Landings

Landings are the yardstick by which passengers measure pilots. They like their transition from flight to terra firma to be barely noticeable. If you grease it in, you'll likely get a few happy comments as the passengers disembark. Nevermind that you may have nearly killed them half a dozen times while enroute; the fact that you greased the landing qualifies you as SkyKing in their minds. Conversely: spend two hours picking your way around TSRAs, picking up moderate ice, and shooting a non-precision approach to minimums - and then bounce the landing. Two hours of competent, shrewed airmanship are cancelled out by two seconds in the flare.

I can't really hold the emphasis on landings against the passengers - as pilots, we do put a lot of effort into our landings, and get a charge out of a really nice one. As an aside, a nice landing and a good landing are two entirely different things. A good landing merely requires that:

1. The airplane be near centerline.
2. The airplane's heading is the same as the runway heading.
3. The touchdown occurs with no sideways drifting (side-load).
4. Descent rate is slowed prior to touchdown (unless landing on a aircraft carrier!).

Professional pilots make good landings the vast majority of the time. Nice landings depend both on the pilot and the airplane. I've flown with a few captains that were very consistent on their landings, but they were never greasers. One of them told me he'd much rather have consistently good landings that weren't greasers, than try so hard to make greasers that he ended up with a few bad ones. That makes sense.

Not all airplanes are created equal when it comes to landings. Some are known to be easy, and some are notoriously hard. The MegaWhacker is one of the hard ones: it requires special technique, and is extremely inconsistent. The difficulty derives from it's length. The MegaWhacker is 107 feet long, yet is fairly low-slung, so caution must be exercised to avoid hitting the tail on the ground during takeoff and landing. On landing, we can use no more than 5 degrees of pitch while close to the ground; depending on flap setting and weight, approach pitch is usually already 1-3 degrees, so there is very little additional pitch available to slow the descent rate in the flare.

When airplanes get close to the ground, they encounter a "cushion of air" known as ground effect. This slows the descent rate somewhat, but is not enough to prevent a hard landing by itself. In most airplanes, you retard the throttles (cut the power), and pitch the nose up to slow the descent rate. In my airplane, cutting the power effects a massive descent rate, so that's a really bad idea. Since we cannot pitch up much more, we usually hold our pitch angle steady while adding a touch of power.

The problem is compounded by the sensitivity of the throttles. On a landing with the flaps set at 35 degrees, only about 2% additional torque is needed. Just bumping the throttles slightly can result in 5% torque increase. If too much power is added, the pitch must be immediately decreased or the airplane will "balloon," after which the pilot will need to cut power and the landing will be firm.

Given all of this, you can see why consistently nice landings are almost impossible in my airplane. I do occasionally make greasers - I made one of my best a few days ago - but in between them are decent landings, ok landings, and teeth-chattering pounders that leave every passenger calling their personal injury lawyers. Furthermore, getting used to landing the MegaWhacker has completely screwed up my landing technique in other airplanes. When flying the C-152 at Troutdale, it takes every inch of willpower to make myself reduce power to idle on short final, and use enough pitch to keep the nosewheel off the runway during landing.

Incidently, there are times where really nice landings are inappropriate. On a short runway, a very wet runway, a slippery runway, or in a heavy crosswind, a firm touchdown is much safer than a "greaser." Furthermore, really nice landings don't save any wear-and-tear over good landings. So really, making a greaser is all about passenger comfort, and more significantly, boosting the pilot's ego.

Sam's getting a digicam!

After months of heavy hint-dropping on my part, today Dawn said she was looking at getting me a digital camera for my birthday; would I like that? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! I love the Nikon N65 SLR we own right now, it takes great pictures - but it's not convenient to slip in the flight case, and scanning in the prints once they are developed is time-consuming and results in less-than-ideal quality. The amount of photoblogging I do will likely increase dramatically around 17 April...

Welcome back, Steve

This afternoon, Steve Fossett landed at Salina, KS, over 67 hours after taking off from that same airport. In that time, he flew 25,000 miles, non-stop and unrefueled. This makes him the only person to ever fly solo around the world, unrefueled in an airplane - he already holds that distinction in balloons. Two things stand out: Fossett tripled his turbojet time with this flight, and he is 60 years old - if this was an airline flight, the FAA wouldn't let him fly!

Not to diminish Fossett's contribution, but I really think Burt Rutan is the aviation giant of the age. Fresh off his success with SpaceShipOne, another of his airplanes made aviation history, and his chances of making a successful commercial space venture look good. In fact, the plan is for him to do so in concert with Sir Richard Branson of Virgin fame, who bankrolled this flight as well.

The news media is hardly giving it any press. They're too busy covering Martha's release and Jacko's trial to pay attention to history in the making.

By the way, GlobalFlyer landed with 1900 lbs of fuel, so it appears that either the "missing fuel" was merely an indication problem or he did some massive endurance-stretching.

Air Safety Quotes

"What is chiefly needed is skill, rather than machinery."
--Wilbur Wright, 1902



"Airshow flying is tough; it's even tougher if you do something stupid. Don't do nothin' dumb!"
--Ralph Royce



"Beware, dear son of my heart, lest in thy new-found power thou seekest even the gates of Olympus....These wings may bring thy freedom but may also come thy death."
-- Daedalus to Icarus



"Death is just nature's way of telling you to watch your airspeed.
--Anon




"If an airplane is still in one piece, don't cheat on it. Ride the bastard down."
--Ernest K. Gann




"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm."
--Publilius Syrus



"If you're faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible."
--R.A. Bob Hoover



"The alleviation of human error, whether design or intrinsically human, continues to be the most important problem facing aerospace safety.
--Jerome Lederer




"Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater extent than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity, or neglect.
--Anon

All photos shown are public domain and can also be found at http://www.micom.net/oops/.

