The Question:
Where do I look during landing? I seem to be fixated on the end of the runway, but it's not working.
My Thoughts:
Fixation, unless deliberate, comes from stress, which is a natural response to “OMG here comes the runway!” I did it as a student pilot, too. It took me many years of teaching landings before I figured out the below and no longer stress about landings, not even from experienced pilots who are making a once-in-a-lifetime mistake (if the mistake is caught early enough and properly corrected ;). Remember, it’s the stress that causes fixation and freezing. Lower the stress by knowing the proper cues and with practice, the freezing and fixation will alleviate.
When landing, experienced pilots are looking out the front window, even in Cessna 172s where the nose covers the horizon, but, they are only marginally paying attention to what is out the nose, the focus point about 6-10 car-lengths down the runway/horizon.
Experienced pilots are gaining their clues out of their peripheral vision and asking themselves:
Are the sides of the runway spreading out or getting closer?
Are the sides rotating or staying mostly straight?
Is one side getting closer than the other?
If the runway sides are moving, then the meaning is:
Spreading out: Getting lower
Closing in: Getting higher
Rotating: Aircraft is yawing and not aligned parallel to the pavement
Mostly straight: Aircraft path parallel with the pavement
One side getting closer: Drifting
With those cues, the pilot can then take appropriate action to correct if needed.
Leaving a touch of power on slows down the entire landing process. The aircraft remains in trim, thus no sudden heave-ho back on the yoke. There’s more time in the round-out, the float, and the flare. Each step becomes distinct, allowing the pilot to spend some time practicing each portion. Greasers become possible. Sure, one needs to practice power-off landings, just like no flap landings and other emergencies, but, when finessing the landing or getting back up to speed, leave a little power on.
Airspeed control in the pattern is important as well. It’s not so much that 5 knots really make that much of a difference as it is pilots who keep control of their airspeed have to be flying in trim. If one is trimmed on final, and trims during the roundout, flaring becomes that much easier.
For consistent landings, I spend a lot of time teaching go-arounds, with a little maneuver I call “scaring the runway.” We will fly progressively lower over the runway, sometimes with the pilot trainee handling only one control, such as power or rudder, while I control the others. Maybe we need to fly at ten feet and practice just tracking the centerline. Perhaps we need to work on the roundout, thus we’ll fly at lower and lower altitudes until just about to touch, then I’ll add some power which will balloon us up (lower the nose!), and reduce, back on down. Sometimes we’ll touch so gently the pilot will not notice we’ve actually touched, that’s fine, there’s no relaxing until clear of the runway at a full stop reaching for the after landing checklist.
Thoughts anyone?
Update
Article at CFI-To-CFI
In most of the trainer type airplanes your eyes are about the same height above the ground as when you are standing up. So when the perspective of the buildings, trees and horizon look like "Normal standing up." then the wheels are about on the ground.
ReplyDeleteSo now we need to know what it looks like from a few feet up. That's simple to do, just stand on a chair or table or better yet some stairs. Just look to the horizon and do some deep knee bends and you can see the perspective change. So when it’s time to land look (Don’t stare or fixate) to the horizon to judge the plane’s pitch attitude, and use your peripheral vision to detect perspective and height above the runway.
My experience is that students worry about being able to land too soon in their training, in reality they don’t need to worry about landing till 10-20 hours of training-after they can control the plane smoothly, proficiently and confidently. After all a landing is nothing more than slow flight at 1 inch above the ground! Why would you try that if you can't do slow flight within 100 feet?!?!
-RZ