Power-Off Landings

[Joshrk22]

How much dual given does your CFI have? He doesn't sound like the best CFI, but give him a chance. Everyone has there own way of teaching someone how to land, and most of them work.

Not sure how much dual he has, but he has about 3,000 hours. He has me starting my turn to base abeam the numbers, so I fly really high over the threshold and land halfway down the runway. We are at FNT, so I don't know if he wants me landing at the crossing of 18/36 because that's where he's telling me to aim for. I would think he'd want me landing red over white, not white over white.

 

[Joshrk22]

Here is what it looks like, I have a lesson tomorrow morning so I will ask him about it then. I don't want to learn the wrong way.

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h264/Joshrk22/trafpat.jpg

 

[satpak77]

JOSH

Your CFI is not doing anything "wrong" by teaching you this. A good instructor I might add will teach you power off landings, powered landings, flap, no flap, door open, stuck rudder peddle, stuck throttle, etc etc

In addition, I used to cover up the airspeed, RPM, even altitude indicators, and have my students fly the patterns and conduct touch and go's by "feel" versus by constantly looking at dials and needles. Some day the RPM gage will fail and you don't need to panic and stall the airplane on base leg when that happens (yes, it has happened...).

We used to have a 6000 foot runway at our airport, and with towers permission, I would fail the power at mid-field just to de-program the student that you don't need to wait till "abeam the numbers" each and every time if you need to land due to emergency. If you turn base at midfield on a 6000 foot runway, you now have a 3000 foot runway to land on. Say your engine failed, passenger had a heart attack, etc etc.

The job of the instructor is to prepare you to fly safely, and exceed the PTS Standards. This includes scenarios above and beyond the "ok, your flap motor is not working"

On that note, if you learn to land from day-1 without using flaps, you learn to be "in touch" with the airplane much sooner than if you use flaps every time and then 10 hours later starting learning no-flaps. If you don't use flaps and then "get to use them" after 10 hours, you will be like "now this is REALLY easy"

In addition, I would not give my students target airspeeds while learning the basics. "Hold 70 knots, come on kid" is overwhelming. I taught outside visual references and power settings (both via RPM gage and by listening) and told them to "make it happen" (safe landings) for the first 5 hours. Once they themselves got a gameplan for landings that worked, I would fine-tune it with airspeed and specifics. But teaching airspeed and hard-in-stone power settings (abeam the numbers, power off kid! always! 70 knots! Not 65, not 75! Get it together!) interferes with learning, as the student is trying to force square pegs into round holes when he needs to figure it out on his own.

Once the student gets the genereal feel and gist of the landings on his own, I bring in the airspeed and other points.

Just me, thats how I teach. Every CFI has a different method.

etc etc

The bulk of MY private pilot lessons was taught by a 70 year old crop duster who earned his living flying Ag-Cats at 25 feet in West Texas.

I am not a Riddle Grad so maybe I have been flying wrong the the last 17 years.

Who knows.

 

[Joshrk22]

Thanks Satpak! He said he's not training to the PP PTS standards, but the Comm PTS. Instead of being able to read and react, anticipate before things happen.

 

[TGTVS]

Try Not To Get Info From Alot Of Different People At First. Theres Going To Be A Lot Of Garbage People Will Try To Teach, And Also A Lot Of Good, But At This Stage In Your Flight Training, No Offense, No Cant Possibly Choose.....it Comes, Trust Me. Power Off Is The Best Appr. Until You Grad. To Bigger Planes.

 

[VNugget]

An approach without flaps lets you fly a constant attitude, which gives you a constant airspeed, which gives you a constant glide angle (wind notwithstanding). At the early stage, this is important because it lets the student judge the glide better and predict where the plane will go, and build up a base of consistency from which the he can judge a base turn and an aimpoint.

I don't have any students learning in any plane with flaps yet, but when I do I'll probably not use them in the beginning.

