How to make good landings

Cotton Under Wing

Introduction

I tried to write about the entire landing process. I gave up - it's too much so let's start at the beginning and I will end at the end at some other time.

It is said that the good landing starts long before reaching the runway. For your information, I have re-discovered that this is true and I spend a good deal of my time as an instructor convincing others that this is true. A good landing starts with a mind set by the pilot long before the final leg. The good pilot pays attention to his perceptions and carefully executes measured responses to these perceptions. Landing an aircraft is very much a skill of executing a picture based on one's perceptions. Merriam-Webster defines art as a 'skill acquired by experience, study, or observation'. Another definition of art is the 'creation of beautiful or significant things'. I know a beautiful landing when I see one and I know it requires a skill acquired by experience and observation.

Paraphrasing those, on whose shoulders I rest, "landings are one possible outcome of a go-around"; if you happen to see a good landing evolving in your go-around attempt, take it and then glow in the cult karma of 'the wheel greasers'. The flip side of this coin is that if the landing is going to be something other than greased, then by all means, have a nice go-around. And by the way, kudos because your perceptions told you your art was bad, you weren't drawing the correct picture. This is the first step to being good at landing. The go-around model of landing is great advice: if it ain't working, go around, don't force a landing that was not meant to be. Some pilots have many more good landings than go-arounds. Why? What leads one pilot to grease the wheels on almost all landing attempts and the others have this experience at a low frequency even after years of flight? The answer is that those who fully understand the picture they are supposed to create using their brushes (pitch, roll, rudder, power, trim) become good landers.

The Pattern Before Final
After initial descents or climbs into the pattern, a good pilot maintains pattern altitude and an airspeed that is not too fast and not too slow, but just right. This will vary from aircraft to aircraft and with external conditions. When it is gusty, a pilot will want a slightly higher airspeed for better control of the aircraft. (I would mention some airspeeds for typical trainers, but I would rather not broach religious topics in this blog - see your clergy person at your local Faith Based Operation otherwise known as an FBO). As the good pilot closes in on the working end of the runway, s/he is tightening tolerances by catching lateral, altitude and airspeed errors earlier and earlier in order to minimize how much the aircraft position must be changed to correct an error.

The Final Approach
Recall that tolerances are being tightened by the pilot; there is less and less room for corrections as the pilot nears the runway. Here is the key: big corrections near the ground are at best the worst thing you can do and at worse dangerous. The good pilot is catching errors while they are almost imperceptible to the eye and corrects with control changes that are of the smallest required movement to make the appropriate correction. Whoa, that last sentence was vague - what does that mean? It means that sometimes little tiny corrections are needed to move the aircraft a few centimeters to stay on the two dimensional glide path, and sometimes big control movements are needed to move the aircraft a couple of centimeters to stay on the glide path, but in either case, the parameter in error is corrected by exactly the right amount and the magnitude of the correction is small. Do you see the common thread? In one case a slight puff or perhaps a slight reduction of cross wind velocity made the aircraft move off line and in the other case, it was perhaps a serious wind shear. In both cases, the correction was a few inches, not a few yards, if you will allow me to mix my metrics. A lot more control movement was required in one case, but in both cases it was just the right amount and it led to very little movement of the aircraft. The 'right amount'? The right amount is the amount of paint an artist uses when conveying her mental perception onto paper with a brush. The 'right amount' is the amount of control reactions (throttle, ailerons, pitch, rudder) the pilot uses to create a picture of the perfect landing. Picture, what picture? The picture is the view the pilot sees looking out the window. If you are having trouble with your landings, ask your instructor to do landings more often and relax, listen and watch the picture s/he draws in and out of the cockpit as the artist works her palette. As an instructor, I am frustrated that many pilots insist that they attempt all the landings during training when I know they don't see the picture. The best artists study the art of other artists to help them develop their skills and yes, the best artist try, try and try again. It takes a keen understanding of what exactly the art is and then repetition to improve one's skill to accomplish the art. If you don't have the picture, you will never get the art.

Why is Early Error Correction so Important on Final?
It is simple: last minute corrections destabilize your artistic effort. Bank and pitch changes used to correct large errors are dangerous when applied near the ground. This is because on short final your aircraft is slow and draggy and it requires large bank and pitch changes to correct errors. Massive attitude changes near the ground can cause all kinds of problems from stalls to planting a wing tip or nose wheel into the ground, etc. Understand the forces working against you long before reaching the runway and correct early when errors are minute. As you approach the runway, airspeed should be nailed to a perfection, the aim point doesn't move and you have the aircraft tracking the extended center line. Mess this up and it's a given that you will have either a messy landing, or a wonderful go-around opportunity - your choice.