Pilotage

The perfect pilot: skilled, knowledgeable, proficient, conscientious, thorough, careful, alert, calm, and possessing of flawless vision and a deep radio voice. Wish I exhibited each and every one of those qualities, but truth is, no one has ever mistaken me for Chuck Yeager.

I'm just an ordinary mortal kinda pilot, one who strives to learn from each flight but, on reflection, often is confounded by the same two or three things. One is an airplane problem. The other two are of my own doing.

Confounding thing number one: I do not know how much power the engine is producing. This is true for every piston airplane I have ever flown, and it bothers me. The handbook for the airplane may have performance tables that show a percentage of power based on propeller rpm, plus manifold pressure and fuel flow for more sophisticated aircraft, but I have little faith in the accuracy of the tables. They were constructed based on a new airplane and engine under ideal test conditions. Or they may even be fiction, as is the case for some older airplanes when hyperbole ruled the day.

I cannot recall an instance when all of the howgozit information in flight — airspeed, power settings, and fuel flow — precisely matched book numbers. Even when compensating for weight, temperature, altitude, instrument error, and the effects of engine and airframe age, it's difficult to make a good match between actual and theoretical performance. A couple of performance parameters may agree, but inevitably one or two are out of sync. For example, of three airplanes I have flown recently, one consumes about 2 gallons an hour more gas than the book promises, another a gallon an hour less, and the third goes 10 knots faster than book (probably an airspeed indicator error, but I'm enjoying the lie).

Other than being maddeningly frustrating, this imprecision has some serious implications for realizing all of an airplane's potential and for the long-term health and vitality of the engine. For example, the mixture should be leaned when the engine is producing no more than 75- percent power. Any more than that and it should be operated full rich. But because of instrument errors and the effects of ambient conditions, I don't have a lot of confidence that the power settings the book says I should use really do result in the engine producing 75 percent. If it's more, I shouldn't be leaning. If it's less, the airplane isn't performing to my flight-planning expectations.

The answer is to operate at a comfortable margin below 75 percent using the tachometer as the primary power gauge for a fixed-pitch propeller airplane and a combination of tachometer, manifold pressure gauge, and fuel flow for constant-speed engines. That way, I eliminate the concern about violating leaning restrictions. Life would be a lot easier if I had a gauge that told me with accuracy the percentage of power the engine was producing at that moment.

Confounding thing number two: Transitioning from cruise flight to the approach and landing. It should be a no-brainer phase of flight — reduce power and descend — and, in fact, too often that's the problem: Not enough brain power is being devoted to the task.

On a long cross country, alone in the cockpit and especially at higher altitudes, the mind can begin to wind down. It has been in high gear to prepare for the flight and for the takeoff and climb, but now thinking begins to slow. Concentration lapses. The sun's rays stream into the cockpit, and the vibration and noise play a steady drumbeat on the body and brain. The cockpit becomes a warm and comfortable cocoon in which there is very little sense of movement either inside or outside the airplane. This sensory deprivation can lead to a mild case of mental hibernation.

The effect of letting concentration slip in cruise flight is that I lose the edge. Instead of thinking and planning two or three steps ahead of the airplane, at best I'm taking care of current events. And if that is the case, events can quickly overtake and overwhelm. If the descent is not well planned and executed — I don't start down soon enough or at the proper rate, or I haven't done an adequate job of reviewing the approach and landing procedures for the destination airport — then I've set myself up for confusion and frustration at one of the highest work load phases of flight. This is not good.

It takes conscious effort to avoid lapsing into mental coast mode during a long cruising flight. What works for me is to conduct the must-do tasks — scanning for traffic, reviewing the navigation situation, and checking the dials and gauges — but enliven the process by mixing in some what-ifs and hows-thats.

The what-ifs involve concocting an imaginary problem, asking myself how I would discover the problem if it was for real and, finally, how would I react to it. It's a good exercise for staying sharp on the various aircraft systems and emergency procedures.

Those long legs also offer a good opportunity to hone proficiency in the use of avionics and equipment. It's asking a lot of a pilot to be expert in the use of each and every function of a GPS or loran, moving map, com radio with frequency storage, autopilot, fuel totalizer, altitude alerter, engine monitoring system, collision avoidance device, thunderstorm detection system, radar, clock and every other green, orange, yellow, or blue display that winks, blinks, talks, or intones. So I pass some of the long hours at cruise twiddling with knobs and buttons. It's my chance to explore hidden but still interesting and useful back-alleys in the often complex and confusing street map of functions in state-of-the- art microprocessor-driven avionics equipment.

Confounding thing number three is, I'm sure, a universal problem: The inability to make consistently good landings. Said another way: Why is it I can execute a flawless touchdown when I'm alone in the airplane (you'll just have to trust me on this one) but not when others are aboard?

I work pretty hard on being consistent in my approach and landing procedures by using specific power settings to achieve certain speeds in the pattern and on final approach, configuring the airplane with flaps and gear at the proper time, and holding a pitch attitude that results in the correct airspeed and descent rate on final. If I've flown the pattern and approach to standards, all that's left is to make small corrections in heading and pitch on short final to keep the expected touchdown point bull's-eyed. Crossing the threshold, I reduce power to idle, flare, and touch down perfectly. It seems so simple. So why don't I squeak it on every time?

I've come to the realization that landings are like making bread: I can use the same ingredients and never vary the kneading or rising techniques and times, but no matter how consistent and precise my methods, the bread turns out different every time.

So it is with landings. Some qualify as a delicious end to a lovely flight. Some are overcooked or underdone with a rough texture and a tough crust. That uncertainty about how it will all turn out is what makes landings — and bread-making — such an interesting challenge. I wonder if Chuck Yeager bakes bread?