 Studios and the FAA Safety Team's National Resource Center located in the Sun and Fun Complex in Lakeland, Florida. I'm your host, Walt Shammel, and our next presenter says he is the world's oldest motorcycle racer. I don't know if that foot means anything about that, but he's also an ATP certified pilot with over 8,000 hours, a gold-sealed flight instructor. He owns a 172, and he joined the FAA in 1990 and is currently the Southwest Region Safety Team Manager. His topic today, a very appropriate one, is takeoffs and landings. Let's welcome Jim McElvane. Okay y'all, I'm glad he mentioned that because I know everyone is wanting to know what the heck is wrong with the leg and backpacks and all that sort of stuff, and I will tell you it involved intrigue, espionage, lovely women, good drinks, airplanes, and motorcycles. Speaking of motorcycles, how many of you in here have ridden a motorcycle? Okay hold your hands up, keep the hands up for just a moment, and y'all look around the room for just a second. This is going to be slightly off topic, but okay thank you. The previous presenters in here that we're talking about risk management, looking at different decisions we pilots make. If you looked around there was probably, I can't see very well out there, but I'm going to say probably 40% of the room, maybe a few more that have ridden motorcycles. If you look at the U.S. population, it is a tiny, tiny percentage. What does that tell you about pilots? We are risk takers, and that's a very interesting profile that we have. Mechanics have their own too, but I am working on a program that deals with just that, a pilot personality and why we make some of the decisions we do, and it is based on risk taking to a very large extent. And quite honestly, we enjoy taking those risks. So we're probably the very best people to fly airplanes, and at times we're the very worst people to fly airplanes. On to landings. If you look at my title and I really do think this is right. Anyone can do them, and they're not all that hard. It's just like taking off, except in reverse, and it is just a little bit harder. I do want this to be somewhat interactive as we go, so I am going to be asking you some questions periodically, and one way I do want to deal with this is by dealing with physics. Now when I say physics, you need not jump back and think it's going to be wave motion mechanics or something, but it is just the common, simple, everyday physics that are associated with flight. And I quite honestly think that we in aviation are not doing a particularly good job of teaching those physics. We teach people to monkey see, monkey do, fly the speed, do this, but they don't truly understand why, which hurts us then when we have to deal with something that's slightly different. So as we go through this, I am going to reference some physics occasionally, and I expect some participation from you, and you better take care of me, you're in trouble. STDs from the FAA, as I was preparing this presentation, I wanted some little acronym, and you're going to see this slide several times, but some little acronym that will make you think about three things that I'm going to talk about here we're going to dissect. But one thing you can do to help you with this then is you can say, well, I went to see the FAA at Sun and Vine, all I came away with was a case of the STDs. So see if that will help you remember it. And it is, as we go through this, we're going to talk about speed a great deal, and when I talk about speed, also use that S to slow down. So speed, slow it up, approach and land at the appropriate speed. Trim, this is any of you all that have been flight instructors, how many flight instructors I can see you in the room. If you've been a flight instructor, you know one of the most difficult things to do is to get a student to trim as they're approaching to land, they tend to get a death grip. And we all do this when you're learning something brand new, and it's scary, we get some tunnel vision and we forget some things. So trim is very, very essential, really smooths out and makes landings much better. And you need to trim throughout the approach and the landing. And then the last one, don't release the controls. A young lady from Air Safety Foundation was doing a takeoff and landing presentation in here just a couple of hours ago. Unfortunately, they went back and hit this one and had a nice video to show some of the ramifications of it. But we tend to fly an airplane down, touch it on the ground and say, I'm done with my part, I got it here and release the controls. And that's so often when the airplane heads for the weeds. So you're going to see this one again from time to time. And I hope you'll walk away with that acronym at the end of the day and work it in here next flight. Okay, landings, why are they so much work? And why so many accidents associated with them? Why are they avoided in practice so often? And then why even high time pilots involved? Any guesses? It's pretty simple. They're hard to do. They're just hard. And let's talk about why. If we talk takeoffs now, I'm not going to please believe me, I'm not making a lot of takeoffs. And we have seen a number of fatal accidents associated with takeoffs. But you've all also heard of an aircraft that got propped, and