GlobalFlyer: Running on empty

Interesting development to Fossett's jaunt around the globe:

(CNN) -- Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett's attempt to fly around the world solo on a single tank of gas may fall short because of a faulty fuel gauge.

Back-up sensors to the fuel gauge indicate the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer has 2,600 pounds less fuel than expected. Mission managers said they do not think the aircraft is losing fuel.

Engineers were perplexed and are trying to determine if there was a mistake putting the fuel on board the plane or if something happened within the first three hours of the flight, Virgin spokeswoman Lori Levin told CNN.

One theory is that despite the full reading on the fuel gauge after the tanks were filled, they may have been 2,600 pounds short of fuel.

As of 10:30 a.m. ET Wednesday, Fossett was over China with 5,500 pounds of fuel remaining.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/03/02/globalflyer.fossett/index.html

Seems to me there isn't much of a decision to make. If the
standby fuel gauges show him 2600 lbs short, chances are he
does not have the needed fuel, and to press on is to invite
a swim in the Pacific - assuming he survives the ditching.

Lazy day...

Dawn and I looked at a house last night. It was nice, but had a small yard and was in a very cramped neighborhood that seemed to be primarily rentals. Thanks, but no thanks. The house searching continues tonight...

Today is my day off, as was yesterday. I didn't get a call from Ameriflight, so yesterday I drove around looking at houses in Battleground, and today I'm doing...nothing. I considered going skiing but the snow kinda sucked when I was on Mt. Hood last week and they haven't had much new snow since. So right now I'm listening to The Beatles' Revolver, and some Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon after that. I'm on a bit of a classic rock kick lately.

Tomorrow I start AM home reserve. The only crappy thing about that is that you can get called at 4:30am. It's a crappy feeling to wake to the ringing cellphone, knowing you're getting called out.

My airline's service between LAX and Reno starts this week. If I get sent on a Reno overnight, I am so hitching a ride up to Tahoe to do some skiing. They seem to be getting all our snow this winter.

Will new aviation technology save lives?

The last several years have seen vast changes in the technology available for light aircraft cockpits. An example is the Garmin G1000 pictured above. It's a fully integrated instrumentation and navigation suite, a "glass cockpit" with capablity approaching that of the Q400 I fly. Solid-state accelerometers replace old vacuum-driven gyros for attitude and heading reference, and GPS technology shows the pilot precisely where the airplane and programmed course are. Terrain, traffic, and weather can all be shown on the large multi-function display. These are all things that've been trickling into small planes the past several years, but you've never seen them integrated like this in anything less than a $20 million airliner or business jet. The crazy part is that all this capability isn't much more expensive than the 1960's technology it replaces.

So what we're seeing is nothing less than a revolution in the cockpit of today's light aircraft. There is no doubt pilots will love having all this technology at their fingertips. My only question is: will it make flying safer? My guess is that in the long run, it will not.

My reasoning is this: the majority of GA accidents are caused by lapses in judgement. New technology will provide pilots with a plethora of information, but will not magically provide pilots with the judgement to use that information in the safest manner possible.

As an example: controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accounts for a large percentage of accidents in IMC (instrument conditions). Pilots flying with the G1000 will be able to see exactly where the terrain is relative to their position - therefore sharply reducing CFIT accidents. Will this terrain depiction, however, lower the total accident rate? Pilots kill themselves in large numbers by flying into instrument conditions they've not been trained for (VFR into IMC). It seems likely that having precise terrain information will entice many pilots to fly into weather scuzzier than what they'd normally venture into, increasing the number of accidents due to VFR pilots losing control in instrument conditions.

Likewise, having downlinked weather radar and lightning strike information is a very useful thing. However, it may well embolden the owner of an aircraft lacking onboard radar to go fly on days he'd normally leave the plane in the hangar. Suddenly visual avoidance and giving thunderstorms a wide berth doesn't seem so important when you can see on your MFD that the heavy rain starts right there. Pilots may find themselves taking chances they'd never take before, which will lead to an increase in aircraft utility - but also an increase in the cases where pilots pay the ultimate price for a lack of caution.

Having traffic avoidance equipment can be invaluable in busy parts of the country. My first summer flight instructing in the Los Angeles basin, I had no less than fifteen near-misses with other aircraft. Still, having TCAS or the equivalent is not foolproof: keep in mind that there are many airplanes out there lacking transponders, which will not show up on your traffic avoidance equipment. Nonetheless, those of us using it tend to be lulled into a false sense of security, and our traffic scan is nowhere near where it should be at low altitudes. Overall the use of this equipment will probably decrease the number of mid-airs, but others will take place because nobody had their eyes outside the airplane.

In short, I think the new technology is a wonderful thing, but it will not make you safer - and the sooner you recognize that, the safer you'll be. The reason so many light aircraft crash is not inadequate technology - it's inadequate pilots. Sure, buy the nicest avionics suite you can afford, and use it - but seek out the best training, learn your equipment's limitations, know your own limitations, and fly conservatively. It's the way airline pilots fly, and the reason we've acheived such a good safety record.