PearlPilot

Landings, probably one of the biggest challenges of a student pilot. I will admit, it took me a little over 30 hours to get this down for good! At last, I made a few "greased" landings and after my final landing of the day my instructor said, "dude you got this"!
How do you teach students to land? I was taught 2 different ways. The first one, did not work. The second one did. The first method was to come down on final at 1,500 r.p.m. and start to cut power, very slowly (when the threshold starts disappearing from the dashboard, like 1, 2, 3, 4, sloooowly reduce power) and raise pitch sloowly. But I was too preoccupied with reducing power while not looking for outside visual cues. I landed flat, I almost hit the nose gear, I did drop in stall type hard landings, I even porpoised once, it was a mess!

The second method: Aim for the numbers, and right before the numbers starts to disappear from the dash, bring throttle to idle. This way, I was able to look farther ahead and see how mother Earth was raising and now I knew to raise pitch slowly, if the descend was not enough, hold it, and once she comes up again, raise pitch. Next thing I know, I had made a really smooth landing.

Any thoughts? I thought I would never get this down. The satisfaction is priceless, but how do you teach a student to land?

cpatterson19

Pearlpilot i have a method I use regularly that was thought to me by some airline pilots. Ofcourse in the large planes its different but it works like a charm when you master it.

If you can control speed on final and decrease power accordingly you set a base for yourself. My base is roughly between 30 to 50 ft about the runway. Gradually flare and as the airspeed bleeds off and the aircraft descends increase the flare. As the nose is flaring the main landing gear is descending to the runway.

ofcourse with this method you have to gauge speed and descent rate if not the speed bleeds off and you fall 5ft to 10 feet. I always get a nice smooth landing reguardless. Sometimes you dont even feel it.

Let me know how this works and if anyone else uses this method.

250 or point 65

For a student pilot, a good landing means a good approach. A student pilot does not have the skill or experience to "save" a landing. Really when we say "save a landing" we really mean, save an approach because it was 99% of the time the approach the pilot screwed up. BE ON AIRSPEED.

The second most important thing in my mind is be on glidepath. I had the benefit of having a VASI at the airport I instructed at (except for that long standing NOTAM - VASI 12R out of service). After a student master airspeed and glidepath control with a VASI, time to move to a smaller runway without one, then a downslope runway, etc. to get the visual cues correct for most situations.

I used to hammer this into my students, a good landing starts abeam the numbers. Don't be so worried about what happens down there, cause if you mess up up here, its gonna get nasty down there.

If you are on airspeed, on proper glidepath towards the numbers, all you have to do at the end is line it up, pull the power and flare a little. But, if you dont do any of these three things, you will still have a safe landing because you got yourself in the proper position to touchdown...might not be all the pretty, but it'll be safe.

Approach to over the numbers is hard to learn, touchdown is easy to learn.

side note: in a light, training aircraft, it is much easier to learn and teach pitch for airspeed, power for altitude because pitch changes airspeed a whole lot faster for an underpowered trainer. my two cents.

USMCFLYR

I set 3.0-3.5 nose down, around 750 fpm descent, jockey the power around (sometimes from full power to idle it feels like) and then drive that piece of metal into the deck so hard that it makes your teeth rattle!
Then - have the guy who watched you land come to your living room and tell you that you did it all wrong
Seriously Pearl - congrats on the landings (greased or otherwise) and continue to improve your technique and take pride in your work. Glad you are having fun!

USMCFLYR

PS. I have the most fun when I know there is someone out at the shack and I come in as low and fast as possible and try to grease on the landing. Consider it practice for my afterlife!

F172Driver

Congrats on getting the landings, its a big step. In my short career as a CFI I have talked to the student about what happens in the landing. I say about 30 feet over the runway we pull the power to idle, then the eyes go to the end of the runway, about 10 feet up we begin the flair and by the time you round out you will be about one foot above the runway. Hold the plane level one foot above the runway by watching the end of the runway until the wing stalls. I also pound into their heads constantly that the ailerons keep the plane on centerline, wings level and stop us drifting and that the rudder keeps the plane from landing sideways. I put them through exercises where I use a model simulating drifting to the right with nose to the left and other ones like that and make them tell me what to do. Constantly doing this seems to be working. Also on the flair stopping the yolk from coming back too far seems to get the right amount into their head. Im pretty new at this but it seems to be working, and again congrats on getting em smooth.

WalkOfShame

I actually had a similar conversation today with my commercial student.

The most important thing is consistency. A consistent pattern means that the picture as you turn onto final will be the same every time. This allows for a consistent glide path, consistent round out, consistent flare, you get the idea. Of course, none of this will be consistent unless particular attention is paid to airspeed, altitude, configuration, etc. For this, I always give my students "base line" numbers to start with that will allow them to worry less (but still keep an eye on them) about looking at the instruments, and more about looking outside at the RUNWAY (not straight ahead! A big pet peeve of mine). You should be looking at three places: the runway, other traffic ahead of you, and the instruments. Not the cars on the road or off into space. Once the students are familiar with the aircraft and the pattern, they are free to adjust or change those "base line" numbers as they please. With traffic in the pattern or entering from a base/final, just adjust the pattern as needed to make it as normal as possible. The flare and touchdown are different though.

I tell my students to feel the airplane and start developing their sense of how if acts close to the ground. This takes practice, lots of it. I've noticed that most students will struggle for a while but then the "light switch" turns on and they have it down. From an instructor's stand point, we have to remember that the amount of information that a pilot takes in (especially a student pilot) at one time is huge. It can take student's a little while to learn how to process all the information that is given to them and understand/react to it.

Hopefully this helps a little. Keep working on those landings and challenge yourself to make them consistent each and every time. Passengers always judge a pilot on his landing, so always try to make each landing better then the last!

cpatterson19

I am glad someone raised this topic.....seems like we have lot of variations to the landing methods. I remember I trained with 3 different instructors who all taught there landings completely different. If I remember right when it came to landings it was like walking into the a major exam and I got a headache thinking "damn I got to land this thing."

What ever produces results and the right and safe results i say use. As I was told by a pilot....as a CFI you are still learning. As a pilot you are still learning. Its up to you to transfer what you learned as best you could to get the required results. I thought I was gonna die on my first few landings and on some I swore I broke some bones or something on the airplane sometimes. Never the less I got it.

F172Driver

It seems that there are many ways to teach landings, this kinda suprised me when I first figured it out. I was asking around when I first started about how to teach the landing and always got different answers, kinda cool how so many methods with all their little differences still end up teaching the same thing.

USMCFLYR

One reason why teaching is as much an art as a science. A little bit of black and white and whole lot of gray!

USMCFLYR

HercDriver130

good approach + good airspeed control USUALLY equals good landing. Personally probably the best landings I have ever done are in gusty nasty conditions. Why.... because you have to work at keeping everything on track... those days when the wind is calm.... well lets just say.. sometimes those are the worst days ..for me anyway.

I have flown numerous small aircraft ..military jet trainers... transports... regional jets... regional turbo props... and biz jets.... the basics are all the same....but every type is different.. hell even each aircraft can be different.... I learn something every time I fly!!