no one in the airplane, the airplane took off by itself and went away and crashed. And you know that if you just do reasonably well on a takeoff, you get the power in you stomp the rotors enough times, eventually it's going to fly. So we can pretty much get them off the ground in crews, not much to it. And in fact, as you take your friends out to wow them with your pilot skills, this is where you say, would you like to fly the airplane? It's pretty darn simple, pull back, push forward, turn left, turn right, not not a big issue. But when we get to the landing phase, my slide one more time. STD, don't forget it. When we get to the landing phase, think about what is taking place. And it is pretty darn miraculous that we do learn to do it as quickly as we do learn to do it. Everything is changing here. Speed is changing. The descent rate is changing throughout this this procedure. Angle alignment, traffic, weather as far as winds and maybe rain or whatever else may be associated with it. And all of that is coming to a specific spot on the pavement that you're trying to get to. And they're constantly changing. So every stick and rudder skill that we have comes into play with landings and we shouldn't make light of them. They are difficult. But they are conquerable. How about this saying, always maintain an altitude that in the event of an engine failure will allow you to make the runway? How many of you have heard it? How many of you believe it? It's probably not a bad idea. And I'm not going to discount it per se. It's a good idea. But what is a consequence of the mindset of staying in close to the runway? If you're staying in close enough at all times under any condition to get to the runway, it may actually cause you to stay very high throughout your approach, may or may not. And you know, of course, this is a wonderful idea. However, in a modern traffic pattern, we've got other airplanes there that isn't going to work out all the time. So just something for you to think about. How about this is kind of a little rule that you use. And that is configured and in a position that you can control the desired of the desired airspeed to a point on the surface with very slight pitch and power changes. And we'll talk about that a little more in depth momentarily. But this this is the golden deal. If you get to where you're flying a good stabilized approach in where you're having to make very, very little pitch or power changes, you got a darn good chance of landings coming out well. Okay, I'm sure some of you all have seen this slide on the internet. And I don't know where that is. But that is one of those runways that you darn sure better have everything work in your way, have the speed under control and put the airplane where you want it on that or be ready to go. And I guess it'd be kind of easy if you overran that you probably have your nice little area where you could pitch those over powered up and go. But on that glide path that we were just talking about. And this is putting it together. If you've got the airplane configured, that point and in fact, let's back that up. If you look at that point in the windscreen a third to halfway up what you're looking at in the windscreen slight power changes are maintaining your angle of descent as you go in. The aim point should only grow wider. That's an again, the young lady from Air Safety Foundation. They had they had a couple of slides in there showing a high and a low but ideally once you get out there, the airplane's turned it's pitched to that point. You've got it properly trimmed a low power setting or no power setting depending on what are no power, depending on how you've set it up. It should the numbers should only begin to get wider and wider or your aim point should only be getting wider and wider as you proceed in STDs one more time. Stick that in your brain. I heard a Honda commercial driving over here this morning. And there's somebody calling every cup that could you tell me give me the number of Honda dealer and they go back and they do it about 50 times. So I'm trying to imitate Honda. Okay, most landing mishaps are caused by too much what? Speed. Now, this is an interesting phenomenon. We're going to talk about some ways that this comes about. But one of it, one of the ways to combat is we instructors. Those of you that raise your hands or instructors a while ago, and you get a brand new student, and you got an airplane, you've got them coming in for their first landing or two, you don't know what they're going to do. You're working on them pretty hard. But how slow do you want them to be as they're coming in? We like ourselves alive. So we tend to build in a little margin, I think as instructors. So we're already teaching a student probably to approach a little too quickly. And so often speed is a factor and we'll talk about some issues with it. Okay, here comes the first of the physics. You got an airplane, you are you've rolled final, you're tracking in and you realize that you're a little bit high. So you reduce the power on the airplane and you pitch it down. I was supposed to have a great big nice styrofoam model in my buddy Dave Ebe bought this good looking jet with no no pilot in it. So you'll have to do with that. But if you do pitch the airplane down physically now aerodynamically, what