Teach the CFI - Landings

[great cornholio]

I did that on my landing with an instructor in Navy flight training. Here is what he told me, flaring is for sissy's, like only drinking beer from a glass, plus other unprintable things. Real pilots never flare, just fly a the first 500'. Getting ready to land on a boat from flight #1. Never flared an airplane again until I starting flying the P-3.

I was flying with a new FO a few months ago who plowed it on the runway pretty good and a passenger asked if he had just quit the Navy and was new to the airlines... He was new to the airlines, but with 250 Total he sure wasn't from the Navy. I've always thought it would be fun/scarey to try to land on the boat.

 

[DrewBlows]

Trim, trim, trim!

A good approach leads to a good landing.

The traffic pattern isn't a great place to learn about pitch attitudes. Take your student to the practice area, where there isn't the pressure of hitting the ground, and show him the proper attitude, with the proper trim and throttle setting for approach. Then let him practice. Once he has the proper approach attitude have him practice the transition from level flight to the proper pitch attitude. When he has that down, show him the proper touch-down pitch attitude and let him practice the transition from the approach attitude to the landing attitude. When your student is comfortable with these basics in the practice area it's time to go to the traffic pattern. When your student can set up a proper approach attitude he can concentrate on making the corrections he needs to put him where he needs to be at the runway.

One last thing, make sure your student always has the airplane in trim. Some instructors say "don't trim after you pull the power out", this is terrible advice. You should ALWAYS be in trim, right up until the flare. In an airplane with a manual trim wheel it doesn't make sense to trim in the flare, but for heavier airplanes it might. When I instructed in Mooneys some students landed fine without trimming in the flare, but some couldn't get the proper attitude without flaring. It's a matter of preference at that point. Any other time the aircraft must be properly trimmed.

 

[MauleSkinner]

I will echo (reinforce, repeat, say-it-again-for-emphasis) what WabiSabi says here. Flying into and out of stalls in slow flight straght ahead and in controlled turns teaches how the controls respond during the landing flare.

...

Slowflight is the key. Flying the airplane at cruise speeds comes naturally - we don't need practice at that - what we need to feel is how the airplane responds at touchdown speeds.

I'll re-echo this from another perspective...as an occasional tailwheel instructor, I find it a LOT easier to teach pilots landings in the taildragger if I wait until after they can accurately control the airplane through slow flight, stalls, and configuration changes. If they can't do this, they certainly won't be able to land the airplane well.

Fly safe!

David

 

[skyaddict]

Tons of good, specific tips on this thread, and I haven't instructed in 7 years, but I found that some students become fixated on trying to find an exact technique that they can replicate again and again, only to be frustrated by their perfectionism. What I found helped solved the problem with those sort of students was to teach them a grab bag of recovery techniques to build their confidence and help them relax... That is, while the textbook gouges get them into the proper "funnel" (or window or gateway or whatever you want to call it) for a proper flare, there is lots of slack built in to the funnel from which you can draw on a recovery/correction tool kit. So make the student very comfortable recovering from every extreme corner of the funnel in terms of position, speed and energy- e.g. a much too high round out, or a late one, or being too fast or slow, ballooning, etc.. I'm not at all suggesting to let them get sloppy, nor am I discouraging a pro-active attitude towards going around when things are outside of the acceptable funnel. But I tried to drill into my students that, once inside the funnel, a good landing is just a bunch of constant little corrections from that recovery toolkit, and if they have practiced and developed confidence at the edges of what would ordinarily force a go-around, they develop nimbleness and lose the uptightness.

Naturally, the student's leeway on practicing a correction vs. a go-around should be much smaller when he's solo vs. with the CFI there guarding the controls.

 

[Amish RakeFight]

It's important to remember the building blocks of instruction like rote coming before understanding. Show them where the nose should be just before the wheels touch down. This way they can rotely (sp?) place the nose on this point in relation to the horizon. Call out the approximate flare height.

Basically, keep things very standardized. They will need to go through the rote phases before they acquire the "seat of the pants" feel for what a good landing should feel like; along with the proper techniques and timing of the flare based upon wind conditions.

You'll want to control and stabilize as many variables as possible fo the student so that they may attempt/ practice the motions over and over to get the correct feel.

One other thing, make sure you're working the rudders during the landing. Primary students aren't able to handle crosswinds (even minor ones) when they are focused on learning to just land, let alone incorporating the x-wind technique.