landings

[a1]

i just want the basic story on landings. how do i land perfectly? i always come in too steep and fast or too low and touch the dirt behind the runway. what do i do.

[visualchaosfx]

As just about everyone on here has told me when I first asked the question:

Did you go through the flight school in FS2004? Landings are covered in those hands on tutorials.

[Jakemaster]

You come in not steep and slower or not low and faster

Seriously, it depends on the plane.  Try and find the right landing speeds and configurations for what you are flying.  I STRONGLY recommend you use the checklists by Werner Schott (availiable here in the Manual/Checklists section) to help you find the general speeds for landing.

It takes practice.  I took a long time to get good at it, but now I can land almost anything, even the big birds.

[a1]

well i made my firsh 757 landing so i think that's a good start. it was right on the VASI red over white the whole way.

[Conan Edogawa]

I taught myself in everything of FlightSim.

[pepper_airborne]

A cessna 172 would be in calm conditions in a circuit at 700FT above the field, on final flaps on 2 notches and maintain a speed of 70 knots. Also try flying on the PAPI and VASI lights.

[samick]

how're ya i'm new and this is actually me first comment but what i usually do is ..... leave the auto pilot on until about 2 miles from runway, then put flaps full and then take off auto pilot and then you should glide in nicely.... try keep the plane(if commercial) at about 150 to 170kts ... that works for me everytime

karl  

[beaky]

Three simple steps to perfect landings: practice, practice, and... uh... right; practice.  ;D

There's nothing simple or basic about it- landing is the trickiest part of flying.

There's no "cheat" for this in MSFS, even flying a model with Autoland... that's why it's more of a sim program than a game.

The key, in any airplane, is to be configured correctly before you descend.
Airspeed, flaps, whatever- all must be as it should before you start down final, or you'll be fighting it.

In any airplane, a good starting point for what your indicated airspeed should be on final is about 1.3 times the "book" Vso, or the stalling speed with full flaps and gear down. If you don't know what that speed is, take the plane up, lower everything, hold it level, and reduce power until you stall. The speed at which you lose lift is Vso.
As you descend, your vertical speed should be about 500 fpm. A little higher than that is OK with big jets, but you can't sink that rapidly all the way down to the runway, so take it easy.

Once you have that, as far as controlling goes, it's more art than science: simply do what you must to keep your target for your flare, the numbers, from moving in your field of view. Everything else you see should be moving away from your target, which should remain still and get larger.
If your target goes up, you are getting too low. If it moves down, you are too high. Et cetera.

You may find you need to add or reduce power to make the correct pitch adjustments without getting too fast or too slow, but try to use pitch as much as you can to control airspeed... it's hard to learn, but jockeying the power- especially in jets- can mess you up on final.

When you cross the end of the runway, pull the power out completely and look at the far end of the runway, Slowly ease back- the nose should come up, but you must not climb. Feel it out. Concentrate on the far end of the runway. Once you're sure you have the right pitch attitude for touchdown and are still sinking, just hold it there.

[RAFAIR100]

Rottydaddy is absolutely right.      Just one minor point for the purists      When establishing Vs, it is better to estalish a steady deceleration rather than trying to hold a steady altitude.      In an aircraft which loses speed quickly - and a lot of them do in FS - holding a steady altitude can induce an accelerated stall.      Better to set up a descent and bleed the speed off at about 0.5K/sec or less.     The deceleration rate may be maintained by varying the angle of descent

[Apex]

Rottydaddy has is right:  It's just like getting to Carnegie Hall:  Practice, practice, practice.  Like many others, landing was the most difficult thing for me to learn (I fly by the seat of my pants), but finally got it down well.  Just keep working on it.  The other posts here also have good advice.  

[beaky]

Rottydaddy is absolutely right.      Just one minor point for the purists      When establishing Vs, it is better to estalish a steady deceleration rather than trying to hold a steady altitude.      In an aircraft which loses speed quickly - and a lot of them do in FS - holding a steady altitude can induce an accelerated stall.      Better to set up a descent and bleed the speed off at about 0.5K/sec or less.     The deceleration rate may be maintained by varying the angle of descent

But if you reduce power smoothly and apply back pressure to try to hold altitude, the airplane will decelerate steadily... the only other way to decelerate (excluding extending something)  is to climb. This is far more likely to produce an accelerated stall, which is simply a stall above "book" speed, induced by increasing load factor, which in turn raises the stalling speed (they're much more common in turns for that reason).


Aside from all that, I was by no means suggesting trying to maintain altitude while decelerating as a way to do an approach- it's something that can be done in order to determine the aircraft's true Vso (stall speed in straight and level flight in the landing configuration). However, I have found in light aircraft- in real life as well as the sim- that holding the nose level and pulling power out can be a very good way to steepen the descent angle while maintaining a nice low airspeed, rather than diving at the numbers.
In this scenario, if vertical speed increases too much, a little power will help check the descent, without increasing the airspeed too much. This is classic short-field technique.

This is why in real life students must first explore the area around Vs and Vso in level flight before attempting landings.

As for decelerating on final, it can work OK, but you're better off maintaining the same airspeed all the way to the threshold... even an airliner on a long straight-in should be stabilized at a recommended approach speed and descent rate that is maintained, if possible, all the way down. Wind and other factors will of course require adjustments, but the goal should be: stabilization before decent begins.