happens? What do you do to angle of attack? Okay, you're decreasing angle of attack. When you decrease angle of attack, what you get rid of drag, and the speed starts coming up in the airplane. So we've got we're high, we pitch that little darling over begin to accelerate. You come in very, very high now, depending on whether or not you you control the aircraft well or not, what may result in coming in is bringing the airplane level, saying, Hey, I should be on the ground by now, but I'm not and then putting the airplane on the ground or not compensating coming in, getting touching the runway and getting a skip. Once it skips aerodynamically, what happens to the airplane? Got your power back, comes in touches the ground and pitches up. Okay, we've got a decrease in speed because we just banged it on the ground. We've got the power off, touch to your friction has scrubbed off some speed and it's pitched up increased angle of attack, and that increases drag. So now we've got an airplane that was too fast. Initially, come in hit, pitching up, and it's slowing. Where did we want to go? We want to go down. So what's a natural reaction? Pitch the airplane over. Once we pitch the airplane over, get that wonderful little phenomenon, a phenomenon called porpoise. And my help me flipper often we wish we had some kind of help when the airplane does come in, touch in, pitches up, aerodynamic drag slow and push the nose back over. What's the first thing to hit the ground on that front gear is going to touch in. So as it touches in, banging the back end down, pitching the airplane up again. Where do you want to go? Go down, pitch the airplane over again. Lucky. How many does it take before the nose gear comes out? About the third one. It's a magic number. Three's always tend to show up in mathematics and in the world. And in airplanes, it's usually the third one when it comes back down, it takes the nose gear out from under it. If you're good enough and you come in, you're really hot, but you're fairly good or you're really lucky. And the airplane actually touches down at high speed. What do you have? High speed tricycle. And you all know how stable a tricycle is from your youth. Run along there and turn a tricycle. And what does it want to do? It's wanting to high side out. If you have a crosswind thrown into that, then get the wing, the wind up under that wing, then you're definitely headed for the weeds. So fast, F A S T, not F A A S T, has shown up again and again and again in landing accident. So I'm going to try to convince you now slow the airplane up a little bit. What is the right speed? The manufacturer's speed that they've got posted in in the book, or the good old use the 1.3 times VSO or whatever your stall configuration is, what's the best depends kind of depends. Now I'm not going to tell you not to do what the manufacturer said. But I do want you to think about what's in the manufacturer's manual and why it might be there. So as we roll into this, I picked one that's kind of a kind of an extreme example, if you will, to make my point. Some of the old Piper Arrows, an old retractable Cherokee, had a book, now this is miles per hour, but it had a book recommended approach speed of 90 miles an hour. If you take that and buy a book now, if you look at the calculations on it, as far as stall, that gross weight this airplane should stall at an indicated air speed, fully configured should stall at 58 miles an hour indicated. If we do, now let's go over to the 1.3. If we take 1.3 times the 58, it's 75 miles an hour. So what is that? You see the discrepancy in it. The manufacturer's got you got you pretty hot coming in. Now, good, bad, or otherwise, that's the figure. Again, I'm not telling you where to fly it, I'm just telling you there are some discrepancies that you need to consider. So what is an ideal speed? And y'all, we're going to have a little bit of math here, and it's going to look terrible initially, and I hate when they say, yeah, you take a half the tire pressure times, whatever the heck, and it's going to skid. But when we get through this, you just put it in a nice little simple stick in your brain, and it's really not too difficult. If you do take the 1.3 times the stall speed for its configuration, now no flaps, partial flaps, whatever, however you typically land, you need to compensate that for less than gross weight. Remember, those figures that one, all of those figures in the book are all at gross weight. So you're taking this 1.3 times stall as configured, and then you're going to compensate it for the lighter weight. And of course, you remember that if there are gusts involved, you're going to use a half of the gust and kick the speed up slightly. Little more math. If you take the actual weight of the aircraft and divide it by the gross weight, that will give you percentage of gross. Nice simple, simple mathematics, and I gave you a little example to the side of 2000. You're going to land the airplane that's going to weigh 2000 pounds, the gross on its 2500. So if you divide 2000 by 2500, you get the 80% of gross is what the airplane's weighing. If you take that 100% gross weight and minus that percent of gross weight, 80%, it's 20% under gross weight. If you take half of that and reduce your stall speed by that amount, 