Landing help

[Daveuk1990]

Hi .

I am a very stupid person but here goes the question anyway.

When ever i do a flight anywhere i always have trouble landingi either land just off the runway or at a diagnal side
i was wondering if there was a way of preventing this and knowing just when to turn to the runway and when to start a decent etc etc
but you'll have to dumb it down for me im not so great at this stuff im mainly talking about boeings mainly
because i can land the other planes fine.
any cheats to land great witch dont include slew mode or map lol
just wondering

Daveuk

[Stormtropper]

Practise

There is a excellent tutorial out there, along with a training flight.

Something that I do during landings that help alot is ignoring everything except the runway. Ignore all the instruments and the stupid PAPI lights, so all thats in my mind is the runway. Takes a while to get the feeling of speed and altitude, but works great for me.

Jeff

P.S. Because of that, I don't do ILS very well

and I always do a nose down approach, until the very last minute, but that might have somthing to do with me spending too much time in a spitfire

[MattNW]

The key to a good landing is in the approach. It's much harder however in the FS than the real world because you can't just turn your head and see the runway like in a real airplane. Even using the VC and setting your pan rate on high you'll still be somewhat limited because it's not as natural using a key or hat switch to turn your head.

What I do is use a modified approach for visual landings. I'll start out a little further than normal than a regular RL pattern and turn until I see the runway. From there I aim to a point where I would normally have started my approach and make that my final turn onto the runway heading.

Once lined up with the runway the key is to keep a steady descent. The approach lights will help you some there (that's if you are landing on a runway that uses them). You have two types first is red and white over and under. With those you want both colors showing so that the lights look amber. In general once you get this you should be descending about 500 ft/minute.

The other is four lights in a row. This one you want two red and two white. With both types of lights if they are all red then you are too low and all white means too high.

Use your throttle to adjust the glide and pitch the nose of the aircraft up or down to control your speed. It's best to start with an easy to fly airplane. Too many want to take the Boeing up and get frustrated because they can't land it well. Of course they can't because in RL a pilot would have many many hours in smaller airplanes starting with the Cessna or a Piper single as a trainer before they even got near a Boeing.

From there all it takes is practice. Shoot "touch and go's" until you get the hang of it and the work your way up to bigger and faster airplanes after you have mastered the smaller ones.

Another way to practice that RL instructors use to help a student prepare for landings is practice slow flight. There's an excellent flight in the Flight Lessons of ACOF for practicing slow flight.

[Daveuk1990]

Sucess Monarch Boeing Taken off from EGLL Heathrow and Landed at GCTS Tenerife
Does it look ok

[ftp]http://www.simviation.com/yabbuploads/succes.jpg
[/ftp]

[Scottler]

Take the lessons and keep practicing...that's really the only way to master the fine art...

[wji]

Use the default B734 and after intercepting the ILS with gear down-and-locked and full-flap, just incrementally bleed of the speed from 146kias to 120kias crossing the threshold . . . it will land itself.
bill
p.s. when the wheels touchdown, hit 'Z' to turn a/p off and uncouple the FD, hit F1 then press-and-hold F2 and jump on the binders :-)

[sonic]

You have two types first is red and white over and under. With those you want both colors showing so that the lights look amber

I was wondering this my self my local airport has (assuming your on approach) 4 lights total.  2 then about 20' to 30' further up the runway 2 more. when Im on approach the last two change 1 red, 1 white, both red, both white etc. that I now but what is the first 2 for I havent ever seen them change.

[jknight8907]

Here's a bit of info that may help:

When you're on a stabilized glide path down to the runway, you may have noticed an interesting phenomenon that happens. The point on the runway that you are headed toward won't appear to move. Everything in front of your aim point appears to move away from you. Everything behind the point appears to move closer to you and then under you. You can use this to determine exactly where your aircraft will touch the ground (although you will land a little farther down due to the flare).

[Saratoga]

jknight is right on. It works in reality too, though to a limited degree. Everything moves but your touchdown spot, it just gets bigger.
Actually, I haven't used that in reality, it's easier for me to just look around to judge glide path, then again that's just me.

[dyfly]

What he needs is the view spot to place in his windshield for aiming. Iam not sure but this might be in his set up.I will have to look you can click this on to bring it up to help out in landing

[congo]

I think I might know what's wrong...........

INERTIA = Inertia is a bodies natural resistance to any change in direction or acceleration.

A mass resists change in acceleration or direction, the more mass, the more resistance, the more inertia.

A cessna has relatively little inertia because it has relatively small mass (weight). So, it's easy to change it's direction and speed with control inputs.

You get a little out of line in the Boeings, and because of the extra mass (weight) they seem to take forever to respond to the controls and veer from side to side and you just keep oversteering to make it right, but it gets worse.............

The secret is to start your approach well away from the airport and get the aircraft configured for landing (flaps, gear), get speed and descent rate well under control from a long distance out. This gives you time to get the jet lined up with the field smoothly.

You have to consider the extra weight of the jet, (inertia is weight in motion or at rest, and it's a force of sorts), so when the jet starts to veer off course, you have to catch it early or it will get quite bad and then........ you oversteer to correct the error, making an even greater error in the other direction.

It's catch 22 at this point, wrestling with a wobbling 737 at late finals or beyond.

The trick is to stay absolutely calm and make only very small control inputs prior to the round out. This takes a lot of practice and the heavier the aircraft, the harder it is to manage at first. However, once mastered, the heavies will track straight as arrows BECAUSE of their high inertia.

You should be doing almost nothing as far as control input goes near the strip, try to get all the errors in the approach sorted well out from the field, you need plenty of time for this.

The closer you get to the field, the more critical any input is going to be, so you want to be very fine and smooth on late approach, no sudden movements.

Once the aircraft is tracking straight towards the runway, only pitch control and minor directional input is needed, (err, unless it rough air or strong crosswind.)

Beware the temptation to start throwing the plane around violently once in the markers.

Good luck and happy landings!

[Saratoga]

Just remember, when you get down low and are right above the runway, you have to make a choice. Do I land or do I go around and try again? You should be thinking that with every landing you ever do, real or virtual. You have to be able to very quickly look at everything, every gauge in the cockpit, outside, flaps, gear, all of it, and in a split second decide if the landing is safe to attempt.

[chief1995]

What I do because of the limited view from the cockpit, is I go to spot view from behind and slighty above the plane. I get a good view of the runway and get line up, about 5 miles away I switch to cockpit view and take it from there. After awhile you do it by feel.
Another tip is to save an approach from around 10 miles out, name it "whatever" ie; "landing cessna" then when you are ready to practice landings just pull that up. It saves time from having to do a complete flight just to practice landing. And do it over and over again.
Any landing you survive is a good landing!

Good Luck,

Chief

[wji]

Well, having said all this about all that and upon reflection regarding the aircraft power levers all that is basically required is to push 'em in the plane goes up and pull 'em out and the plane comes down.

bill
p.s. sorry, captains . . . i'm just in one of my moods . . .

[dyfly]

congo, now that is simple,any better said I could'nt stand it  Point the nose at the runway # cross the # pull power back  point the nose now at the end of the runway and hang on