Landings

this is not a good landing

this is a good landing

There are a lot of jokes about landings in the aviation community.

I have flown with a man who told me about an impressive landing that he had the pleasure of accomplishing (and remembering). It was a carrier landing in a helicopter that even I could tell from his description would be thrilling to see much less fly. I asked him - how old were you when you did that? I was curious about what I was doing with in my life when he was doing that. Quick math told me I was just getting started raising my third child. I thought about who I was then and how far from there I had come. I thought about no matter how hard I worked at flying that I would never have a landing like that to share. I though about the trade offs we all make as we make our choices. I thought I should work at getting as good as I can at landing the equipment that I do get to fly. I thought about how fortunate I was to have him - with his wide range of flying experiences - teaching me what ever I was up to learning.

I noticed in my critique of yesterday's training flight that I had done a lot of the prep work for take offs and not so much for landing. I have recently (this year kinda recent) flown with some one who was pretty conscientious about good strong intentional landings. One of the nicest things he ever said to me was, "I like your landings because you fly the airplane all the way down to the ground." After a good nights sleep and some thinking about what I would especially like to do better in the airplane today I think I have noticed something that may be important to me. This: THe main stuff that I am not executing as well as I expect to is the exact same stuff that I didn't learn to do well those first few hours at the beginning of the Pvt. training. I didn't trim for - nothing - and you know that made everything harder and crappier at the same time - working harder for suckier results - hmmm. And just trying to fly by the airspeed indicator on the approach w/o really thinking about the wind much - not thinking about the wind much is always a potentially - well let's just call it flirting with the devil. Yeah - winds something like 350v020@12 kts (near the surface - slightly more at TPA). I wasn't flying the final leg as I would have had I been flying not learning. The 65kt approach would have been - not. Full flaps - not. I think I was concentrating on touching and holding the peremeters that the training flight required and struggling against my inclination to greese the landings. The Instructor said your student will need to see pretty much the same picture each time you land so that they can build a foundation from what is a normal landing. After thinking about this I can see what he was trying to get me to hear. Okay - that's why we don't send private flights up when the winds are kinda wicked ... yeah - I can land the plane but that may actually interupt their smooth aquisition of landing skills. I definitely don't want a new student out there making stuff up while they land. I am going to approach this from a new perspective today.