Flight Training - January/February 2020 - 35

Don't wait until the situation becomes obvious and
requires dramatic pilot intervention. Fix problems
while they're still small, and minor adjustments in
pitch and power will correct them.

unlikely to notice a slight drift in your ground track. You're less likely to see that you've
climbed 100 feet from visual cues seen out the windshield, and subtle changes in
groundspeed will be difficult, if not impossible, to notice. Landmarks will be less prominent and timing the rollout of your turn to final will be hard to nail.
Drop down to 800 to 1,000 feet above the ground, however, and all those variables
become easy to notice. At the published traffic pattern altitude, you'll see right away
whether you're climbing or descending, drifting toward the runway or away from it,
and you can make smooth, timely, subtle corrections that put you where you want to be.
The best part is that you'll see, sense, and feel these differences so you can keep your
eyes outside where they belong, and you won't have to constantly shift your attention
between inside and outside references. There's no mental transition from flying on the
gauges to visual cues because you're visual the entire time. You'll only glance at the
instrument panel momentarily.
Consistent, precise, stable approaches set up pilots for success because they have
fewer variables to deal with as the airplane nears the ground. Configuration is set.
Power is set. Airspeed and rate of descent are constant. Elevator trim is set. All the pilot
needs to do is fly into ground effect and flare.
An unstable approach, by contrast, presents pilots with a slew of competing problems. Configuration and power changes lead to varying airspeeds, rates of descent, and
control feel. Elevator trim is likely being altered late in the game, and a too-fast or tooslow airspeed can lead to excessive float in ground effect or not enough energy to flare.
There are simply too many problems for a pilot to solve simultaneously.
If you're on final approach and you feel you have no choice but to make large
changes in pitch, power, bank, speed, or configuration, realize that you really do have
a choice. You don't have to land on this particular approach. The sooner you make
a go-around decision, the less exciting the go-around itself is likely to be. Make the
go-around decision during your base turn, for example, and flying the traffic pattern
will be a nonevent. You may not even have to climb.
The longer you wait and the closer to the ground you get, however, the less likely
you are to easily salvage the situation.
Airplanes are incredibly robust and durable in most situations-but they're terribly
fragile in others. The main landing gear, for example, will tolerate all sorts of abuse
from firm landings, and so will aircraft tires. But nosewheels, and the stainless steel
firewalls they're attached to, have glass chins. They'll bend or break if they're allowed
to hit the ground first, and they're not designed for side loads. Even worse, when a nose
gear flexes or fails, the propeller is likely to contact the ground next-and that means
extensive damage to the prop as well as an engine teardown.
The pilot's job-especially when things are going wrong on landing-is to protect
the fragile and costly stuff first.
If and when you find yourself slow on short final with an excessive sink rate, add power
and adjust the pitch so that the main landing gear absorbs the impact. If you're lucky, your
last-minute reaction will convert what would have been a jump into a mere skip.
Or what would have been a skip becomes an insignificant hop.
Timing, as they say, is everything. FT
dave.hirschman@aopa.org
AOPA.ORG/FT 35

http://www.AOPA.ORG/FT

Flight Training - January/February 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Flight Training - January/February 2020