I saw this happen

[Weasil]

Avbug,
Thanks for your comments. You missed my point however. Not only was I saying it IS appropriate to teach full stalls it is also required by regulation. And no I am NOT teaching recoveries wrong. It is my job to hand out pilot certificates, so part of my job is to determine what other instructors are doing wrong, and help change that!

Clearly 100 feet wasn't enough altitude for this particular student to recover in - does that mean he never demonstrated good stall recovery at altitude in a controlled situation - probably not. So what else then does an instructor need to do? Maybe there's nothing you can do but i like to believe that you can always try to improve yourself.

Also I do teach students touch and goes. I was not saying you shouldn't. I am just trying to have an informed discussion on the topic of accident prevention. To take the attitude that something is a common accident and just forget about it is a mistake in my book. I believe it is important to always be wondering what you can do better an to learn from other people's mishaps.

Of course you or I can recover from a stall at 100 feet agl but my point was that a student can't after pitching to 45 degrees above the horizon in an aircraft with limited thrust. Any examiner you talk to regarding stall/spin awareness wants an applicant to be able to discuss situations to avoid/be aware of where stalls can be most hazardous, not just be able to recover from one.
In the interest of that I am always looking at stall/spin accidents to see how they occured and more often than not it is not the inability to recover that is the problem, it is the lack of altitude.

Students need to be taught to avoid nose high attitudes at slow airspeeds near the ground with uncoordinated control inputs wouldn't you agree?

And as for the landing accidents, what I meant to say was that 100% of these occured doing touch and goes. There has not been an accident on or near the runway involving full stop landings in the last 12 months. So in analysing these accidents it is my job to develop training policies to help avoid these in the future.

As for conventional gear aircraft, I have flown high powered military tailwheel aircraft for years so I am talking about something which I know. My question is if touch and goes are harder (as you say) then why do the regs require full stop landings before carrying passengers? Wouldn't it make more sense to require the more difficult operation as is the FAA's tendency. Why do you think they require instrument students to do a partial panel non-precision approach - they state that because they feel this is the most difficult approach you can do partial panel. So it seems that the FAA feels that full stops are more difficult. I am not saying I agree with this, I am just trying to discuss it without attacking other people's ideas.

quote:
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The only solo landing requirement listed in part 61 in fact is to do 3 full stop landings. And why do you think recent experience requirements require you to do your landings to a full stop if in a tailwheel aircraft or at night? Could it be because the full stop portion is considered more challenging then merely doing a crash and go...? Food for thought
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Where is this only solo requirement located?

61.109 (a) 5 (iii)

3 takeoffs and landings to a full stop at an airport with an operating control tower.

Do you know how many times I have had an instructor send his private student to me for a checkride only to discover that he had the student do touch and goes when he soloed and has never done 3 full stop landings!

Again, to make my position clear. I do teach touch and goes. I am not saying they are bad/wrong. I am just discussing the situation at hand, every instructor should make it his mission to give their students every chance of never having an accident.

 

[Weasil]

Nobody's mentioned it so I will. How can a student pilot have 6 hours of PIC time? We all know pre-private solo time is not loggable as PIC.



Dude

The regulations now say that a student pilot can log PIC time while solo.

 

[Timebuilder]

What? you never had an "adult" show up for lessons. I have had many 15 hour a year pilots show up at the fbo and need instruction.

Sure, I had them. After three years they had 45 hours. They just don't represent the majority of flight students, the group into whom this student who crashed has the greatest chance of "falling into". Sorry. Bad pun.

I thought that the ratio of TT to PIC time represented someone who either flew infrequently or was having a hard time "getting it". Not specifically a "cause" of the accident, but certainly a lack of PIC experience is a contributing factor in a typical accident, and certainly when you have logged a whole bunch of time without being the PIC.

My last job was an SIC job in a jet. I logged a fair amount of "sole manipulator" time, and I could get in right now and make a safe takeoff and landing. Am I ready to jump right back into harness for regular operations and an 8410 ride after almost seven months off? No, absolutley not.

As soon as you get out of the airplane, your abilities begin to atrophy a little. It's the PIC experience, the management of the entire process, that makes you a pilot. So, a lack of PIC time (in a single pilot airplane in this case) was a red flag to me, not a cause of the accident.

I found touch and goes were a great drill that allowed the student to experience the max number of takeoff and landing experiences in the limited instruction time available. As Avbug mentioned, one great reason is the rejected landing. Another is the fact that such a small number of hours in a pilot's lifetime are spent in the flare or on the takeoff roll. Practice is never a bad idea.

I learned to solo the airplane at a little strip that had a crosswind on most days, so airplane control was second nature. Since then I have drilled the idea of applying correct control inputs into students. It seems that this is what was needed here, in this case.

 

[Weasil]

. Since then I have drilled the idea of applying correct control inputs into students. It seems that this is what was needed here, in this case.

Couldn't agree more!

