Originally Posted by
JamesNoBrakes
That's great when you have 20,000 hours and can do it out of instinct. But guys with closer to zero hours need structure to form the basis of that judgement. Zone of no movement is the point on the runway the aircraft will fly into on approach if you continue with no changes, the foreground gets closer to you as you approach it, the background gets further away, so you identify it by the area that is "not moving". That way you can maintain a stable approach regardless of configuration. If the runway perspective flattens out, you are getting low and you need to add power and increase pitch to get back to the previous perspective, and opposite of that if it gets steeper. And no, I did not write that for you, because you are obviously not closer to zero hours, like the OP.
Never heard of it.
I don't land out of instinct. Some of my worst landings have been fairly recent. Having read your description, I have no idea what you're talking about, but I land a 747 the same way I land a J-3 cub or an 802.
So far as students, I find that 99% of what the student needs to know takes place in the traffic pattern, from takeoff to landing to ground reference to slow flight and stalls. Pick a good day with a stiff crosswind, take the student out in that. Fly down the runway at 5'. keep wings level and throw the nose around with the rudder. Land, pick up three feet, land, pick up three feet, all the way down, ad infinitum. Some of the best training I did was at a small rural airport in cubs and aeroncas and the like. No radios. Relatively short gravel runway, tall pecan trees around, always turbulent. 200' pattern, taking off and landing both directions, simultaneously. Takeoff on runway x, right pattern at 200' to return and land on the same runway, turn around at the end, takeoff runway Y, opposite direction to x, left pattern, 200', back to land on Y. Turn around at the end, now it's x, rinse and repeat, all day long, with students going both ways. Good training, good heads-up work. Occasionally a guy would shoot at us on the downwind as we fly down a levee. Good for situational awareness. Good reminder to keep flying it until it's in the tie-downs. We'd fly do vertical traffic patterns in strong winds; takeoff at the threshold, climb to pattern altitude or some arbitrary altitude lower, and descend to the threshold, in place. Flight under powerlines. Formation under powerlines. Precision. A lot of what was needed, was all found in the traffic pattern.
Fly numbers. Fly no-motion something-or-other, or whatever rings the bell, but in the end, it's not rocket science, and it does come down to judgement; judging height, when to flare, when to reduce power, and the only to really internalize it is to go do it. A lot. Never take a landing for granted. No instinct. That doesn't exist. Some say a smooth landing is luck; maybe it is. I have no idea. It's a judgement call every time.