You’re in the pattern today. Again. It seems like it’s been a month since you went out and did anything else with an airplane, and probably a few weeks since you had any fun. At first, it felt good to finally get a chance to sink your teeth into some real landing practice. But now? Well, let’s just say that your landings feel like one barely controlled crash after another, and they are hardly advancing your Top Gun dreams.
Sound familiar? If so, take heart. You are not alone. It’s called a learning plateau, and everyone experiences them.
The landing is a particularly slippery fish. Just when you think you’ve got the hang of it, the wind shifts, or the traffic changes, or the airplane has a different weight or center of gravity. Every landing is different, and you can spend a lifetime in pursuit of the perfect one. The frustrated student, however, has quit caring about perfection long ago, and just wants to be able to use the airplane again sometime after this lesson.
Good landings have certain characteristics in
common. Let’s look at some common landing problems and how to fix them.
What’s the problem? Your airspeed is too high.
Diagnosis: You don’t want to limit yourself to runways that are at least two miles long, and new tires get expensive after a while. Excess airspeed causes floating—time spent with wheels not yet on the pavement, as you watch precious runway go by. Even a few knots of extra speed will have you touching down several hundred feet farther down the runway. Sometimes after an airplane lands long like this, brakes are slammed on, and tires squeal. While it’s not exactly pretty, the aircraft usually can be stopped in this manner while still on the pavement and still under lateral control.
However, even if you never plan to land anywhere but old B-52 bases and the Great Salt Flats, you still can end up with technique-based problems from coming in too fast. For example, if you try to pitch the nose up into the flare attitude while you still have excess airspeed, the aircraft will balloon. Ballooning is trading off your excess airspeed for just enough altitude to make a really uncomfortable drop now that you don’t have any airspeed.
Possibly worse than either floating or ballooning, gusty winds or impatience may force an early touchdown. If the airplane is too fast and not ready to quit flying, simply pitching down may cause the nosewheel to touch first. The nose strut—and the firewall to which that strut is attached—are not strong enough for this. What’s more, you could induce porpoising (bouncing down the runway) or wheelbarrowing (rolling on just your nosewheel).
What should you do differently on your next landing? Preferably, you should be at the correct speed before ground effect makes it harder to slow down. Ground effect is a reduction in drag that occurs when you get within one wingspan above the ground. Tempting as it may be, don’t just stare at your airspeed indicator. On final approach, your scan should be mostly divided between the runway and the airspeed, but you may have to watch traffic or other factors. If you are musically inclined, pay attention to the sound your airplane makes when it’s at the right speed—or too slow, or too fast. Not musically inclined? That’s OK: Watch the angle of your airplane to the horizon (or trees and buildings) and feel for the proper amount of mushiness.
Oh, and watch the airspeed indicator, too. Pitch up to slow down if you’re too fast. It should go without saying that the power is already at idle.
What’s the problem? Your airspeed is too low.
Diagnosis: The objective of landing is to bring the airplane down out of the sky, and then to stop bringing it down. If you time it right, you stop that downward motion with lift from the wings before the runway does. That lift comes from air flowing over a wing, and when that air moves too slowly, the wing can’t make enough lift to stop, say, a downward trend toward the pavement. You need exactly enough speed so that when you pitch up (flare), you will trade the last bit of excess speed for the lift necessary to stop your descent and cushion your touchdown. If you are coming in too slow, there’s nothing left to trade for extra lift, and the airplane will continue its earthward trajectory with teeth- and landing-gear-jarring effect.
What should you do? See the airspeed and attitude control tactics from the solution to the first problem above.
What’s the problem? Either your longitudinal axis, your direction of flight, or both are not pointed down the runway.
Diagnosis: Landing gear in general and tires in particular don’t roll very smoothly when they go sideways. All flat spots aside, in the worst-case scenario, if you combine misalignment with too much speed (and inertia), you will end up off the runway—or skipping down the runway in a dangerous little dance.
Use your rudder to align the longitudinal axis of the airplane with the runway centerline. Keep it aligned with the centerline by using your feet. Conventional airplanes with left-turning tendencies will show those tendencies to a small degree in the flare, so don’t be surprised if you need just a touch of right rudder (gradually increasing pressure on the pedal as the speed bleeds off) at touchdown.
What if you’re tracking parallel to the centerline but not on it? For airplanes smaller than the width of the runway, this is simply bad form, and something for the local airport bums to rib you about. If the airplane fills the width of the runway and you are not dead center, however, you may have worse problems than airport bums.
What if your longitudinal axis appears to be aligned with the centerline, yet you keep getting off track? Then you have a crosswind pushing you off your intended course. Push back by banking into the wind. This bank will accomplish exactly what banking does in an airplane, which is to change where the longitudinal axis is pointed. To understand why this adds a new problem, see above. The solution is the same: Use your feet.