 

[TurboS7]

little more personal

My wife was doing touch and goes on runway 15 at DuPage County Airport. This was before they put in the new runways. On her third touch and go, I was watching from the old picnic area. I heard a pop and I couldn't believe my eyes. There was my wife at 200 feet just hanging on the prop, not going up or down.She just kept on going, I heard her on the radio(I had a hand-held) declare an emergency, the tower cleared her to land on any runway. Then he added you are cleared to land on the grass, on the airport, anywhere. She staggered along straight ahead but needed to clear those power lines off of 15. I could tell that she wasn't going to make it. Then she turned to the left very gently and did a very shallow 270 at 200 feet or less inside the powerlines.She came around and landed on runway 28 with a quartering tailwind. My heart was beating like crazy. When she landed we took the airplane to the hangar and did a compression check. I found that she had dropped not one valve but two at the same time. She was literally running on 2 cylinders. I had spent countless hours training my wife in slow flight a Zero indicated airspeed, that is the way we train when we have to fly in the bush. It all paid off and my wife is still with me today. The next day we rented a C152 and she got her private pilot ticket.

 

[Weasil]

Turbo, that's a great story. That must have been hard to watch. Sounds like she had good training.

I saw a cropduster once have an engine failure right after takeoff and to clear the powerlines he pulled back on the stick, the aircraft stalled and fell into the powerlines and landed in a field and he hurt his back. This is what I am talking about, teaching students to avoid unsafe flight attitudes. Too often engine problems near the ground result in stalls which is what ends up causing the fatality/injury. It really burns me to see this described as a common accident as though there's nothing that can be done about it, there can be in a lot of cases, better instruction!

Another thought comes to mind regarding touch and goes. The ultimate goal of student pilot training is to pass a private pilot checkride. A lot of times I get students who have done lots of touch and go training and when I ask them to demonstrate a short or soft field landing I get a touch and go with no demonstration of max braking, retracting the flaps or holding the nosewheel off for a soft until it is no longer possible. It sure is a good exercise to soft field touch and goes though with some students where you have them keep the nosewheel off the runway during the entire touch and go, and still maintain directional control while retracting the flaps.

 

[Crizz]

Where is this only solo requirement located?

61.109 (a) 5 (iii)

3 takeoffs and landings to a full stop at an airport with an operating control tower.

Do you know how many times I have had an instructor send his private student to me for a checkride only to discover that he had the student do touch and goes when he soloed and has never done 3 full stop landings!

I think this reg has more to do with control tower and ground operations. Full stop @ a controlled field also includes talking to ground control.

IMO, this reg is an attempt to make sure students are proficient dealing with a control tower, not making sure they can land a plane. Weather it does that, is up for debate.

 

[avbug]

Quite right. The requirement is for towered landings...the point of being full stop is to require complete involvement with tower and ground operations in a controlled environment. The FAA never intended to require that only three full stop landings be conducted, nor was that regulation ever intended to stress such a ridiculous idea.

It's about the tower, not the landings.

Why does the FAA require that conventional gear airplanes be flown to full stop landings for currency requirements? Simply put, a conventional gear airplane doesn't finish flying when the airspeed ends; the landing isn't hardly complete until it's come to a full stop. Additionally, torque and other issues are a bigger factor for a conventional gear airplane with respect to runway alignment and aircraft control on the ground.

Again, the emphasis is on the specific airplane and type, not on the fact that it's full stop. Otherwise, all aircraft would be required to conduct landings to a full stop for the sake of currency, instead of just conventional gear airplanes.

In many instances, going full stop is cost prohibitive, and very unnecessary. A student should be able to handle the airplane on the fly, and touch and go landings help achieve that skill.

 

[Weasil]

a touch and go can be more challenging in a conventional gear airplane. How does this apply?

Quote from Avbug's later post
________________________
"Simply put, a conventional gear airplane doesn't finish flying when the airspeed ends; the landing isn't hardly complete until it's come to a full stop. Additionally, torque and other issues are a bigger factor for a conventional gear airplane with respect to runway alignment and aircraft control on the ground."

You just completely contradicted yourself. Nice job. And what about night landings in a nosewheel, those are also to a full stop.
The emphasis is on the full stop, not on the specific airplane type.

The FAA never intended to require that only three full stop landings be conducted, nor was that regulation ever intended to stress such a ridiculous idea.

Again you are wrong. This is the only requirement for solo landings. Read the regulation. Nowhere in there do they require a student to practice solo touch and goes. I am not saying that you shouldn't have students do touch and goes, I have many times in the past. I am asking the question, why do you think they wrote the regulation in this way, is it significant. Lots of towered fields at which you do full stop landings you don't talk to ground control, you often stay with the tower and do a stop and go or stay with the tower and taxi back to the runway.

If the reg was written just for the purpose of it being at a towered field then why not just make it 3 landings at a towered field instead of making it 3 full stop landings?

 

[avbug]

Good gravy, Weasil. You waste no time, do you? Who are you really? Clownpilot, resurrected, or another of his logins?

The FAA never intended that only three landings be conducted; they set a minimum. No regulation exists which stipulates that only the minimum need be accomplished; pilots are certainly encouraged to do more.