10% in this case, that gets you back down to a much more reasonable speed. So you're just compensating for the gross weight itself. And here's the one example, and these are the same figures from the arrow that I had up there earlier. Got 2500 pounds, but you're landing at 2000 pounds. Divide 2000 by the 2500, gives you 80%. Gross is 100% of the weight, so you're at 80%, gives you 20% under gross. Take half of that and multiply that times the speed, and that will give you that the error, not an error, the compensation you need. So in this case, it was 75 miles an hour. You remember from the other slide, 10% less than that, because you were 20% less in gross, 7.5 miles an hour. Make it easy on us and build in our little fudge factor. We'll use 7. So really, instead of 90 miles an hour in the book, or 75 with the 1.3, a much safer and better speed for getting the airplane in there would be 68 miles an hour. Comprende? Okay. And really, again, let's forget all the computations. Just think about it. This really, if you throw this away and make it simple, just how much lighter? How much lighter is the airplane than gross? And do that compensation. It's really pretty simple. You can, in most cases, you could do it in your head. I would recommend, if you want to start looking at these and trying some of this out, I would look at the way you configure the airplane normally. I'm flying with half fuel and two people, and you can set yourself up a schedule, and you can have a couple of three speeds. Flying by myself, a couple of people in it half fuel, and that way you don't have to be competent. You won't be computing that in the air. You'll just have a little card and you're saying, like the airlines do, computing a landing weight and the speed, then you just look at your little card and say, oh, the way I'm configured today, I should be closer to this than that other speed. And that gets the speed downwards a little, a little better. Up. STDs again. Okay. Putting, putting what we talked about together at this point, with our runway out there and our aim point, if we've got, this is where we ought to have the airplane, all of these factors that we've mentioned, we've got the speed down where it should be. We've got the airplane configured as it should be and we've got the airplane trimmed so that you can let go of it momentarily and the airplane is still going to fly to that spot on the ground. STDs, if I get not much more across today, please start working that trim. You can't believe the number of accidents that are due to an aircraft being trimmed nose down on, on that final approach and getting in close to the runway. Again, if we think about the physics involved, if we have an aircraft that's approaching at X airspeed and as we begin to slow the airplane down as we're coming in, if we don't compensate in some manner as we slow the airplane, if it's loaded within CG, it's going to become more and more nose heavy throughout the approach. Compensate for it. If you don't, you're going to find yourself, and as a flight instructor, guarantee. You'll see your student over there. They're busy. They're scared to death. They're working and you can just watch the arm. You can see the vein starting to pump up in their arm. I used to, when I'd catch them out early on a, on a final, I'd say, let go of the yoke. No, no, no, no. Let go of the yoke. And of course, if they had too much, they're not going to do it. But it's something you've got to get yourself, and if you're a flight instructor over, that airplane needs to be trimmed all the way down to round out so that any time, if you lose concentration, the airplane is going to continue flying to the spot you want it to go on the runway. Okay, the dreaded crosswind. And promise you we'll pull all this together. We talk about speed, and there are a lot of accidents due to speed. Crosswinds are often involved with landing accidents. And crosswinds, depending on where you live, you get to fly them a lot, or you don't get to fly much. Lucky and I are from North Texas, and I guarantee you, we get to fly a lot of crosswinds there. And typically, students coming out of a windy environment like that, pretty good crosswind flyers. So let's look at it. And this is where I really want you to, this is that mirror, when the title of this talk was, there's nothing to landing, it's just like taking off, except it's in reverse. If you're a flight instructor, or you, pilots, please think about this mirror image. It's extremely important in a crosswind takeoff and landing. So a taxi, we won't get into taxi, but you know, you use the old memory device of climbing to, dive away from, in a conventional gear aircraft anyway, when you're taxiing out to compensate for the wind. But you've got the airplane around now, and the airplane is lined up on the runway. For the sake of everyone, let's say we have a fairly light, right crosswind. What are you going to do with ailerons? Okay, going to roll them to the right, and like you stole my, stole my other question, how far are you going to roll them? It's a light crosswind, all the way to the right. As you accelerate down the runway, as the, the, your controls become more effective, with ailerons rolled all the way right, the left wing is going to become lighter, because that's got, you've