Waypoints: Tricks

“Skeptic!” he retorted. “You wait and see.”

Configured at a pattern altitude of 1,000 feet agl with gear and flaps down, power set for 80 knots indicated airspeed, I watched the approach end of the 5,500-foot runway disappear under the nose of the Beechcraft Bonanza. I followed Eichhorn’s command to push it over for a normal descent angle. I used the throttle to maintain airspeed, and soon we touched down on the first third of the runway. “Bonanza’s a slick airplane, but when you get it slow and dirty, it’s like a brick,” he said. And he’s right.

Clever parlor trick, but what’s the point? Plummeting from pattern altitude to the runway on short final is not exactly normal operating procedure. But it is a great demonstration of the ability of the airplane and how you can use its performance to the max if you need to.

“Fifty-five knots seems to be the magic number if you get too high on final,” advised instructor Dave Hirschman. It was my first flight in the Vans RV–12 SLSA I had just bought. (No, not to replace the Bonanza—long story and column for another day.) As he predicted would happen, I entered the pattern north of 80 knots and therefore as I turned final, even with full flaps deployed, I was hot and high. The RV–12 is one slick little bird—and I was out of drag weapons, almost. Rather than slip, I pitched the nose up and waited for the speed to get to 55 knots indicated, and magically, the airplane began a descent at a good clip. As I was crossing through what appeared to be a normal glidepath, I pitched over slightly to get to about 60 knots and voilà, I was back where I needed to be and touched down normally.

How do you argue with the idea that every landing should be on the centerline—and on the stripe you chose a half mile out on final?Hirschman’s warnings not to over-rotate the RV–12 on takeoff reminded me of advice I received from a Cirrus instructor once about lifting off in an SR22. “Don’t pull back on the yoke to rotate; just press your elbow into the arm rest—that’s about all you need.” And he was right; the sporty Cirrus sprinted off the runway and away we went. It works in the RV–12, too.

“Pull the yoke out to about here,” instructor Bill Hale said as he exposed about three inches of the Bonanza’s fat control column in the center of the panel. “That way as you’re rolling down the runway, the airplane is light on its nose and you’ll detect and be able to correct for even the slightest crosswind right away—keeping it right on the centerline.” Hale has thousands of hours of instructing through the Bonanza/Baron Pilot Training (BPT) program, so who am I to argue? As with Eichhorn, also a highly experienced Beechcraft instructor, Hale was right. I’ve adopted his trick for every takeoff, and it really does help finesse control on the runway.

I’m not quite so consistent—yet—on another bit of advice I picked up from Joe Brown, president of Hartzell Propeller. Brown is fanatical about precision flying, whether in a taildragger or a turboprop. “Pick a stripe on the runway and land on it every time—every time!” he exclaimed, punctuating the air with a pointed finger. Actually, it was more like a commandment, as Brown becomes downright inspirational when he gets going on the subject. We were comparing notes a couple of years ago during a planning session for what ultimately would become the AOPA Air Safety Institute’s Focused Flight Review project. Soon he was in command of the room, and everyone was nodding in agreement. How do you argue with the idea that every landing should be on the centerline—and on the stripe you chose a half mile out on final? Do it every time and soon it’s second nature.

“Stop right here,” instructor Jack Hirsch said as I taxied the Bonanza onto the runway at Greensboro, North Carolina. I was sitting at about a 45-degree angle to the runway centerline. “Who says you have to be looking only down the runway?” he queried. The controller had given me a “position and hold” instruction (today it would be “line up and wait”). By sitting at an angle I could see the final approach path. If the controller forgot about me and cleared someone else to land, I was in a position to see them coming.

Busy twenty-first century lives make it difficult to hangar fly, where you can pick up both small and significant tips and techniques to improve your flying. But almost every other pilot has something to teach us. Listen and watch carefully, and you’ll be surprised at what you learn.

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