If the reg was written just for the purpose of it being at a towered field then why not just make it 3 landings at a towered field instead of making it 3 full stop landings?

Read the previous post, you dingbat.

 

[Weasil]

That's right.. they set a minimum. My question is why did they put full stop landings as part of the minimum requirement instead of touch and goes if those are so much more valuable a teaching tool. Like I stated previously, doing full stops does not ensure the student has to contact ground control. The towered field might not even have ground control and even if they do, lots of times when staying in the traffic pattern you just taxi back to the runway while remaining on tower frequency. Or what if you did full stop, stop and goes... these would have no different experience for a solo student in dealing with a control tower than touch and goes. The towered experience would be the same in this case whether they were full stop or not.

 

[Crizz]

Dude... why would they put the tower stipulation in there if their intent was to make the student do full stops? Why wouldnt they just word it "3 solo landings to a full stop"

If your contention is that the tower has no value, then explain the stipulation.

 

[Weasil]

i'm not saying the tower has no value. the tower has lots of value.. of course it does. I'm saying both stipulations are in there, the tower requirement and the requirement for full stops.

A couple of earlier posts said that they added full stops to make you deal with ground control. But if you were to do stop and go landings then you would not deal with ground control. So it seems to me that the requirement to do the landings at a towered field is considered to have value and the requirement to do full stops is also considered to have separate value.

 

[liv'n_on_credit]

PIC

Nobody's mentioned it so I will. How can a student pilot have 6 hours of PIC time? We all know pre-private solo time is not loggable as PIC.

If the student is the only person in the airplane but not the PIC, then what Pilot is In Command? I sure hope someone is in command of the plane.

 

[Timebuilder]

I was told that the FAA addressed this enigma in the 1990's, and made all solo time PIC time.

In one hundred hours of flight, six hours of PIC (solo) time seems low to me. Of course, if someone flies twenty hours a year, at a rate of one hour every two plus weeks, then in five years you probably wouldn't be a private pilot, and would be lucky to fly well enough to generate six hours of solo time.

It's just that this is not the norm.

 

[TWA Dude]

Re: PIC

If the student is the only person in the airplane but not the PIC, then what Pilot is In Command? I sure hope someone is in command of the plane.

There's a big difference between acting as PIC and logging time as PIC. I was referring to logging only.

Weasil:

I recall logging my pre-private solo time as PIC back in 1991 because my CFI told me I could. I also remember having to "correct" that issue in my logbook so the interviewers at United wouldn't throw a poop-fit. Students with times like the guy in question probably aren't cut out for an airline career anyway so I guess it's moot.

Dude

 

[SierraPilot]

FAR 61.51

(e) Logging pilot-in-command flight time.

(4) A student pilot may log pilot-in-command time only when the student pilot --

(i) Is the sole occupant of the aircraft OR is performing the duties of pilot of command of an airship requiring more than one pilot flight crewmember;

(ii) Has a current solo flight endorsement as required under § 61.87 of this part; and

(iii) Is undergoing training for a pilot certificate or rating.

 

[Weasil]

61.109aii refers to dual instruction at night. The discussion is about solo in the daytime.

However, why do you think the dual night landings have to be full stops instead of touch and goes? These don't have to be at a towered field so the argument that doing full stops is just to expose you to a tower and ground operation makes no sense. There must be some other reason for making them full stops.

 

[dmspilot00]

61.109aii refers to dual instruction at night. The discussion is about solo in the daytime.

However, why do you think the dual night landings have to be full stops instead of touch and goes? These don't have to be at a towered field so the argument that doing full stops is just to expose you to a tower and ground operation makes no sense. There must be some other reason for making them full stops.

You are right about the regulation referring to night. Sorry.

You asked me for my opinion, so I'll say I think that dual night landings have to be full stops because taxiing at night is much more difficult than in the daytime. Taxiing at a controlled airport is much more difficult than taxiing at an uncontrolled airport. I do not think the regulation intended for anyone to do stop-and-goes, however only the people that wrote the regulations can answer that.

I do not understand why you are trying to say that the towered airport landings have to be full stop for the practice of performing full stop landings. Obviously if the student makes at least 3 solo flights then the student will have to make 3 full stop landings. You can't terminate a flight without doing a full stop landing.

In order to not do 3 solo full stop landings the student would have to go on no more than two flights with an average of 5 hours each, way beyond the range of most airplanes.

I believe that the FAA would have made a separate regulation if they wanted the student to get extra practice in "full stop" landings.

 

[Weasil]

Hi, all good points. What if you were doing your training at a non-towered airport though. Then you might only go to a towered field once while soloing.

I don't know the answer to this question, I'm just putting it out there. It seems a lot of people agree with teaching their students to do solo touch and goes. What about having your students do solo soft field touch and goes? Is that a good idea?

I remember a guy up in Milwaukee who had his student doing solo short field landings and he landed short of the runway. The FAA were talking about this at a seminar and they said that there was no record in the student's logbook that he had been show how to do short field landings prior to going solo. The instructor said he had taught him to do them but got in trouble for not telling the student not to do them solo because his logbook didn't indicate he had bee trained on them.