Lesson 20 - Touchdown!

It had been over a week since I flew last. One lesson had been scrubbed for maintenance issues, and the winds last Monday were above maximums, so we were grounded then as well. Learning how to land in high winds had already proven dubious, so even if the winds had calmed down below maximums, I'm not sure I would have flown anyway. "More frustrating than educational" is my litmus test for winds. Today dawned with blue, cloudless skies, and most importantly, no wind! Was today going to be the day I finally got a handle on landing an airplane?

I got to the field, prepped the plane, and we set off. If it's busy at Centennial, Air traffic control doesn't let pilots do touch-and-goes, leaving us to head off to Colorado Space Port instead. I don't mind flying into Space Port; it's a nice flight out there and I get a chance to work on pilotage and cross-country flying skills. Also, I  take that time to prep my mind for what we're planning on doing for the lesson. Today, traffic at Centennial was light enough where ATC approved us to stay in the pattern there. There were a few other planes in the pattern with us, so it became something of a game of "follow the leader" with no clear indication who was actually leading. We would be--quite literally--flying in circles (well, ovals) with ATC choreographing everything, including letting others periodically cut in. The nice thing about having parallel runways is that ATC can set aside one runway for us students and small planes, freeing the main runway up for the corporate flights. 

The downside of staying at the home airport for this work was that for the first time in my lessons, we started immediately on the task at hand as soon as the wheels lifted off the ground. There was no 10 minutes of flying to get to the practice area, no time to get a feel for what the air was like and think about what we were going to do. Nope, up off the ground, get ready to make the right crosswind turn to climb to pattern altitude. Ready, set, GO! I don't know that I necessarily missed the mental prep time, but it did take just a few seconds to get my mind in gear. Fortunately this wasn't a brand new process to me, but my nerves were definitely a bit unsettled as I made my first turns to enter the downwind leg and parallel the runway. 

The hardest part for landing is staying on the glide slope. This is the vertical path you follow when approaching the runway. In most cases, that's about 3 - 3.5 degrees from the ground. You pick your aiming point (about 200' past the numbers on the runway) and try to stay on that 3 degree line until you get just above the runway. You do this by coordinating the pitch of the plane (how high or low the nose is) to set your airspeed, and then add or remove power (throttle) to keep your elevation in check. It sounds simple when you see it written in the books, but it's really much more of a dance as the two are also somewhat interrelated. As you increase or decrease your throttle, the nose of the airplane wants to pitch up or down just a bit. You can't really adjust one without the other, at least to some degree. 

Centennial airport is equipped with PAPI (Precision Approach Path Indicator) lights. These are lights that are beside the runway with two lenses in front of each light, one red and one white. They're arranged such that the higher you are, the more of the white lenses you see. As you get lower to the ground, you see the light through the red lens. The idea is that the perfect glide slope will give you two red and two white lights. (Some only have two lights, so one red, one white.) If you're high relative to the glide slope, you'll see three white and one red. If you're really high, four white. If you're slightly low, you'll see three red and one white, and if you're dangerously low, you'll see four red lights. You don't want to see four red lights. You really don't want to see three. My instructor likes me to stay at two red at a minimum, erring on the side of three white. It's a lot easier to slow down and lose altitude when landing than it is to speed up and gain altitude. These lights are a great guide, but ideally you want to get a good mental sight picture of what the runway itself looks like as you are on the glide slope. If it appears short and squat, you're probably too low. If it appears long and narrow, you're likely too high. If nothing else happened today, I wanted to burn into my mind what that sight picture of the runway looked like. Not all airports have PAPI or other similar systems, so while they're a good reference when they're there, you need to learn how to do this without them as well.

Despite my nerves on my first attempt, things went pretty well. ATC directed us to do a standard pattern, so when we were past the end of the runway, I reduced power and added 10 degrees of flaps. This slowed us down to around 75 knots, and I made the right turn to the base leg of the approach, all the while losing about 500' of altitude in the process. Then the turn to final, line up with the runway, drop more flaps, slow to around 65 knots, and stay on the glide slope. The hardest part for me to gauge in this process is how to regulate the power to control elevation. If you add too much power for too long, you go from being too low to far too high. If you don't add enough power, you never correct your lack of elevation. This is something that you really just have to feel. Repetition. Not having any wind really helped me get a sense for how my control inputs were affecting the flight. If you looked at my approaches today in terms of elevation control, they probably looked like an uneven set of stairs, but I'll take that for the win at this stage in the game. 