got the aileron down in it, you know all your cords, you're getting more lift of that left wing, and it's trying to lift the airplane. Well, as you feel it begin to lift, you just back out some of that aileron control. How much rudder do you use? Just enough to keep the airplane going straight down the runway. So we've got, we're sitting on the runway, we've got a right crosswind, we've got the ailerons roll completely in to that right crosswind. We begin to power it up, airplane starts traveling down, we're maintaining a center line with, with our rudders, maintaining the, as, the pressure on the right aileron in the airplane, but as we feel the airplane wanting to lift, we're gradually backing out a little bit of the aileron. And I'm sure all of you all have had the experience of keeping the aileron in a little too long, and that wing will actually lift, kind of scare the whiz out of you some. But you're wanting to back it out very, very gradually. So same as we're going out, remember now, mirror image is what we're getting to because this is important on the landing. As the ailerons are gradually rolling out, as we're bringing up speed, probably going to become, require less rudder, as you're getting more efficiency out of the rudder, as the airflow comes up over it, so slightly changing those control positions. Until the speed, when we reach the speed for lift off, here's, you might want to make a little, a compensation here. If you do have a strong crosswind, or a moderate crosswind, where you're having to have a lot of cross control in it, when you lift off, remember, some of your lift is being diverted to a horizontal component, so that's going to raise your stall speed slightly. So on our strong crosswind takeoff, you're probably going to want to keep the airplane on the ground a little longer, and that doesn't mean with a lot of pressure forward, just enough pressure to keep the airplane there. If you get too much pressure, of course, you'll start the wheel-barrowing of it. At lift off, you should have been coming out on the ailerons, maintaining your alignment, as you bring the airplane off the ground, it should weather vane in, if you allow it to then, you've lost the friction of the earth, weather vane into the wind, you can take your controls out and fly the airplane out in a crab, if you will. Typically the way everyone does it. Alright, the landing, and guarantee you, people that don't do a lot of crosswind, no, that's not fair. Every one of us in here, if you're approaching the airport, I don't care how good you are, it's a pretty testy day. It's a good, pretty good crosswind, little gust, associated with it. How much farther do you get up on the edge of the seat, than that nice, calm, easy, easy day? We all do it. So it does put some pressure on, and rightly so. We're going to have to work. Nothing to it, and we're going to reverse what we did on the way out. Here, the young lady again this morning said, I don't want to get into that, because we'll roll off in an argument. Crab or kick, I don't want to get into either. I was speaking to a group a few months ago, and the one guy said, well tell me this, the FAA said you got to have a stabilized approach. So how can an approach be where you're flying down in a crab, and then you all of a sudden kick this all out. That's unstabilized. Well, I can't argue. I mean, I can't argue with him, but I'm a crab and kick person, and I just don't like the other method. So whichever way you get the airplane to the runway, as long as you're getting to the runway appropriate speed, got the airplane trimmed, we're doing well. Okay, remember as you're coming down now, here's the mirror image. Remember, on our climb out, as you were picking up speed, you were having to roll the control slowly out, as you got more efficiency and air flow over them. Here we are bringing this airplane in, and we're slowing the airplane. So you start in as you're coming, as you're flying down, and you've got, let's say you're flying it down in a cross-control situation. With your airspeed up, as you turn final and start in, not taking too much to hold it there. But as you begin to slow the airplane, you're going to have to start increasing the controls. And here's another one, flight instructors in the room will verify. A lot of us tend to build our own crosswinds. We've got a little bit of crosswind, so we come around and roll some aileron in there, too much aileron. Then what do you got to do? The airplane is flying over here. Well, we need more rudder, so we get some rudder in there. Oh, pretty soon we've got full lock cross-control coming down in a 10-knock crosswind. So be careful, only what you need for it. So these controls, as we're sliding down now, we're gradually taking them out as the speed comes down, just like we did on the climb out. Pitch on this exactly the same. We're going to fly the same, same pitch as you make the round out. Speed is going to be very close, except remember what I said. Because you're going to be in a cross-control situation, some of your horizontal lift is going to be stealing that vertical lift. So you may want another five knots or so on that. Touchdown, and y'all here, another one you got a haul away from here today, when you touch down, think about the takeoff. Lucky said we