Landing -

 

Lesson 1: Greasing 98% of Your Landings

A lot of people (including me) are initially taught to land by letting the airplane stall just above the ground and gently find the runway itself.

I understand that this might be an easier method to teach a new pilot because the airplane kind of lands itself in a way, but it always made me feel more like a passenger in the airplane rather than the pilot of the airplane.

It sounds subtle, but they are massively different.

Letting the airplane stall just above the ground can still end with a fairly soft landing, but it leaves you as the pilot kind of in limbo waiting for something to happen to you (i.e. land softly on the ground).

It might help new pilots learn that the airplane can gently land itself, but I think we're doing pilots a disservice by not teaching them to fully control the airplane from day one.

I don't know about you, but I don't ever want to be a passenger in my own airplane (I've been there, and it sucks).

As I've grown as a pilot, I've learned that the concept of "waiting for something to happen to you" is a very uncomfortable (and sometimes dangerous) place to be.

So here's the shift we're going to make that can result in radically better, more consistent landings:

View the landing as a flight maneuver.

The instructor who taught me to fly a Super Cub introduced this concept to me and it radically transformed my landings.

The airplane is still flying during landing, and so instead of waiting for the airplane to magically stop flying and end up on the ground, you can intentionally (that's a key word) put the wheels where you want them, at the airspeed you want, in the flight attitude you want.

It's no different than flying any other flight maneuver, it just happens to also involve the landing gear and the ground.

Once I started to practice flaring the aircraft and feeling for the ground with the landing gear, it totally shifted my mind away from just "letting" the airplane land itself.

I can instead still control the aircraft all throughout the landing process instead of becoming a passenger for part of it!

Crosswind Landings

This technique is particularly game-changing in crosswind landings.

Learning to land in a crosswind can be challenging at first, especially if you subscribe to the method of letting the airplane stall just above the ground and land itself.

What if it stalls and touches down when you are in a bad crab angle, or what if it stalls and touches down when you aren't aligned with the runway?

You can see how this method gets dicy in a strong crosswind.

When you instead view landings as a flight maneuver and intentionally put the wheels on the runway when and where you want them, landing with the upwind wheel first in a crosswind is not a huge change to the landing technique.

It makes it very simple because it's still a flight maneuver with the same goal, but the inputs have just changed a bit (i.e. the wind and the wind correction).

You are just landing with one wheel first rather than with both of the mains at the same time.

The Secret: Energy Management

Even if you view landings as a flight maneuver, and even if you try to put the wheels on the ground when and where you want them, this is still going to be very hard to implement if you don't get your energy management right.

For my first several hundred hours of flying, I always approached landings with too much airspeed.

I was landing on huge 7,000 foot runways in a Cessna 172 where you could get away with poor airspeed control.

You might float for a thousand or two thousand feet of the runway, but you were still just fine.

That all started to change for me when I began learning to fly a Super Cub and my 182 into more rural strips that required better short field technique.

There, you can't get away with poor airspeed control because you'll bring far too much energy into landing in a place that you can't afford to float.

If you flare with too much airspeed, you'll just float down the runway.

The key to having just enough energy to flare and feel for the ground with the landing gear without excessive floating in ground effect is nailing the approach speed.

In my 182, 60kts is the perfect amount of energy to where I can arrest the sink rate with the available energy in the aircraft, reduce the power to idle, and feel for the ground with the mains.

Come in at 70kts and this technique won't work for another thousand feet down the runway once the airplane has bled off some energy.

Go try this, and let me know what you think.

Step 1: Nail your airspeed on approach. For me in my 182, 60kts is the perfect final approach speed. It might take a little experimenting with your plane to find the appropriate amount of energy. You'll quickly learn if you had too much or too little (explained next).

Step 2: Use the available energy of the airplane to arrest the sink rate in the flare.

Step 3: Reduce power to idle and feel for the ground with the landing gear. Sometimes this reduction in power can be done in tandem with the flare. If you float excessively, you had too much energy to begin with or waited too long to reduce the power.

If in a crosswind, it's the same technique but introducing the wind correction and feeling for the ground with the upwind wheel instead of with both wheels.

With some practice, this truly changed my confidence level in landings instead of just waiting for the airplane to stall and land itself. I encourage you to go try this in the pattern a few times and see the difference.

Tomorrow's lesson

Tomorrow's lesson is another "lightbulb" moment I had, but one that I learned the hard way. It took me a while to open up about a mistake I made, but I think we can all learn from it so for that reason I'm excited to share it with you then.

Until then, fellow left-seater, I wish you blue skies! (unless you're working on your instrument rating)

Charlie

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PS - you might have asked, "Charlie, if this technique is so good, why grease landings only 98% of the time?" Well, we're human after all. I'm not perfect, and I definitely "botch" a landing every now and then. I'll take 98% any day!