Always Learning

But the next flight, I didn’t pull back far enough on the yoke and planted the airplane on the pavement in a flat attitude. The next flight, more of the same. I was in a rut.

I posed my dilemma to some pilot friends. The Cessna 182 is notoriously nose-heavy on landing, so their suggestions zeroed in on increasing elevator authority and raising the nose in those final seconds. There were as many strategies as there were pilots: Carry power into the flare. Use the electric trim to add nose-up trim. Set full nose-up trim, using the trim wheel only. Use two hands on the yoke to increase the back-pressure.

I tried one, and then another. Still, the wheels touched down with a thud. So, I took the airplane out one morning just to practice landings, and this time I focused on fundamentals. The first time around the pattern, I was too high turning onto final approach. I pulled back the power to increase the descent rate but overcorrected, and then I needed to add power on short final. That meant I arrived over the threshold with excess power for the roundout and flare and…thud.

It wasn’t about the last few seconds, or the peculiarities of the nose-heavy 182. My problem was basic energy management on approach. The next time around, I made smaller power corrections and focused on keeping the aim point steady in the windscreen throughout final approach, giving me less to manage in the flare. The main wheels touched down just before the nosewheel—still a bit flat, but better. My third landing was gloriously routine.

When we find ourselves in a funk, it helps to go back to the basics.When the touchdown goes wrong, it’s easy to focus on the touchdown. But the tires kissing the runway is the final touch, not the essence of a good landing. And model-specific details like the 182’s heavy nose matter, but they’re secondary to the basic principles of landing.

Switching between the 182 and an airplane with a better glide ratio had contributed to my initial overcorrection on final approach—I had subconsciously anticipated needing a larger power reduction to descend to the glide path, based on recent experience in the Van’s Aircraft RV–12. But the 182 requires no special technique for staying on glide path, just a commitment to observe and adapt. And tips like how and when to roll in trim can be helpful, but many amount to personal preference. The most important elements of a landing are consistent no matter what we fly. When we find ourselves in a funk, it helps to go back to the basics. Then, we can move on to finesse.

As a student, I resented the concept of “finessing” a landing. It felt as if I were supposed to wake up one morning and just know what it should feel like to flare. But many elements come together for a good landing: an approach that is on glide path and on speed, smooth and timely pitch and power corrections, wind within your limits, good depth perception and attitude control within the flare. Finesse isn’t a mystical talent, just the culmination of these skills.

In a dramatic scene from Kung Fu Panda—bear with me, I have little kids—the title character’s father reveals the secret ingredient in the family’s famous “secret ingredient soup.” Spoiler alert: It’s nothing. Our lovable panda already has what he needs to take on the snow leopard terrorizing the valley. He just needs to believe in himself.

So, I’ll take the lesson from a cartoon goose. There’s no secret ingredient to a good landing. Just the principles I’ve known all along.

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