Once over the threshold of the runway, reduce power to idle, and let the plane glide to just a few feet above the runway. Pull the nose up slightly so you don't land on the nose gear, and the plane will settle onto the runway as it loses airspeed and decides there's just not enough lift to keep it in the air anymore. For a touch-and-go, once you're on the ground, you retract the flaps, add full power, and take off to do it all over again. My nerves settled a bit once we were back in the air, so my climb-out and turns were a bit smoother. I got a bit steep in one of the turns, but corrected quickly enough. The second approach and landing weren't quite as smooth as the first; I flared a bit higher over the runway than ideal, so the plane hit a bit harder than I was hoping. We didn't bounce, but it definitely left room for improvement. 

On my third landing, ATC told us to fly an "extended downwind" leg. They do this when they need to create space in the pattern for an incoming plane. It basically means you fly longer in the downwind leg before you make your base and final turn. The difference is that in a standard pattern, you're descending and slowing down in the various legs of the pattern. When you fly an extended pattern, you fly further out from the airport, so you have to fly all that distance straight back. When you do that, you don't have the familiar reference points and legs to remind you when to reduce power, add flaps, etc. You're on a long straight-in approach to the runway, and have to gauge when to reduce power, add flaps, and all that stuff based on looking at the runway. For practical purposes, in a standard pattern, from when you begin your descent to when you touch down is about 3 miles. Your downwind leg is about a mile to the side of the runway you're landing on and you begin your descent when you're just past the end of the runway. So for a straight-in approach, you want to begin your descent about 3 miles away from the runway. That gives you your 3 degree approach angle. If you know the area you're flying in, you will know roughly where 3 miles is, and can work from there. If you're flying into an unfamiliar airport, you'll have to use GPS to figure out when you're three miles out. The thing to watch out on with straight-in approaches is that it's easy to be too fast because you don't bring your flaps in soon enough. The "flaps 10, turn, flaps 20, turn, flaps 30, land" rhythm isn't there. I found myself on glide slope easy enough, but forgot to bring in flaps and was about a mile out doing 90 knots. Too fast. A little too fast. I was, however, impressed with how quickly adding flaps sapped your airspeed. I made this landing a little further down the runway than I was aiming, but I got us down okay. 

We made three more landings, each just slightly different than the previous one, but most uneventful. Our last landing was the worst of the day. My instructor and I were talking about aiming points, and I got so wrapped up in the discussion that I didn't flare quite as quickly as I should have. My instructor realizing about the same time that I did that we needed to flare NOW, we both instinctively pulled back on the yoke at about the same time. Twice the back pressure on the yoke meant we nosed up higher than we should have, risking a stall. My instructor told me to add power as he leveled us off, took the controls and sat us down further down the runway. Lesson there, don't get so wrapped up in conversation that you forget what you're doing. There's a reason why we try to limit conversation during critical stages of flight. The final flare on landing is probably about as critical as it gets. No harm, no foul, and thanks to a long runway we got down without having to go around. 

All in all, though, a very productive day. I think I have a good sight picture in my mind as to what the runway has to look like. At least that runway. I'm a bit concerned when I go back out to Space Port or another runway that I'll be able to set that same picture though the runway may be narrower, longer, shorter, wider, or any combination in between. And while my instructor was assisting me in the landings, he said they were all about 90% all me. He was there just to make minor corrections to help give me the feel of things. After my previous two times learning how to land, today was a definite confidence booster. 

A few unrelated takeaways from today's lesson. First, when there's a lot of traffic, there's a lot of radio chatter between the traffic and ATC directing things. That has a tendency to distract from the instruction because you have to stop what you're saying to listen to ATC to see if they're talking to you, or if who they are talking to is someone you need to look out for. That cuts into the time for explanations of what you're doing, so just be prepared for that. If you're learning at an untowered airport, or one with much less traffic, you'll have more time to talk with your instructor about the process.

Second, the basic things are getting familiar enough to me to where I can take longer periods of time between flights and not feel like I'm forgetting everything. New skills will obviously need more frequent repetition, but the older skills are a bit more engrained in muscle memory. 

Third, I'm loving my new sunglasses. I had custom progressive sunglasses made for me so I can see distance out the windshield and still read my instruments and checklists. I'm no longer flying looking like a librarian with my readers halfway down my nose. Having proper sunglasses has reduced eye strain, and I think at least on the subconscious level has made flying a bit less taxing on the brain. That has to help...