were going to start the roll with full aileron in it, no matter what the crosswind was. When you're landing in a crosswind and you touch the airplane down, where are the controls going to go? Continue in, remember you're slowing. As it slows, you're losing efficiency. You lose that efficiency, the airplane is going to weather vane or move across the runway. So once you've touched it down, you're going to begin to increase, increase, increase until they're locked in exactly mirror image the way you took off. My son, I taught my son to fly, then he went away to the military and flew in the military, and he is one of the best dang crosswind landers, because I just beat him up over that, and we just, we were out in a 210 last week before, when I still had a cast on my foot, and he was my rudder guy, and he beat me up a little because he didn't think I'd locked him enough, so do work on that one. That roll out again, keep them coming in until if you were to stop on the runway, you're in exact same configuration as when you first put the power in. One other, stay off the brakes. I used to fly, well I'm still flying an F-90, but I flew an F-94 of the FAA for a number of years as an instructor pilot. They have very, very touchy little brakes on an F-90 King Air. If you even hint that your feet are on them, you'll flat the tires when you come in. So it was a really good habit for me to develop and to beat up my attendees. Don't have your feet where you can touch the brakes no matter what. It's a good practice in your chair key, your 172, your 140, whatever it may be. Slide your feet down so you cannot touch the brakes on takeoff or landing, and you'll be amazed at how much nicer it is. If you ever reach up and stab a break, it's going to lurch the airplane. When it does, you're going to quickly compensate by stabbing the other one, and then you get this nice little dance going down the runway. So off the brakes. Okay, STDs one more time. Speed, slow it up. Trim, have it so that you just bounce in your hand. If you're an instructor, work on your students. I want to see you bouncing your hand on that yoker stick throughout the approaching landing, and don't release those controls. Okay, test. We'll run through the test real quick, and I wish I could just pick on, I wish I knew a thousand names, but let me just, let me throw the questions out and let's see. Why are so many, why are landings involved so much in accidents? That one's the first thing. They're just hard to do. They're just hard compared to the rest of the flight regimes. What factors responsible for most poor landings? Someone has to give me that one. Okay, too much speed, thank you. True or false? Once in the pattern, you should always remain within gliding distance of the runway. Maybe, maybe, and you may not get to. What is important is that you have the airplane positioned, configured, and at the appropriate speed to glide without significant changes in pitch or power to the points you want it to go to. Three possible results of speed after arriving at the runway? Skip, porpoise, flatten fast. Here goes my tricycle. Proper speed for your final approach. Now this is that big mathematical thingy, but you do not need to kill yourself with it, but it is 1.3 times the stall speed as configured and compensation is made for less than gross weight. And remember just the difference between, in percentage, between gross and actual, take half of that, take that from your speed, and that'll get you a little closer. Okay, during landing you encounter a lull and have to use power to correct what's a possible consequence. You got the airplane, it's doing good, you're coming in, get a lull and the airplane sinks. You powered up rapidly, what are you going to do with the power up too? Pitch. So, pitch and power, now what have you got to deal with? It's non-stabilized approach now, you're going to have to get the airplane up, get it back, configured for landing. What's a real good idea when that happens? Go around. If you've got the runway, you can power it up, get it back to level flight, get your, get your sight picture again, bring it back in and start over. Good idea to quit and go around. The, where you can't touch the brakes, work on that one, slide them down so you can't touch them. They'll only get you in trouble until you've got the airplane slowed. And I know in the King Air, anything, anything above about 60 to 80 knots along in there, if you touched it, you just, I mean you're wasting your time anyway, you've got to get it slowed and the weight on the wheels, your aerodynamic drag is much better than the brakes. Okay, y'all please think through this one. You've got a steady crosswind from the right, explain your control input and speed management for the landing and the rollout. Remember, I always like to pick on people when we're doing this, but y'all are in the dark. You're coming in and you're slowing the airplane, you've got a little right aileron in it to this right crosswind to fly the airplane over on centerline and you're maintaining that since you're flying over to the left, you're maintaining that alignment with a little left rudder. As the airplane begins to slow and you're going to round the airplane out, as it's slowing, you're going to have to continue to roll more and more aileron