“But,” you say, “that would mean I am banking one way and yawing the other. That’s uncoordinated!”
Correct. In order to touch down in a crosswind with the wheels rolling straight, you will be uncoordinated, and you will touch down with the upwind wheel before the downwind wheel. The degree to which you are uncoordinated and the degree to which the upwind wheel touches first will depend on the strength of the wind. If full rudder deflection is not enough, find another runway.
What’s the problem? You’re too high.
Diagnosis: Running off the end of the runway is hazardous to your renter’s insurance premium, and the overworked mechanic will sigh despondently when he has to order more brake pads and tires.
Not to be confused with coming in too fast, coming in above the correct glideslope doesn’t carry the risk of ballooning or floating as long as you are at the right speed.
So what can you do? You actually have a few options and can exercise a little creativity here.
Reducing power sooner would be the first go-to solution in most trainers.
Deploying more flaps will help by allowing a steeper angle of descent while maintaining the correct airspeed.
Slips are a tradition in flapless aircraft, and can be used in a pinch (or just for fun) in many aircraft with flaps. Check your pilot’s operating handbook to see if you can slip with flaps deployed, or if there’s a limitation (some Cessnas, for example, should not be slipped with full flaps).
Ultimately, if some combination of these solutions doesn’t put you in a safe position to land, go around. Next time, try starting the descent sooner or widening the pattern.
What’s the problem? You’re too low.
Diagnosis: Again, the airport bums will make fun of you if you show up with tree leaves in your landing gear. Darn bums!
All kidding aside, it should be evident that too low is obviously dangerous and should not be taken lightly.
What should you do?
If you have power, add it. If you’re slipping, quit it. If you have flaps down, it’s probably best not to touch them. The problem with flaps is that they don’t just add drag for a steeper descent; most flap designs also contribute lift. If you’re too slow to fly reliably without that extra lift, when you retract the flaps you will sink. You will continue to sink until the airplane speeds up enough to recover the lost lift. If you had that much extra altitude to spare, you would not be having this problem in the first place. Ask your instructor and consult your POH for best practice in the trainer you are using.
Next time around, keep your pattern tighter by flying downwind closer and turning base sooner. You could also wait to start your descent until later, carry more power, and not deploy as many degrees of flaps—or add them later in the pattern. By the way, you can expect these sort of changes as a matter of course when you have a strong headwind on base or final.
What’s the problem? You’re flaring too high.
Diagnosis: t’s hard to appreciate a perfect landing when it comes a foot or so too high. If you’ve ever seen an aircraft being lifted in order to switch from wheels to floats or skis, imagine that lift accidentally dropping the airplane from a few feet up. That’s essentially what is happening when the wings quit flying, but the wheels aren’t able to take over just yet.
What should you do differently next time? Opinions and techniques vary widely on this subject, ranging from where your eyes should be focused to exercises intended to teach you what flare height looks like. Some things to try include looking farther down the runway or focusing more on your peripheral vision. Some exercises include sitting in the pilot seat while your instructor holds the tail down in the flare attitude, or doing low passes down the runway with the help of your instructor.
Other causes of problems in this area can include adapting to a wider runway, a sloped runway, or different lighting (landing into the sun or in haze). In these cases, generally you just need a little practice under the new conditions.
Of course, it is also possible you need to relax. At least one student literally had to be reminded to breathe on final approach because her fingernails were turning blue. You may be imagining what it would be like to run the propeller or the nosewheel into the runway, and the image causes you to unconsciously pull up. If those kinds of mental images are tripping you up, make a point of picturing what you do want rather than picturing what you don’t want.
What’s the problem? You’re flaring too low.
Diagnosis: Your speed, alignment, crosswind correction, and glideslope may all be setting you up for a beautiful touchdown, but if you don’t take the final step and use your leftover speed to stop your descent smoothly, the runway will stop your descent suddenly.
What should you do differently next time? The same exercises for fixing the high flare will help here, too. Once you know what flare height looks like, every time you think the airplane is going to touch down, pull up slightly and don’t let it touch. Keep pulling up smoothly until there is no more “up” to pull. Squeeze every last bit of lift you can from the wings as you skim the runway surface. If you are slow and low enough and you feel it out gradually, then your pitch should not be high enough to hit the tail before the wheels touch.
Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Every time you make a mistake, ask yourself what exactly went wrong. Then ask yourself what exactly you can do to fix the problem. The real trick is to stay focused on that fix as the minutes on crosswind and downwind tick by, so that you don’t find yourself mindlessly following bad habits as your brain reacts to various cues (i.e. being abeam the numbers, the instructor unconsciously leans left, et cetera). The suggestions here don’t cover everything, but they should at least give you an outline for how to approach your own problem solving. Keep trying solutions, and you’ll be off that plateau in no time.
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