Lesson 27 - That was a bit rough...

I try to find the good in every lesson I take, so not to dwell on the negative or the frustrating. Flying is understandably a very hard skill to learn, and I'm used to days when things don't go so great. Finding the good keeps me going.

Today's good - I didn't break anything on the airplane.

Okay, that may be a bit harsh, but any thoughts I may have had after my last outing that that landings might start to "click" with me shattered on my first attempt today in a hard thud as I pulled power to idle and the plane slammed onto the runway. 

"That was a bit rough." 

Fortunately the landing gear on a Cessna 172 is quite resilient. Apparently they're used to abuse by new students. 

Truth be told, I'm not surprised today went as it did. On my last outing, I was thrilled that I was able to finally land the plane without my instructor helping on the controls. It proved that I could do it and was quite a confidence booster. What I couldn't do was really explain how I was able to do it. I just kinda did. It wasn't accidental that I was able to do it, but it wasn't the result of any repeatable skill, either. Today's lesson was to hone in on that, to make that "blind squirrel finding a nut" landing from last time something I could repeat consistently. To do that, you've got to make mistakes, analyze what you did wrong, and figure out how to correct it. Suffice to say we didn't get to the "figure out how to correct it" phase, but boy did I have my share of mistakes from which I can build a long list of what doesn't work. 

There are two things that are messing me up at the moment. First, there's the notion that you don't want to do sudden control movements in the plane when you're flying. It just doesn't work. Make small changes and be patient enough to let the plane catch up with you. I've done that with increasing success in the pattern, but when it comes to that final round-out and transition to landing, I'm still not as smooth as I need to be, and I'm not giving the plane time to respond to my control adjustments.

There's a reason I think this part is proving particularly difficult. Put quite simply, it's self-preservation. When you're landing, your nose is pointed towards the ground. You spend a lot of time lining up the landing looking down at the ground as it's approaching. When you get down to that last 10 - 20 feet, you realize how bloody fast that ground is approaching, and your nose is still pointed towards it. When you're driving and there's an object in front of you, your instinct is to sharply turn the wheel to avoid it. It's a reflex. Your body knows it doesn't want to hit something, so it acts to get you away from it. When the ground is approaching like it does when you're landing, your body instinctively wants to pull back sharply on the yoke to get the nose going higher so you don't hit the ground. That's instinct. It is, however, counterproductive to landing. You want the plane on the ground, and pulling the yoke back that sharply causes you to gain a bit of elevation, but also stall. When that happens, you drop like a rock. When this happens 5' above the runway, you slam onto it instead of gently gliding down. 

The trick (at least as my instructor explained it to me) is to slowly apply a bit of back pressure to gently raise the nose just enough so the nose wheel is higher than the main wheels. "Gently" is the key. Let the plane respond to the controls. You'll have the advantage of ground effect giving you a bit of extra lift already, so your descent will be slowed once you get to around 10 - 20' above the runway. When that happens, the point you were aiming towards on the runway will actually pass beneath the plane, and you raise your eyes to look down the runway as you apply back pressure to change the pitch of the plane. 

So that's what I've been working through in my mind all this week--how to be a bit more proactive and controlled in that last phase of landing. If I can do that, then I know I can train my mind not to freak out that the ground is getting closer and closer. It's just going to take time and repetition.

Adding to my grumbling about this lesson, I totally brain-farted on one of my go-arounds. Throttle needs to go to FULL. For some stupid reason I only pushed it in about 2/3 and started to decrease flaps. It wasn't pretty. I didn't lose any (much) altitude and we were not in danger, but--geeze--throttle to FULL!!! Then get the nose to horizon, reduce flaps one notch, let airspeed build, establish positive rate of climb, then retract flaps. I know this, but it needs to be more automatic. 

On the plus side (See, I told you I always look for a positive!) my altitude and airspeed control on climb-out is getting a lot smoother. If I got to pattern altitude on my crosswind-to-downwind turn, I was able to level off mid-turn. Also, my use of the trim is getting smoother. I'm also getting to be a better judge of how high I am off the ground at various points in the pattern, so I can make quicker, more even adjustments to that. It's sight-picture reinforcement. The more I do it, the more I get used to the visuals.