Tuesday, July 24, 2012

The Approach and Landing Techniques

To close a flight you must land the aircraft and bring it to a full stop. Approach and landing is a very crucial phase of flight. There is not a pilot who never did a bad landing. each and every pilot must have experienced it at least once. and one should bear in mind a good landing comes from a good approach. a good approach is a stabilized approach. a stabilized approach stable in the vertical and the horizontal speed. a 3 degree approach angle is desirable depending on the type of approach you are flying. the approach speed is essential during approach as it will determine your rate of flaring, your round out height and also your ground roll and braking efficiency. Most of the beginner pilots could not maintain a good approach speed. the optimum approach speed is 1.3 of the configuration stall speed. this speed should be maintained all the way until touch down so that aircraft pitching response is less sensitive (low pitching rate and hence easier for us to measure the amount of control input needed during the flare/ unit step input and/or unit impulse input) and you have ample time to think on many other things.A repetition from above, when we enter the flaring part at low speed the aircraft is less sensitive in the pitching attitude and we can control it without jerking the control and hence avoiding the aircraft from ballooning or bouncing.
the reasons that caused ballooning and bouncing are:

1) high rate of descent and bouncy gears.
2) high speed approach and/or power.
3) over-controlling the aircraft (incorrect flare technique result in jerking the control)

Although it is possible to land the aircraft at high speed, the pitching attitude must be well controlled to avoid the aircraft from ballooning. to cushion the landing we reduce the aircraft rate of descent by increasing the pitching attitude and at the same time airspeed reducing. one last thing is to hold off the control column or joystick and wait the aircraft to touch the ground. 



 Batch 42/11 
(Future Pilots)

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