From: peted@microsoft.com (Peter Duniho)
Subject: Re: Help landing, please
Date: 26 Jan 93 21:02:36 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation
Keywords: Landing

In article <930125145822@AltaHopa.ftp.com> plummer@babyoil.ftp.com writes:
>My typical approach is slightly fast and I flare a bit high.  Then
>I fly the plane (Cherokee) essentially parallel to the runway and the
>CFI starts saying, "Pull back.  Pull back.  More. More."  I pull back
>and the plane balloons.  Then, I suppose speed is lost due to the
>attitude.  I try to point the nose down, more to a horizontal
>attitude, but due to the lack of lift, it just plops down and bounces
>off the shock absorbers.  If I am "lucky", I wind up doing a 3-point
>landing -- not the best since I should be landing on the main wheels
>first.
>
>An important issue is that, after the balloon starts, I am sort of
>befuddled and am not sure what to do.  The CFI just keeps saying to
>pull back more, but that seems like it will make the plane either go
>up more or cause it to drop on the the runway faster.

Well, since landing seems to be the hardest part of learning to
fly, from a brand-new pilot's perspective, it's not surprising that
this and similar questions keep coming up.

To address your specific problems, you're right that once you're
ballooning, pulling up more isn't going to help things at all.
I'm not sure why your instructor would tell you to pull more on
the yoke once you've started to balloon during landing.
On the other hand, my instructor gave me some advice that worked
very well for me: don't try to push the nose down!  Once you've
gotten yourself into a balloon, just hold the yoke still, or at
the most, relax your pull on it a _tiny_ bit.  As the plane's
airspeed continues to drop, the nose will start coming back down
on its own anyway; it's more important to keep your flare as
stabilized as possible, rather than worrying too much about having
the plane in exactly the right place at every moment.

Along with this advice, I'll also say that large control movements
should be avoided if at all possible.  This goes along with having
a stabilized landing.  If you're moving the yoke farther than a
centimeter or so at a time, you're moving it too much.  I found that
thinking of my pitch control as more of a "pressure" input than
a "movement" input really helped me a lot (and I had the same exact
problems that you're having when I was trying to figure out how
to land the plane!  except that my instructor had better advice,
I think).  That is, pay more attention to how hard you're pulling
on the yoke, instead of trying to pay attention to how far you
move it.  When you balloon, make sure you don't change the amount
of pressure until the plane settles back down a bit and you're
back to a stabilized situation.

I found that learning to use the trim really helps this "pressure"
idea.  On final, get your approach stabilized with the trim so that
you can basically glide to the numbers without pushing or pulling
on the yoke (don't worry...this takes awhile to learn, but you will
eventually get the feel for it...practice practice practice!).  Then,
when you flare for your landing, every landing will have the same
baseline pressure (that is, none) from which you gradually increase as
you land.  You will pull the same amount on the yoke for every landing,
because you started at the same point for every landing.  What you
need to learn is what that feels like, and the only real way to do
that is to just keep doing it, and remember what it felt like when
things worked out.  It is KEY to not overcorrect, and the easiest way
to overcorrect is to allow yourself to make large control movements.
Just say no!

(Did anyone happen to save a copy of my post awhile back on landing?
Unfortunately, my news system expires articles after two weeks; but
I think there's other good things in there that this guy might find
interesting.  Also, it seems to me that there's probably good books
that say this same sort of stuff; anyone know of good references?).
-- 
Pete Duniho         "Give me a fish, or a mountain, to scale..."
peted@microsoft.com              -- Toy Matinee