Greg’s flight instructor tips – Page 5 – Greg Brown's Flying Carpet Blog

fly better steep turns

Greg's piloting tips, Greg’s flight instructor tips

Are you having trouble with consistency when practicing steep turns? (Ie; maintaining bank attitude and altitude?) Here’s the sequence I recommend, with #4 being the item you’re probably not doing right now:

1. Make clearing turns (of course!)

2. Note your starting heading, and identify a prominent outside landmark on that heading you can recognize later for rollout.

3. Roll PROMPTLY into the steep turn using the attitude indicator to establish your 45° bank, and “center the ball” with rudder. (IMPORTANT: Add back pressure as you roll through 30°.) Now look outside and you can see the 45° angle between the horizon and the cowl, as well as the proper pitch attitude. I recommend using outside reference for the turn, while scanning the altimeter and heading indicator periodically to back up what you’re seeing outside.

4. Okay, here’s the secret. Once established in the turn, MAKE ONLY PITCH CHANGES by pushing or pulling; DO NOT TURN THE YOKE LEFT OR RIGHT (except as necessary to correct for turbulence) NOR UNNECESSARILY MOVE THE RUDDER. This is important because every time you change bank angle, you’re changing the amount of back pressure required to maintain altitude. Turning the yoke while established in the turn creates the need for pitch adjustment, in addition to the need to correct the bank angle. You’ve now got two variables working at the same time, and you’re all too familiar with the result — oscillating all over the sky! So again, once established in the turn, ADJUST PITCH to maintain altitude, and DO NOT TURN THE YOKE. Apply this technique, and you’ll be delighted at how much easier the whole maneuver is.

5. When you see your landmark coming up on the horizon, check the heading indicator, and begin a prompt rollout 20-25°* before reaching your desired heading. IMPORTANT: Return to normal pitch attitude as you roll through 30° toward level.

The rule of thumb for rollouts is to start leveling the wings at ½ your bank angle. Since half of a 45° bank is 22.5°, that’s how many degrees before the desired heading to begin rollout. For a 60° bank, begin your rollout 30° before reaching the desired heading.

make better landings

Greg's piloting tips, Greg’s flight instructor tips

All new pilots and many experienced ones are challenged by landings. You are not alone! For some time to come you will seek the “perfect flare,” and find it only occasionally. That being said, here are a few pointers for improving your landings.

Most success in landing airplanes of every size comes from establishing a “stabilized approach” well before touchdown. By approaching the runway the same way each time, you minimize distracting last minute adjustments near the landing point.

1. Fly your landing pattern the same way every time.

2. Perhaps the single most important factor for making good landings is to establish and TRIM for the proper airspeed on final approach. Too fast? You’ll “balloon” or float in the flare. Too slow? The plane will drop in like a rock. Trimming is critical because it stabilizes the plane at target airspeed without much attention from you. (You have plenty else to do at that point, right?) The airspeed will automatically drop off as it’s supposed to, on flare.

3. Correct your final approach path long before touchdown. You’ve probably noticed that along with airspeed variations, coming in high or low tremendously changes how you must flare. That makes it tough, because ideally you’d like to flare similarly every time. The trick is to IDENTIFY AT THE MOMENT YOU TURN FINAL IF YOU ARE HIGH OR LOW, LEFT OR RIGHT, AND CORRECT IMMEDIATELY WHILE STILL FAR FROM THE RUNWAY. Stabilizing your normal airspeed and approach path well before reaching the runway makes flaring easier and more consistent. (The high-or-low part can often be identified and addressed on base leg, even before turning final.)

4. For the flare itself, your goal is not so much to do a specific maneuver (“Here’s where I need to flare; I’ll do it… now.”), but rather to cause the plane to stop flying and stall at “one inch” above the runway. So think of the flare as a “round out” rather than an abrupt pitch change. Smoothly and gradually pitch up as you approach the touchdown point, in an effort to keep the wheels from touching. Then HOLD THE PLANE “ONE INCH ABOVE THE GROUND” AS LONG AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN. It takes self control but continue pulling back on the yoke to keep the plane “1 inch” above the ground, until it “lands by itself.” This smooth, continuous transition from final approach to touchdown indeed constitutes “the flare.”

5. Keep your eyes focused well down the runway, NOT immediately in front of the plane. Flare is largely judged through peripheral vision, so looking down the runway gives you the “big picture” required for good landings.

6. How to deal with runways of varying lengths and sizes. Don’t fly the pattern based on sight picture alone, because doing so will put your downwind too close to short narrow runways, and unusually far from long, wide ones. Rather, always fly downwind about 1/2 mile from the runway. To estimate that, establish yourself at pattern altitude and visually compute your downwind distance from the runway based on runway length.

(Downwind to a 5,000 foot runway should be ~½ runway length away. Downwind to a 2500 foot runway will be ~one runway length away. Downwind to a 10,000 foot runway will be ~¼ runway length away, and so on.) That gets you flying a similar pattern and approach to every runway no matter what its length, because you’re always starting from a half-mile downwind, turning base at 45 degrees past the numbers, etc.

When you master the above building blocks, you will master landings. Let me know how they work!

Identify misfueled aircraft

Greg's piloting tips, Greg’s flight instructor tips

Jet fuel is kerosene, while most light aircraft piston (reciprocating) engines burn gasoline. (Diesel aircraft engines are the exception – they can run on jet fuel.) Kerosene burns hotter than gasoline and has a different flash point, so it doesn’t explode at the “normal” time in a gasoline engine’s power stroke. The effect of this is that when a piston aircraft is misfueled with jet fuel, the engine will run okay at low power settings at least for a while, but at high power settings the engine will overheat and seize.

The bad news is that high power settings are first used on takeoff, so in the classic misfueling incident a piston aircraft takes off successfully and then suffers engine failure at the worst possible time, a few hundred feet above the ground.

While I’ve never personally experienced a misfueling, one occurred at an airport where I once instructed. The airplane was a Piper Navajo with two brand new piston engines, and shortly after takeoff both engines quit. Luckily the pilots had enough altitude to return to the field and land safely. Afterward we instructors learned valuable lessons from the mishap.

At our next staff meeting the chief mechanic distributed two unmarked fuel samples: one pure avgas, and the other the mixture removed from the afflicted Navajo. He challenged us to identify which was which. Despite lots of sniffing and color-checking, no one could tell the difference!

It turned out that the Navajo’s misfueling had resulted in a mixture containing about 10% jet fuel, which was enough to kill the engines, but not enough to cause detectable changes in the fuel color or odor. The mechanic then taught us the following tricks for ruling out the presence of jet fuel in avgas.

1) When sampling fuel from your piston aircraft, dribble a little on your fingertips. Avgas should rapidly dry completely away. But kerosene is oilier than gas, and if there’s some in the fuel you’ll likely be left with an oily residual on your fingers. (There’s evidence that gasoline absorbed through the skin may cause long-term health effects, so when possible proceed directly to the next step.)

2) You can further test the fuel using “paper chromatography,” which you probably learned in high school chemistry. Drip a drop of fuel on a clean paper towel. Straight avgas will evaporate leaving little or no visible residue. But in a mixture of gasoline and jet fuel, the kerosene migrates outward through the paper to the edge of the absorbed drop, and after the gas evaporates leaves a tell-tale ring. Knowing that could one day save your life.