Still Trying To Land
It's been a while since I've written. I flew on Friday 8/26, and again on Sunday 8/28, and I'm going again today. Guess what? Landing is hard! On Friday, we flew from PAO out to HAF (Half Moon Bay). That was pretty cool, since we got to go up and cruise for a little while before launching into pattern work and landing practice. But once we got there things got pretty stressful. Luckily Kevin took care of the radio work for me -- HAF has no tower, so there's an open UNICOM frequency for all airports in the area. Pretty taxing to try to figure out what's going on, and you have to report basically any time you do anything. Plus, the fog was coming in pretty hard, and there was just enough room over the runway to do an abridged version of the pattern.
So we did a bunch of landings there. None were any good. I kept pulling too hard, causing the plane to "balloon" or start climbing a little bit. Not good; the power's already at idle, the plane's decelerating, and climbing (in the extreme) would result in the plane dropping on the runway from way too high. The one time I didn't pull too hard, I didn't pull enough and landed on the front wheel. Kevin saved the impact from being too hard, but he let it be alarming enough that I didn't want to do it again. He was getting very frustrated with me, actually -- I think this is where it would have been very helpful to really understand each step of the process before going into it. I did try to read up on it, but the few things I remembered from the reading wound up being incorrect (for instance, the literature I read said to judge your proximity to the center of the runway by looking at the side, since the center line disappears. Kevin says this is wrong, and I see why -- if you're looking at the side, how do you judge pretty much anything else? A better way is to use your peripheral vision but keep facing forward).
After HAF got too foggy to fly, we flew back to SQL (San Carlos) and did a few more landings there. Honestly I have no memory of those landings; I was too tired and just trying to get through it. I'm sure they sucked. And then we went back to PAO and did three more landings. The second one, Kevin took the controls and just showed me how to do it, what I should see. That helped a lot, and the last landing was actually not too bad, so we stopped there.
On Sunday, we just stayed at PAO and did 10 landings. One of them was fantastic; the rest all left something to be desired. I figured out a few things, though. For one, I am not actually raising the nose; I'm just preventing the nose from going down when it wants to. I've got a really good feel for the pattern and the approach (for the most part, though I still have a tendency to come in a touch high). I'm leveling off really well over the runway, and I'm holding my centerline OK. What I need to do at that point (and when the power is reduced to idle) is to WAIT. Wait for the plane to start pitching downward, and then don't let it, by pulling back. Then the rear wheels will touch first. AND I need to stop pulling back when the rear wheels touch!
It sounds easy, but it gets much harder if it's windy, for example. Then you've got to keep yourself over the center line with the same control as you're using for your elevation, and then you have to rotate yourself to be parallel to the runway using your feet! It's an exercise in coordination; it's pretty brutal.
So we'll try again today. And if I don't get it today, we'll try again Thursday...
So we did a bunch of landings there. None were any good. I kept pulling too hard, causing the plane to "balloon" or start climbing a little bit. Not good; the power's already at idle, the plane's decelerating, and climbing (in the extreme) would result in the plane dropping on the runway from way too high. The one time I didn't pull too hard, I didn't pull enough and landed on the front wheel. Kevin saved the impact from being too hard, but he let it be alarming enough that I didn't want to do it again. He was getting very frustrated with me, actually -- I think this is where it would have been very helpful to really understand each step of the process before going into it. I did try to read up on it, but the few things I remembered from the reading wound up being incorrect (for instance, the literature I read said to judge your proximity to the center of the runway by looking at the side, since the center line disappears. Kevin says this is wrong, and I see why -- if you're looking at the side, how do you judge pretty much anything else? A better way is to use your peripheral vision but keep facing forward).
After HAF got too foggy to fly, we flew back to SQL (San Carlos) and did a few more landings there. Honestly I have no memory of those landings; I was too tired and just trying to get through it. I'm sure they sucked. And then we went back to PAO and did three more landings. The second one, Kevin took the controls and just showed me how to do it, what I should see. That helped a lot, and the last landing was actually not too bad, so we stopped there.
On Sunday, we just stayed at PAO and did 10 landings. One of them was fantastic; the rest all left something to be desired. I figured out a few things, though. For one, I am not actually raising the nose; I'm just preventing the nose from going down when it wants to. I've got a really good feel for the pattern and the approach (for the most part, though I still have a tendency to come in a touch high). I'm leveling off really well over the runway, and I'm holding my centerline OK. What I need to do at that point (and when the power is reduced to idle) is to WAIT. Wait for the plane to start pitching downward, and then don't let it, by pulling back. Then the rear wheels will touch first. AND I need to stop pulling back when the rear wheels touch!
It sounds easy, but it gets much harder if it's windy, for example. Then you've got to keep yourself over the center line with the same control as you're using for your elevation, and then you have to rotate yourself to be parallel to the runway using your feet! It's an exercise in coordination; it's pretty brutal.
So we'll try again today. And if I don't get it today, we'll try again Thursday...
posted by MKT at 2:39 PM
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