Flight Training - April 2013 - 28

Here are some of the universally
agreed-upon factors that separate a good
landing from a not-so-good one:
• Touch down on or near a predetermined
spot in the first quarter of the runway.
• The speed at touchdown is the minimum that is practical.
• Touchdown is on the mains (assuming a
tricycle-gear airplane), with the nose held
off until it’s purposely lowered.
• There is a minimum of float, which
means the speed at flare must have been
correct.
• First, last, and always, it is a graceful,
smooth maneuver.
A GOOD TOUCHDOWN STARTS ON
DOWNWIND. Has anyone not heard the
old-school cliché? It’s one of the first
phrases out of a CFI’s mouth. What does it
mean, and how does it affect the landing?
While there are dozens of factors involved
in a proper setup on downwind, the most
important is consistency. When the power
reduction is made opposite the end of the
runway, whether for a power-off landing or an extended power-on approach,
the process always occurs in the same
place, at the same speed, and in the same
manner.
What this does is establish a datum—
a stable point of reference from which
everything else can be judged. If the
height, position, and speed vary from
landing to landing, then we have nothing
on which to build our landing experience.
If nothing after the initial power reduction is the same as on our last approach,
we don’t know what to adjust to make our
landings better.

AIRSPEED CONTROL IS EVERYTHING.

Every airplane ever produced has gone
through an extensive flight test program
that established a best approach speed for
the airplane and presented it in the pilot’s
operating handbook. If we’re faster than
that number, we won’t glide as far and
we’ll float more in flare. If we’re slower,
we won’t glide as far and we'll have much
less float in ground effect—possibly none.
So, we stand the chance of hitting the
runway really hard.
The speed that an aircraft is carrying as
it crosses the threshold speaks volumes
about what is going to happen next. If fast,
the aircraft is going to skate along on top
of ground effect, giving any wind just that
much more time to mess with it. Excess
speed makes controlling the flare more
difficult and greatly increases the likelihood that the aircraft will balloon back up,
then drop in hard.
In general, the airspeed isn’t consistent
or adequately controlled when the pilot is
not controlling the nose attitude in relation to the horizon. In a reduced-power
situation, as on landing, the nose attitude
is the primary speed control. Unfortunately, too many of us think that the
airspeed indicator controls the nose, when
just the opposite is true. While the two are
linked together, the changes in airspeed
are first indicated by an attitude change.
So, we control speed by first setting a nose
attitude, letting the indicated airspeed
stabilize, and then make small attitude
changes to adjust the airspeed as needed.
The most common problem in controlling the nose attitude is that a pilot
“looks” over the nose but doesn’t actually

PRECISION OVER THE THRESHOLD

20 feet

Threshold

500-800 feet

IF YOU ARRIVE over the threshold at 15 to 20 feet above the ground, you can be assured of
landing 500 to 800 feet down the runway.

28 /

FLIGHTTRAINING.AOPA.ORG

“see” what’s out there. So, we pick a
feature on the nose—maybe the top edge
of the spinner or a row of screws on the
cowl—and make small adjustments in
the space between that and the horizon.
Once the relationship between the nose
and the horizon is firmly entrenched
in our visual memory, speed control
becomes second nature.
KEEP THE SCAN GOING. All the time that
we’re flying, we should have a continual
scan going that ties together all the factors
we’re trying to control. Most instructors
have a short mantra that they use. Maybe
it’s chanting rpm, altitude, attitude, pattern (ground track) or using the acronym
PAST—power, altitude, speed (another
way of saying attitude), track (our path
along the ground).
The mantra is a way of instilling a scan
that is constantly in action. Our eyes
and our attention are continually scanning through the windshield, then across
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Flight Training - April 2013

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