Power off approaches let you practice for an engine failure for every landing, as opposed to doing a few of them in training and re-learning how the plane flies when the fan quits for real.

 

[avbug]

An approach without flaps lets you fly a constant attitude, which gives you a constant airspeed, which gives you a constant glide angle (wind notwithstanding).

An approach with flaps does the same thing.

 

[avbug]

Power Off Is The Best Appr. Until You Grad. To Bigger Planes.

Giving your post the benifit of the doubt and assuming you aren't flame-bait, teaching all power off approaches all the way down, all the time, is poor airmanship, and not good for engines. Especially if the landings are conducted as touch and go, or go-arounds are performed, in piston engine powered airplanes.

You type these replies, and really hold an ATP?

 

[Joshrk22]

To prevent shock cooling my instructor would sometimes advance the throttle a few hundred RPMs and then reduce it to idle again. I don't think that could be bad for the engine, can it? I could see if we idled all the way from the downwind.

 

[avbug]

Josh,

Training airplanes take a lot of abuse, and rightfully so. Abuse to the engine is one of those things. Power off descents in the pattern or to emergency landings are part of training, and should be a very big part of training. Every landing power off, and every approach power off, however is not a good idea, and isn't good for the engine.

If you do a power off approach and landing the landing should be made full stop with a taxi back to allow for the engine temps to normalize (more uniform throughout engine), rather than doing a touch and go with a sudden power-up, or a go-around/balked landing.

Shock cooling is a mythiogical, misunderstood topic. Many argue that it hangs over you, waiting to do you in. Others argue that it doesn't exist. Truth is that thermal damage to engines does exist both high and low. Rapid changes do cause cracking, most notably on the cylinder head between the spark plug holes, and can lead in some engines to seizing, or even problems such as detonation, preignition, etc, when unburned fuel and fuel byproducts remain in the cylinder.

Smooth engine operation is a good key to long engine life, and your long life, too. Always try to treat the engine and the airplane as though your life depends upon it. Because it does.

In training, we do see more wear and tear on the airplanes. We're experiencing things in the training environment that we may not do in the real world of flying on a regular basis, or ever. That's the nature of training. These events prepare us for emegencies, form the basic building blocks of our understanding, and develop habits and wisdom for our future longevity in the industry.

Unfortunately, bad habits can also be taught. Among them I see frequently are the mentality that engine failures magically always occur near a runway. Or that only full flap or no flap landings should be taught, or that pitch controls power and that whole debate, or that ground effect is a "cushion of air beneath the wing." I see great misunderstandings coming out of improper training regarding the use of carburetor heat, looking for traffic, proper use of the radio, engine operation and theory, and a very common use of idle power from abeam the numbers to landing a standard method of approach.

Each instructor teaches differently, and that's quite okay. You'll find that by trying different instructors you may gain a great deal of insight that you may have missed with just one. I often found when I was teaching full time that when I hit an impasse with a student, when the student was on a plateau and not learning or progressing, having the student fly with a different instructor often broke that impasse. Other instructors would do the same with me, and it was often the insight provided by a fresh pespective that made the difference.

Where you need to be careful is absolutes. When you hear people telling you to always make power off approaches or landings, that should throw up a red flag, just as the idea that one should always make partial flap landings in a crosswind should throw up a red flag. You'll find that the folks making these statements are not out to cause harm, but operating within their own safety zone based on limited experience in a particular area...and you'll find that there's usually more to the subject that you can learn. More to benifit you, and choices available in the cockpit than those sets of absolute define.

In the air, there's often more than one way to skin a cat. Power off approaches and landings as a general practice are bad form, in many aircraft. Fly a turbine airplane and that changes...power off doesn't hurt anything, most of the time. But a piston powered airplane, especially a geared piston powered airplane, a power on approach followed by whatever power is necessary to land under given conditions, is more typical. Again, the circumstances and the airplane, and what you're trying to accomplish, dictate what you use, when, and where. Good luck!