PearlPilot

Thanks for the kind words...I never thought I would get this done, and once, I got it, it seemed to "click" and I cannot tell how that feels to do it all by myself. Now I am looking forward to the rest of the fun stuff that getting a PPL has to offer.

ryan1234

I kind of favor teaching a short-field landing for every landing... or rather... an accuracy landing for every landing. In the very primary, positive pressure on the rudders at all times (not the brakes), keeping the centerline between your feet.

The most important thing after all that (as has been said before) with light airplanes is pitching for airspeed and nailing that airspeed... let's say 60KIAS in a 172 on short final.... feeling the ground effect and reducing power. I guess good landings is about knowing how your aircraft responds to power and pitch adjustments and knowing what it feels like in the ground effect (or when it will fall through). Really it's manipulating the AoA to get that perfect combo to get it down where you want it (and softly at that)

Most students.. seem to carry so much extra energy on final... thinking they are "playing it safe. They tend to float for a very, very long time.

congrats on finding that sweet spot, don't get discouraged if you have a bad one every now and again though! I'm always learning what not to do!!

Cubdriver

I've come to the conclusion that smooth, accurate landings are a bit of an art, and are helped along by a bunch of rules of thumb. Some of them that I use a lot are:

-"power for glidepath, pitch for airspeed".
-"find the spot on the runway that appears not to be moving, that is where you are going to touch down".
-"add power to cushion the flare".
-"go around if you are not comfortable with how things are going".
-"establish your final configuration by 500 agl" (stabilized approach)
-one I came up with "work it down through the flare".
-"keep the nose off" or "nose down last".
-"brake hard without skidding" (short field only).
-"fly the airplane all the way back to the ramp"- new pilots tend to quit piloting after the roundout.
-"aileron into the wind" (crosswinds).
-"use rudder to align with the centerline".

These are just a few. FAA-H-8083-3A Airplane Flying Handbook Chapter 8 has a good review of the subject for small airplanes.

PearlPilot

I read chapter 8 about 5 times! such well written book. By the way did I mention that the field that I finally greased them was 1950 x 40 ft?
No floating allowed haha.

WalkOfShame

I do the same thing. After my students get the basics down we go to a 2300ft by 25ft runway. If they don't nail it or they float.... taxi back... great teaching aid!

KC10 FATboy

Get stabilized on the the glideslope and find a reference point on the windshield that intersects with the landing point. Use the flight controls to keep said reference point on the landing point.

Also, I always found that teaching reference power settings helped stabilized the approaches. As another poster said, shack the approach and you will have a good landing.

ZnCrO4

Rather than teaching pitch for airspeed or pitch for glideslope I always made sure my students had an understanding of the relationship and insured that they had a stabilized approach. I also made sure my students understood how wind would affect the use of L/D max. Note that I said the use of L/D max and not just L/D max wind has no affect on L/D max itself. This would help them understand how to use airspeed/pitch to adjust for glidepath..... I know crazy thought. But the use of increasing drag and decreasing speed will cause you to take more time to get to the runway and increase your rate of descent where as if you increase speed it will take you less time to reach the runway and to a point (somewhere near L/Dmax) decrease drag/ your rate of descent. Early in my career an old timer once told me "if you have to add power you are doing it wrong." At the time I thought he was nuts, but today I think can judge how good a pilot is in a particular aircraft by how little he or she touches the throttle/s/thrust levers.


just my two cents...