Flight Journal: flight 27- part 2

[beaky]

The sun has set behind the hills as we put the plane away for the night. J. shaves a few dollars off the lesson cost because I was denied the landing... nice guy.
 He also apologizes for taking over, explaining that he once had a student who made an approach under similar conditions, and did well with the aileron input until the flare, at which point he relaxed just enough for the plane to drift off towards the grass in ground effect. J. called for power for a go-around and the student goosed the throttle, flooding the carb just long enough for the engine to falter, as they now drifted sideways over the grass, closer to the trees than the runway, which was dwindling.
 J. tried to bank slightly back towards the runway, and one wingtip struck the ground as the plane settled... a vicious ground loop ensued, complete with the nose digging into the turf, trashing the prop and nosegear. To sum up, J. stated:
"When it was over, we were facing the wrong way, and lower... because the nosegear was gone."

I was awestruck. "Anybody hurt?" I asked.

"No... God was definitely lookin' out for us that time. But it sorta changed my life..."

So, he's a little nervous about letting me tackle landings here with a 10-knot crosswind component... and I understand why, now. But I will have to try it sooner or later, and I may do better than that hapless student, as I now have the benefit of Learning From the Mistakes of Others, which is one of the hallowed cornerstones of aviation.

[Brett_Henderson]

Interesting read, as usual  :)

This is the first time I've second guessed your instructor though. Not about taking the plane for the landing, but for the 75knot landing. I was taught, and try to teach setting up a good cross-control early and maintaining normal approach speeds (and angles)(60kias over the numbers), planning to land it one wheel at a time.  That way, youv'e already got the upwind wing low and under control and it's a lot safer than "kicking" the tail out while flaring. While I was up in Fargo last month, I sat in on an inerview for the piloting job in that sky-dive modded 182. The current pilot (interviewer) was relating how important proper x-wind landing are when a plane has an extra 3 feet of wing... When the interviewee was asked about his technique, he was stopped mid-sentence when he said, "carry some extra airspeed and fly it down to the runway".  Bad Bad Bad !   :-/  

[beaky]

Interesting read, as usual  :)

This is the first time I've second guessed your instructor though. Not about taking the plane for the landing, but for the 75knot landing. I was taught, and try to teach setting up a good cross-control early and maintaining normal approach speeds (and angles)(60kias over the numbers), planning to land it one wheel at a time.  That way, youv'e already got the upwind wing low and under control and it's a lot safer than "kicking" the tail out while flaring. While I was up in Fargo last month, I sat in on an inerview for the piloting job in that sky-dive modded 182. The current pilot (interviewer) was relating how important proper x-wind landing are when a plane has an extra 3 feet of wing... When the interviewee was asked about his technique, he was stopped mid-sentence when he said, "carry some extra airspeed and fly it down to the runway".  Bad Bad Bad !   :-/  

Read again... it was 75 mph ...that model uses ASI calibrated in mph (with a little "knot window").

Still a little hot, but I think it was more for gusts than the wind angle itself. Maybe I remember wrong; who knows.
This is why I'm not using full names...
But whatever the case, I'll maintain he is a "good stick", and a very good instructor.

[Brett_Henderson]

Curse those mph ASIs .. lol

No doubting he's good and I'm sure he'd second guess me, plenty... and I'd insist. Shared experiences and talking about this stuff is an important part of the learning.

You know how, when you're taking off in a stiff X-wind at that point where the plane becomes 'almost' weightless ? ...

[beaky]

I agree... although I've found that it usually helps to initially approach a bit faster. I haven't landed many times under those conditions, but last time I flew, I had a good opportunity to experiment, and found that for me, in that airplane at that field, a slightly shallower approach than my normal default short-field method, combined with just a little more airspeed to minimize time spent in vertically-moving air, did the trick nicely. I felt I was getting more positive results; easier to transition early to a sidwslip with a little margin of airspeed. But once you're over the pavement, the airplane has to stop flying ASAP, or the wind could get the upper hand. That's why making an effort to target well ahead of the numbers and cross the threshold a bit lower than usual helped: I was able, it seemed, to "round out" sooner, distance-wise, which gave me room to check the drift one more time before touchdown. On two of those approaches, I let it float just for a moment to buy some time to really fight the wind, and it worked.
Without that, I found myself not entirely certain what would happen when that upwind wheel set down... one of the landings was just bad: upwind main, then the nosewheel as I was adding rudder, then it rocked once between downwind and upwind wheels, then settled on with me jamming full aileron and opposite rudder to keep tracking straight. That uses up a lot of runway...
 But I did also find that going for "short enough to be safe" rather than "close to the numbers" was a good rule in gusty crosswinds- I managed at least one good one, approaching in my usual way, by simply letting it balloon and moving my target forward. a little change of plans, that's all. I was unhappy about how far I touched down, but rolled out and stopped with plenty of room to spare.

I suppose the ideal would be to simply land, correcting for gusts as needed, but on that particular day I was getting up and downdrafts on the bottom of the final leg that required some strategy. Took that first go-around, where everything was peachy (if rough) until I crossed the fence and saw the end of the runway suddenly dropping under the nose to convince me that my regular approach was not going to cut it. So I worked on gliding more aggressively, if you will, then trying to transition to a normal flare with as much attention to the wind as I could manage. Tried very hard to land full-stall each time, and I got the horn on two landings, which impressed the hell out of me- I haven't done that twice in one day in a long time.

I wish I'd noted the airspeed on touchdown on that dual flight- no stall horn, I think, but he certainly didn't fly it on.
But if he did have that habit: if he got his wish to work flying in the bush in Africa or South America, he's been cured of it by now.

[Brett_Henderson]

I was tending to some insurance biz over the phone with the club prez today, and brought this topic up (he's the 20,000+ hour pilot I cite often as my mentor). His response wasn't so cut-n-dry, but he affirmed that it's always best come over the fence at normal approach speeds. Extra airspeed by the time your in ground effect is more a risk than it is useful (I do it too, now and then... especially if it's been a while since a good, strong X-wind landing). Same perils I've mentioned (boucing and floating). He does differ with me though, on how early to get the corrections in.. stating that it depends on the pilot's proficiency. Running out of rudder is un-good for pilots uncomfy with strong X-winds. Then as expected for wise old guys (or is it old, wise-guys ?), he went off on tangents and horror stories about nasty X-winds. I think his message was... "push comes to shove..it's even better to actually fly to the runway a little from the upwind side, than it is to carry extra airspeed.. something about if you ever have to land a twin on one engine, and the engine that's out is on the side that aggravates the X-wind..  and ... it's much better to stall and land hard, even side-loading, than to come in hot and try to re-center yourself after a bounce while you're 10 feet off the pavement, barely above stall speed (if you try to lift the upwind wing going that slow, you're gonna bury the downwind wing).

What we agreed on, is that it depends on the pilot's abilty to control a slow plane in ground effect. If he's good, he'll know when to go around anyway.. and that's what counts..

[beaky]

What we agreed on, is that it depends on the pilot's abilty to control a slow plane in ground effect. If he's good, he'll know when to go around anyway.. and that's what counts..

I'll drink to that. I must be pretty good, because I'm usually just as eager to go around on a day like that as I am to land.