Which leads me back to RL primary instruction: ideally a student should learn how to transition from  level slow flight to a controlled descent without changing airspeed at all  before attempting a landing. It's tricky, but it's what the airplane "wants" to do, and it makes for sweet landings.

[N2744X]

how're ya i'm new and this is actually me first comment but what i usually do is ..... leave the auto pilot on until about 2 miles from runway, then put flaps full and then take off auto pilot and then you should glide in nicely.... try keep the plane(if commercial) at about 150 to 170kts ... that works for me everytime

karl  

I disagree. FS2004 is a simulator. When getting your private, you never even touch the autopilot, if you are the 1 in about 150 students that happens to fly an airplane thats equipped with one. I fly a Cessna 150L, and with my father on corporate charters, a Cessna 414AW. (Thats where my username comes from.) In the 414, we generally use the autopilot for the climb and cruise segment of the flight, but we always fly the takeoff (obviously ), landing, and decent without it. We arent equipped with autoland, and we have to change our rate of descent, because if we descend too fast, we will shock-cool the engines. (Bad Thing). Same in the 150, except we fly it 100% stick and rudder. The biggest reason for that, is that we have to autopilot . Bottom line, to be a professional pilot, you have to learn to fly the airplane pure stick and rudder. You'll never get anywhere as a pilot if you cant. Every airline captain, and first officer for that matter, in the airline industry can hand fly their airplane. Its just second nature for them. And there are sometimes that call for getting rid of the autopilot. For instance, in our 414, the max gear extension speed is 170kias, meaning that we can deploy the gear at just about anytime, because the aircraft really only exceeds this speed in either a descent, or high power cruise. So, what most people do in 400 series Cessna's is, when you start to hit really rough air, the first thing you do is immediately disconnect the AP, and focus most of your attention on keeping the aircraft straight and level. If its really rough air, you want to do your best to slow the airplane down as quickly as possible. So you immidiately bring the power to the bottom of the green arc, (on the RPM and Manifold Pressure.), and if necessary, drop the gear. We have done this several times, and with the power decreased, and the gear down, its easy to lost 50kts of airspeed in under a minute.
Also, its better to use the flaps in increments, thats what the detents are there for!!! Dropping in full flaps suddenly can result in unwanted abrupt pitch changes. Remember that different flap increments have different limitation speeds. Like in out 414, you can add approach flaps at 180kias, but you cant go to 30 degrees until like 140, and you cant go anywhere beyond that (45 degrees), until 130. These limitations are there because the flaps can only structurally take so much wind resistance. If you deploy them so much as 20-30kias over the limitation speed, you run the risk of damaging the flaps. Just to "baby" the airplane, and play everything safe, we never deploy anything in the 414 (gear, flaps, etc.) until we are 10kias belows its limitation speed.

Bottom Line, learn to fly without the autopilot, because if you dont, your not really a pilot. Your not a pilot if you cant fly the aircraft throughout all areas of its flight envelope.

Happy...Autopilot Free...Landings!

Joe

[Falcon500]

Im not bragging but this just seems so wierd for me, I learned to fly using the arrow keys in Janes Fighter Anthology, then i got a stick and started flying CFS2, on hard flight model, it was a lot easier than FA, and flying Carrier haven 3 on CFS2 i can basically make a cross wind to final at 1,000 ft up and one mile out.  :o (with something small of course like a caravan, or learjet, but even with the big boys i set up about 5,000ft up and six or seven miles out.

[visualchaosfx]

how're ya i'm new and this is actually me first comment but what i usually do is ..... leave the auto pilot on until about 2 miles from runway, then put flaps full and then take off auto pilot and then you should glide in nicely.... try keep the plane(if commercial) at about 150 to 170kts ... that works for me everytime

karl  

Autopilot is nice. But its better to land manually. Right now I'm practicing landing with a PMDG 747 with realism settings set to hard. Not the easiest thing in the world to do but I'm managing. I also downloaded a better Cessna 172 and have been practicing the landing with that as well and I'm doing pretty good. I'll probably post some video clips on youtube so I can have them on my future Flight Sim hobby Myspace page that I'm gonna start soon.

I used to be gung ho about the autolanding but manual just seems more better to do. You can get pretty creative with manual landing so long as you don't damage the plane on landing.

[N2744X]

i just want the basic story on landings. how do i land perfectly? i always come in too steep and fast or too low and touch the dirt behind the runway. what do i do.

Also remember this common phrase:
"Speed is Your Friend!"
My dad learned that one when he learned to fly the lear. Pretty Catchy huh?

Also:
"Pitch and Power"
Contrary to common belief, the throttles are not always used to control speed, and pulling back, or pushing forward, on the yoke is not always used to control altitude. When on short final, (and this is even more prominent in slow flight) use the pitch to control speed, power to control altitude. For instance, when we do slow flight in my cessna 150, we have to use this, because its the only way to achieve slow flight without stalling the aircraft. In case anyone is wondering, slow flight is when you maintain straight and level, as well as make turns, about 5-10kts above a stall. Turns are only in 2-3degree increments, but the aircraft turns much much more quickly when its slow. But when you fly that slow, you have to bring the nose up to increase angle of attack. So when you have the nose at the proper nose up attitude, and the power set just right, you can fly in the 150 at about 38kts around all day, and you wont stall if you use pitch and power properly. if you start to lose altitude, add more power, if you start to lose airspeed, lower the nose a little bit. It sounds complicated, but its pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Most of the experienced simmers probably use it without even realizing your doing it on short final.

Joe