy, doesn't it? The airplane on final approach crosses the threshold in an easy glide, the nose rises a bit, and after a brief interval when the craft seems to hover just above the runway, it alights—main wheels first, then the nosewheel.

This may not be what you are experiencing. The timing of your roundout and flare is still off. The airplane touches down prematurely and skips, or hangs in the air beyond all reason, then flops onto the pavement. If only there were more time during that sensitive transition from glide to flare to get the feel of it!

"Did you know that your airplane has a built-in time machine designed just for students having landing difficulties?" asks columnist Rod Machado in his December 1999 AOPA Flight Training commentary "Fighting the Flare." Read his advice for tackling this challenge.

Another idea is to make sure you clearly understand the goals—misconceptions can mean hours of delayed learning. Ask for additional demonstration of the elements of landing. Quality demonstrations are discussed in "CFI to CFI: Show and Tell" in the April 2004 AOPA Flight Training.

Learning also requires analyzing what happened on earlier attempts. "Don't you just hate it when you think you have landed, then find yourself 10 feet up, wondering what happened? Well, you bounced. You bounced because: (a) you were too fast when you landed, and you basically skipped off the runway; (b) your descent rate was much too high because you didn't flare soon enough, fast enough, or both; or both (a) and (b)," explains Thomas A. Horne in his March 1997 AOPA Pilot article "Landing Proficiency," from the "Measure of Skill" series available at AOPA Online.

Confronting landings may be your first experience with a learning plateau. See ways to get the train moving again in the June 2003 AOPA Flight Training feature "Sophomore Slump." Also know that student pilots are not the only ones to have trouble, as the September 2002 confessional "No Flare for Landings" makes clear.

Fend off discouragement, and move on to a time when you can savor the results of your hard work. It'll be sooner than you think!

From AOPA ePilot Flight Training Edition -- Vol. 4, Issue 14, April 2, 2004

Inbound from a training flight, you prepare for your last landing of the afternoon. You'd like it to be a nice one because not only is it a pleasant way to finish up, but you want to confirm that your hard work in learning to land is paying off. As the airport draws near, however, your instructor has yet another new technique to show you. This will be your introduction to the no-flap landing.

The no-flap landing is something that could be requested on your private pilot flight test to probe how you would handle a flap-system malfunction (download and see Area of Operation X, Task B of the Practical Test Standards). It is an option all pilots of flap-equipped airplanes could consider under other circumstances, too. The aircraft's minimum controllable airspeed without flaps extended is higher than with flaps. Absent the induced drag of flaps, power/pitch changes will be your primary resource for adjusting airspeed and glidepath. Another tool to help correct your glidepath is the forward slip, discussed in the June 7, 2002, "Training Tips."

Once you're comfortable with them, include no-flap landings in future practice sessions. It's a level of proficiency that not all pilots maintain. "Students, as well as veteran pilots who have fallen into the rut of always using the same landing technique (typically partial flaps), are often reluctant to adopt the comparatively nose-high attitude required to slow down a flap-equipped airplane without using flaps. So they fly the approach much too fast, land long, and use up too much runway," cautions the "Accident Analysis" column in the December 2001 issue of AOPA Flight Training.

At an extremely busy airport, air traffic control might ask you to keep up your speed on final approach—another possible time for a no-flap landing, as Robert I. Snow discusses in the August 2001 AOPA Flight Training feature "Keep Up Your Speed." And in "Continuing Ed" in the June 2001 AOPA Flight Training, columnist Mark Twombly offers other reasons. "What if something imperfect pops up in the midst of a perfectly normal approach? What if an animal wanders onto the runway just as you cross the numbers? What if the flaps refuse to extend?"

Give yourself every advantage today, so handling the unexpected will be a matter of routine tomorrow.

GIVING OVERSHOOTS THE BOOT

From AOPA ePilot Flight Training Edition -- Vol. 4, Issue 15, April 9, 2004

Every student pilot practicing landings in the airport traffic pattern occasionally experiences the problem of overshooting the final approach. See "Instructor Report: The Asymmetrical Traffic Pattern" in the April 2001 AOPA Flight Training.

Excessive speed is one cause. Becoming distracted when you reconfigure for landing, thus losing awareness of your progress over the ground, is another. But for beginners, wind is the usual culprit. Suppose you are on a left downwind for Runway 33, preparing to land in wind from 280 degrees at 10 knots. This means there will be a crosswind component of 8 kt from the left on final—see the February 27, 2004, "Training Tips". But it also means that there is an 8-kt crosswind component from the right on the downwind leg! If you have not corrected for that, you will gradually drift in toward the runway while flying downwind. Compounding the problem is that when you turn to the base leg heading of 60 degrees, the tailwind component increases, and so does your groundspeed. So there you are—closer to the runway than you want to be, moving faster over the ground than expected. It's a perfect recipe for an overshoot, often followed by a sloppy, unstable final approach, rough landing, or worse.