in it as it slows. When you touch it down, it's going to slow rapidly. That's really going to get rid of those aerodynamic forces over your controls. If you don't roll all of the control in it as it slows, that's going to let that left, the right wing in this case, get more left, lift and the airplane will often head for the weeds then. Okay, y'all passed that I'm sure. Everybody got the answer, correct? And now just a real fast review, landings are hard. I hope you will practice them and don't. So often, there was a statistic given earlier about a private pilots. There's a relatively low rate of accidents for pilots in training, but they become private pilots, they get out and it doubles very, very quickly. I think we tend to get out and get away from our instructors and each time we encounter something that's more difficult, we back away. And what's more scary than a crosswind landing? So what days do we pick to go out and rent an airplane in practice? Usually calm, nice days. So turn that around, make yourself work on those landings. Begin final descent from altitude and it'll enable you to reach in that. Remember again, if everything's going well, you should be sitting back fat, dumb and happy, a little bit of control input, trimming the airplane. Power is set, low power typically, gliding to that point on the runway. As you bring the airplane, as you round the airplane out and reduce that power, if you're at the appropriate speed, remember it's going to pay off right in there. And when it touches down, gets the friction and slows, what's going to happen if you jerk back on the yoke? Nothing. It won't fly anymore. It's below stall speed. That's where people are getting in trouble, is the airplane has still got too much speed when it touches in. So if you've got that, got in that configuration, doing well. Remember the trim thing, all the way down and throughout. Only issue with trim is if you have a very high horsepower airplane and you've continued to trim it and trim it and trim it and have to go around, remember if you full power it, now you've got it trimmed, nose up, the airplane will tend to pitch up. There are some aircraft that are so powerful you can't overcome that pitch. So be sure, now again you've already got speed, so you're probably not going to have to go full power in this go around. So you're just going to bring up the power you need, change your pitch, reconfigure and fly the airplane out. But if you had to immediately go full power, that is a consideration. Remember that computation that I gave you, at least go out and work with your airplane and get a speed that's more appropriate than landing at gross weight. Back to the basics of rudder and nailer on, this is in the STDs, do not back those controls out once you land, increase your control, whether or not that's crosswind. Don't use brakes on initial landing or take off, keep your feet so you can't touch the brakes. If all of these aren't working out, use that old go around. We don't use enough go around, so do please practice those. Not this last flight, but about three weeks ago we were lined up and landing at Kickapoo Airport in Wichita Falls. On short final, there was a young lady, a German student, from the sound of her voice who just pulled right out in front of us at the last second. My son was with me again. We just powered up, just eased over to the right of the runway, reconfigured the airplane, didn't have to go full power, just enough to make it fly and went on around. So practice them periodically, it does happen. All right, this is other wording, but it's STD. I truly believe the landing accidents would decrease drastically if appropriate control input was held after landing. Aircraft were at the appropriate airspeed for approaching landing. You've got to slow them up a bit and the aircraft is always in trim. Okay, please give me a question or comment. Oh y'all, that's a voice I didn't want to hear here today. He's the same guy that got my plastic airplane. Dave E.B., Colonel Dave E.B., a great flyer. He's horrible to go out with though I will tell you. He's got a beautiful restored J3. I've been flying it some with him. He's hard core. If you make the most beautiful landing in the world in that OJ3, his head will bob slightly. No, his head will bob forward just slightly. And you've got to look hard to see it. If it was really terrible, then it goes to the left just slightly. And just a hard core. But last night we were having a martini and he said, you need to tell folks that the nose wheel on a Cessna 172 is for taxi only. All other times you should be flying it as a tail wheel. If you think about some of the things that I just discussed here, that's exactly what you're doing is you're flying the airplane like a tail wheel airplane. You're getting it slowed down to the point that when it touches in, it's configured and touches in, it will not fly. If any of you have flown tail wheels or you do fly tail wheels, you will not bang a tail wheel airplane in like you can your 172 and stay. You will wish you hadn't done that in the tail wheel airplane. So that is why I really, I know Dave would agree, tail wheel folks make great, great aviators about anything they step into. If you take a tricycle gear person, they take some work in a tail wheel airplane