We were leaving school about 6:30 in the evening.\u00a0 I was with my wife and one of our authors\u2014they had been working on a book while I was teaching school and we agreed to give him a lift home afterward.\u00a0 As we drove away, we were near the approach end of Runway 34 and I saw a light twin on final.\u00a0 I did not recognize the aircraft and did not know if it was from Daytona or a transient.\u00a0 I did have a feeling that it was a training flight of some sort.<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t know much about pilots, here is one thing I will tell you.\u00a0 We are admittedly, a rude bunch.\u00a0 When we see an airplane in flight, or one about to takeoff or land, we will stop everything we are doing to watch.\u00a0 It is what we do.\u00a0 Don\u2019t be offended by this behavior.<\/p>\n
So, both my wife and our friend looked at me a little oddly when I pulled into the parking lot near the runway to watch the landing.\u00a0 \u201cWhat?\u00a0 I have to watch the landing,\u201d I explained.\u00a0 My wife understood immediately; she has suffered through my \u201caero-rudeness\u201d in the past.<\/p>\n
Both the landing and the comments of my wife, who is a non-flyer, amused me.\u00a0 She may not be a pilot, be she can spot a bad landing from a mile away.\u00a0 She can now almost comment on them correctly.<\/p>\n
Whoever was flying this airplane flew the approach too fast, did not correct for the crosswind well enough, and then fought it all the way down 2500 feet of runway as they floated.\u00a0 There were two main problems to this approach and landing: the first was excessive speed and the second was incorrect crosswind landing technique.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know why pilots insist on flying landings with higher than normal approach speeds.\u00a0 Someone is teaching people to fly too fast on the approach.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 However, excessive speed on final is a bear to deal with when it comes to actually landing the airplane.\u00a0 The extra speed literally keeps you in the air much longer than you would like.\u00a0 This of course, translates into float and lost runway.\u00a0 Remember, there is nothing more useless than runway behind you.\u00a0 This is true for landings and takeoffs.<\/p>\n
The Pilots\u2019 Operating Handbook (POH) specifies speeds for normal and short field landings.\u00a0 As a pilot, your first duty is to fly the approach at the designated airspeed.\u00a0 Your second duty is to trim the airplane.\u00a0 If you trim the airplane correctly, you are going to have an easy time landing.\u00a0 If trimmed improperly, you are naturally going to fight it all the way through the landing.<\/p>\n
Another area in which pilots tend to work too hard is during the crosswind landing.\u00a0 There are two acceptable techniques for landing an airplane in a crosswind.<\/p>\n
The elementary method is to slip the airplane\u00a0to align the airplane\u2019s centerline with the centerline of the landing runway.\u00a0 Once you do this, the airplane will have a tendency to drift downwind if you keep the wings level. \u00a0To correct for this, you have to bank the airplane toward the wind just slightly.\u00a0 With this technique, yes, the ball is going to come out of center; this is because you are cross-controlling the airplane to keep the fuselage going straight by using opposite rudder to hold it aligned, and aileron to keep it from drifting.<\/p>\n
The advanced method is to “crab” the airplane\u00a0by keeping the wings level on the approach and as you near the runway, start feeding in rudder to straighten out and then use enough aileron to keep from drifting off centerline.\u00a0 This technique depends on proper timing.\u00a0 As the airplane slows, you have to use the flight controls at just the right moment to catch the drift and align the aircraft with the runway.<\/p>\n
Now here is the secret to either technique; as the airplane slows down, the flight controls will become less effective.\u00a0 What this requires of you is that as the airplanes decelerates, you have to keep cranking in more aileron into the direction the wind is coming from.\u00a0 You need to crank it in all the way <\/em>as it slows down.<\/p>\n The one last thing you should remember during any landing, as well as crosswind landings, is to be smooth.<\/p>\n -30-<\/p>\n \u00a9 2011 J. Clark<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We were leaving school about 6:30 in the evening.\u00a0 I was with my wife and one of our authors\u2014they had been working on a book while I was teaching school and we agreed to give him a lift home afterward.\u00a0 … Continue reading