At that point, what would you do? "Perhaps the most important lesson a student can learn—and an instructor can teach—is how to abort an approach safely and go around," wrote Christopher L. Parker in "Flying Safe—The Last Half Mile" in the October 1997 Flight Training.

Learning how to keep a continuing check on your position in the pattern and make appropriate drift corrections takes practice, but there are techniques that will give you an edge. In the August 2001 AOPA Flight Training feature, "Looking Down: Ground Track in the Pattern," Budd Davisson makes a suggestion. "Try this experiment: The next time you fly when there's any kind of wind across the runway, take a look behind you as you turn crosswind. Are you still on the extended centerline?" His point is that if you catch drift early, it will remain in your thoughts while you divide your attention between the numerous pattern-flying tasks.

As is true of mastering so many piloting skills, small adjustments made early make all the difference. Perhaps you are only a few seconds of timing away from turning your traffic patterns into works of art that are beautiful to witness and a joy to perform.

From AOPA ePilot Flight Training Edition -- Vol. 4, Issue 16, April 16, 2004

The March 26, 2004, Training Tips on "Tackling Touchdown Travails" encouraged student pilots struggling with landings to have confidence—brighter days are coming! Errors such as bounced landings and an accompanying phenomenon called porpoising are miscues that you will soon leave behind.

The cause of the bounce and the porpoise is failure to achieve the correct landing attitude at the proper height above the runway during the transition from the roundout to the flare. See Thomas A. Horne's description of these terms in "Touchdown!" in the September 2003 AOPA Pilot. If you hesitate to rotate the nose to a sufficiently high attitude while reducing your descent rate to almost nil before the wheels touch, two things can happen: You'll touch down with excessive airspeed, and the impact may propel you back into the air.

Then where are you? On the way back up, nose high, power off, airspeed dissipating. What to do next depends on how severe the first arrival was. A minor hop can often be corrected simply by adding slightly more back pressure on the yoke during the second touchdown. You can recover from a somewhat more aggravated bounce with a combination of back pressure and a touch of power. A real gear-shaker may leave you almost stalled and so high that the only recourse is to go around and try again.

Under no circumstances should you jam the nose down in an attempt to land after a bounce. This is what causes the porpoise—a jarring and increasingly severe succession of impacts and rebounds often leading to nose-gear failure and accidents. Robert Rossier analyzes landing errors including the porpoise in the September 1997 Flight Training column "Learning Experiences."

Failing to understand what causes porpoising is a common source of student discouragement. See Rod Machado's cure for this—including simulating bounce errors with your instructor to practice recoveries safely—in "Self-Confidence Hurdles," his commentary in the December 2000 AOPA Flight Training. And as AOPA Air Safety Foundation Executive Director Bruce Landsberg urges all student pilots and their instructors in the July 2001 AOPA Flight Training "Instructor Report," remember to "make go-arounds the rule" when a landing is not working out.

Then practice. The results will soon be obvious.

From AOPA ePilot Flight Training Edition -- Vol. 4, Issue 17, April 23, 2004

Your final approach was stable and the touchdown precise. You avoided the bounce and the porpoise discussed in the April 16, 2004, "Training Tips." But stay focused! Your landing is not complete. Although it is natural to want to let down your guard (and the nosewheel) after a nice touchdown, there is more work to do. As you may have heard someone say, you must keep flying the airplane until it is tied down—which, at this point, it is not.

"After touching down, maintain continued aft stick pressure to spare the nosewheel and hasten the transfer of weight from wings to wheels. As airspeed drops off and the elevators lose effectiveness, the nose will drop on its own. Then you can apply brakes and bring the airplane to a stop, using rudder for ground steering," writes Thomas A. Horne in "Touchdown" in the September 2003 AOPA Pilot. Be patient about attending to after-landing chores. Ideally, wait until you have taxied clear before raising the flaps or switching to the ground-control frequency. "Distractions such as these can lead to a loss of directional control and, perhaps, an accident," cautions Christopher L. Parker in the December 1997 "Instructor Tips" column in Flight Training.

Know the condition of your runway. Notices to airmen (notams) or the automatic terminal information service broadcast alert you to any braking-action reports, the subject of the November 28, 2003, "Training Tips."

Everything under control? Great. But there is still opportunity for surprises requiring calm, quick attention. An unbalanced nosewheel tire combined with a slight side movement of the nosewheel at touchdown can provoke a sudden noisy, vibrating sensation called a nosewheel shimmy. It's not as bad as it sounds and feels in the cockpit—but it can be quite a surprise just as things are quieting down. Usually you can arrest it simply by raising the nosewheel slightly and letting it come down again as you decelerate. (The shimmy can also occur on takeoff and is cured by raising the nosewheel. In either case, squawk it to your mechanic.) Some airplanes are equipped with a "shimmy dampener." Is yours? To find out, consult Mark Twombly's "What It Looks Like" column in the January 2001 AOPA Flight Training.