An impossible dream?
Greek mythology includes the tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece. Jason, a young man, at the suggestion of his uncle searched relentlessly for the Golden Fleece that was in a land far away and guarded by a dragon that never slept. His uncle was rooting for the dragon.
In 1999 I began a quest of my own, hunting for the secret to the perfect landing and hoping not to run into a fire-breathing dragon or a mean uncle. Others have found it, like the Wizard of the West, Sir Bob of Hoover, but alas, he lives in a land far away. I decided to find it on my own. This isn't the "good and safe" landing you strive for, but the perfect landing that leaves passengers asking, "Are we down yet?" Like Jason, I sought advice from throughout the land. Unlike Jason, who could use the ship Argo, I had only the phone.
First, I spotted an ad in AOPA Pilot from K2 Aviation in Talkeetna, Alaska, a flightseeing company that lands tourists on the glaciers of Mount McKinley. Pilots who do that must land perfectly every time, I reasoned, and so I called one of them.
"You mean the sort of landing that brings praise from the passengers even though the pilot has been off altitude and lost for 90 percent of the flight?" sardonically asked K2's Bill Post.
Checklist for perfect landings
- Fly a perfect pattern — visualize it over the ground
- Retrim with every configuration change
- Find a final-fix point, a barn, tree, or fence, that is one-half mile from the runway threshold, and be 400 feet agl at that point
- Aim for the second centerline stripe and land on the third
- Be completely stabilized at 300 feet — in the right configuration and at the correct airspeed
- Control your airspeed to plus or minus 3 knots of the book-recommended speed
- Know when to go around
- Carry a little bit of power, as in a soft-field landing
- Keep the nose constantly in motion, rising to the landing attitude
"Yes, exactly," I assured Post.
While he flies tailwheel aircraft for K2, and most of you fly trigear airplanes, he has extensive experience in Cessna 206 and Piper Cherokee aircraft. He offers these tips to pilots of both tailwheel and trigear planes. Establish a minimum descent rate, as seaplane pilots must do when making a glassy-water landing. Carry a bit of power as you would for a soft-field landing. Also, know your airplane and be aware of its behavior at different weights. For renters, that means try to rent the same aircraft or type of aircraft most of the time, if you really want to improve. "I grade myself on every landing," Post said.
Pilots may want to put a mark or smudge on the windscreen to better notice relative movement of the intended touchdown point. (Actually, of course, you will land beyond the point you aim at.) The mark won't be in focus, but it can still provide information, just as an out-of-focus gunsight aids a hunter. Another valuable suggestion is to ask a pilot friend or an instructor to coach you. "It's hard to make mental calculations needed for the landing and critique yourself at the same time," Post said. After all of his successful landings in the bush or on glaciers, Post still thinks he has much to learn.
"I'm not perfect," Post said. "That's got to be Bob Hoover. Consistency like his is the mark of the top pilots."
Hmmm. Bob Hoover, who in ancient Greek times would have been made the god of flying. I set out, telephonically, to find him. Along the way I met Ron Fowler, author of Making Perfect Landings, published by Iowa State University Press. After giving 12,600 hours of flight instruction, Fowler now devotes himself mostly to writing. Fowler said that a good landing begins with flying a perfect pattern.
First, it is important to visualize your traffic pattern using ground reference points. Then, it is important when on final to know when you are one-half mile from the runway. Find a final-fix point — maybe it is a barn, fence, or tree — that is one-half mile from the touchdown point. At that point, for most normal landings, you want to be 400 feet above the ground.
Next, control your airspeed, Fowler said, to within plus or minus 3 knots of the speed suggested in the pilot's operating handbook.
Another tip he offered is to trim the airplane for hands-off flying with every configuration and power change. Most pilots trim only twice — once after the first power reduction when abeam the point of intended touchdown and once on final.
Speaking of a touchdown point, aim for the second centerline stripe. You don't really want to be on the numbers unless the runway is critically short, because the numbers are dangerously close to the end of the runway. Your goal is to touch down on or within 200 feet beyond that second stripe. There won't be time to get out the tape measure, so try to touch down no farther down the runway than the middle of the third stripe. Such precision is the key to the landing.
Fowler, like Post, believes it is critical that you be aware of any apparent motion of your intended point of touchdown as it appears in the windscreen while on final. "Without that you are not going to make a good landing," he said. If the point on the runway moves up, you are getting low, and if it moves down, you are getting too high.
Finally, learn from your own mistakes. Analyze what went wrong. Fowler suggested that, for further advice on perfect landings, I contact one of the larger flight schools training airline candidates. Just such an opportunity arose a few months later.
Common landing accident scenarios
- Lack of eye-hand coordination
- Failure to handle windy conditions properly
- Fatigue or complacency after an uneventful flight
- Inadequate crosswind correction or improper technique
During a trip to Florida I took time to visit the Comair Aviation Academy in Sanford, north of Orlando. Comair, a Delta Air Lines connection, owns the flight school, and many of its graduates take jobs with Comair. The school has six instructor leaders, four assistant chiefs, and two chief flight instructors. Danny Brown is one of the chiefs. He suggested some drills you can do at the local airport to train yourself for the perfect landing.
His first tip is to practice touch and goes without letting the nosewheel touch the runway. Retract flaps while keeping the nosewheel up, and take off again. "It really cleans up the soft- and short-field technique," Brown said. FAA examiners who test Comair students "love seeing students who have that sort of control," he added.
Years ago, I witnessed this training technique at an airline-owned flight school in The Netherlands using Piper Seneca aircraft.
Second, learn the amount of movement of the trim wheel that is required to attain a certain airspeed. In the Cessna 172, grasp the wheel at the top and rotate it completely to the bottom; one turn equals 10 knots. If you want to go back to cruise airspeed, take out one bottom-to-top rotation. Want to make perfect 45-degree-bank turns? With the Cessna 172, add two rolls of the trim wheel. A 60-degree-bank turn requires three rolls of the trim tab. For those of you with electric trim, try counting as you hold the trim switch.
Finally, if you want to get the approach angle correct, place your hand atop the instrument panel, palm facing you, and place the runway numbers just above your hand. That will be the "spot" on the windscreen that you will watch to determine if the numbers appear to move up or down. "It works every time," Brown promised.
Brown added a couple of "don'ts" to his advice as well.
- New pilots think they are supposed to plant the aircraft on the aim point on the runway. Don't.
- Be ready and willing to add power and go around if the landing isn't going well; don't try to save it. Add power in order to arrest the sink rate if you flare too high; don't let the aircraft slam on with power at idle.
- Finally, don't look immediately ahead of the airplane while landing, but farther down the runway. Pilots who don't look down the runway sometimes fail to flare at all, or flare too high.
Brown suggests that pilots try to be stabilized at 300 feet agl. That is, have the aircraft in the right configuration and at the right airspeed so that no changes are needed.
As a bonus, Brown tossed in a tip on crosswind landings. Comair teaches its future airline pilots the wing-low method of crosswind landing. For straight-in approaches such as those used at controlled airports, Comair suggests pilots crab into the wind in coordinated flight until 1.5 miles from the runway. Then they should switch to lowering the upwind wing and maintaining the centerline with rudder pedals. That method avoids switching from a crab to a slip in the final seconds of the landing.
Following that visit, I continued my search for Wizard of the West. While searching on the Internet, I also asked the computer gods this question:
"Who makes perfect landings?" The answers that came back: "Tara Lapinski makes perfect landings" and "To purchase a Tara Lapinski, click here." The Tara Lapinski page reported that the Olympic gold-medal skater had damaged her landing gear — a hip — and of course I didn't want any advice from her after learning that.
Months passed and my journeys were taking me no closer to the god of flying, or so I thought. Then I happened on the correct aisle in the exhibit hall of the National Business Aviation Association convention in New Orleans, where Hoover was signing autographs. At last I would learn the secret of perfect landings.
"Wet runways," Hoover said. Even if you make a perfect touchdown on a dry runway, the tires will skid for a brief moment before the wheels spin up, and that causes a jolt no matter how skilled the pilot. However, the tires slide less before spinning up on a wet runway, reducing the jolt. Another secret, he said, is to have short struts on the aircraft. Long ones transmit more of the landing jolt. That is the sort of detail you would expect from a perfectionist, details that had never occurred to me. Maybe I wasn't ready for perfect landings after all.
As a demonstration of skill, Hoover often held his Sabreliner airshow jet inches off the runway for the entire length of a 7,000-foot runway without ever touching, and without rising more than a height equal to two lengths of the landing-gear struts. In fact, until Hoover performed such a demonstration, the U.S. Air Force once balked at buying the North American F-100 Super Sabre. The top brass pronounced that the nose came up too high in the landing attitude, providing inadequate visibility over the nose. So Hoover flew the entire length of the runway at Edwards Air Force Base with the landing gear just a foot above the surface. When he taxied back, he discovered that the Air Force had bought the aircraft.
None of us is as skilled as Hoover, of course. So I asked for some advice for the average Cessna 172 pilot. The famous airshow performer and test pilot laughed and revealed the actual secret of perfect landings.
"Work real hard at it," he laughed. The answer at last. My quest can proceed. And if I don't achieve perfection in 2001, then maybe this perfection thing is overrated. Maybe "good" and "safe" landings aren't so bad after all.
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