because we're just so lazy. And that's the way I started to flying a 152 172 is then I started flying a a super cub with a civil air patrol and that was an eye opener and really taught me how to fly an airplane. Additional question or comment? Yes, I'm lucky. Things we're seeing, we pick up a lot of action on airplanes and I've counseled several people on it, but one of the things we're seeing more and more is that we're seeing instructors out there in a retractable gear airplane whether it be a singular or twin, shooting, touching, goes. Bad, bad idea. We find them on the belly, they're trying to dump the flaps and go back around. That's not a place to try to do that. Let me, Lucky's statement and y'all, this is Lucky Lou. He works with Dallas Air Salvation, one of the premier companies that goes out and picks up wrecked airplanes. Lucky is a heck of a resource on issues with airplanes and of course often it's no mechanical issues going back and looking how we pilots to up a good airplane. His comment is instructors going out and doing touching goes or we pilots going out and doing touching goes in a complex aircraft. We actually did that some in King Air's years ago in the FAA which I think everyone has quit doing now and I will tell you as an IP, I let a student, I'm not a student, another FAA inspector get the airplane back off the ground, see 90 King Air with full flaps in it and there's, I agree with Lucky, there's just too much to do once you put that airplane on the ground to reach them, to change the flaps and then go back out again and while you're moving all that around remember here's the airplane, the tricycle going down the runway and that's where folks get in trouble. Pulling up a gear lever, losing control of the airplane, taking it to the weeds, getting off the ground with full flaps and the airplane pops up but then won't fly so yeah, take the time to get off the runway, reconfigure and go again, touching those are just a very dangerous thing. Are we doing to save money? I know but gosh, they're just, they're dangerous. Yes sir. The normal landing once the airplane is fully on the ground, does that, you say you should keep, you should say you keep the, a full aileron after you've landed and then releasing the ailerons once the airplane is fully controlled on the ground. Absolutely, if you will, with a crosswind, yeah, if you will with a crosswind, continue to roll the ailerons into the wind after landing until they're locked fully in, that's really the way you should be decelerating down to a stop or to your turnoff point on the runway and think about the physics again. If you have, if you've got the aircraft and it's on the ground, just because it's on the ground, it's still moving, the controls still have some aerodynamic effect or you've got wind crossing it. Well, if you roll those ailerons out, as the airplane is still tracking down the runway, here's your upwind wing or your, your, your upwind, the upwind wing is going to be getting more lift than your downwind wing and it wants to lift the airplane. If the airplane lifts, you get a gust and it lifts, it'll tend to pivot and then you've got issues going on. So as the airplane touches in, continue to roll the ailerons in as it decelerates until they're fully locked and remember like, like you said at the beginning, I don't care how much crosswind you've got, start your takeoff roll fully locked into the wind, gradually coming out. When you finish and you land, gradually rolling those in until it's fully locked and remember, fly the elevators the same way. You want to load that nosewheel with a lot of weight. So you should be taking off pretty much, no, not always full aft, but with the elevator back, full aileron in the crosswind, gradually decreasing that as you lift off when you land, it should end up in the same position. If you're not doing this, y'all are going to be amazed at how stable the airplane is when you put it on the ground. If you'll continue to roll that in, it stays rock solid instead of moving back and forth on the center line, trying to dump you. Additional question. If not, please remember the STDs you got from the FAA. If you will slow the airplane to the appropriate speed, and if you'll keep it trimmed throughout the approach and the landing so that any time you can let go of the yoke or at least bounce your hands loosely on it, you don't have to make those strong, strong control inputs or at least hold a strong input while your attention gets diverted. And then last thing is just that question, don't release the controls, increase the controls as the airplane slows. Even without a crosswind, once you land and the airplane is slowing, you should never have dumped that yoke forward. You've touched it in, you should be increasing the yoke as it slows till the yoke's full back with a wind right down the runway. You'll be amazed at how stable it is. Y'all, thank you very, very much for you, for your interest in this program. Remember the STDs. Thank you. Well, that was pretty good, Jim. Did you say takeoff and landings? Yes, sir. I think you got it backwards. It ought to be landings and takeoff. You know, we have a lot of problem with landings because it takes a lot of skill, a lot of judgment. And we're tired. We've been flying for four hours. We got to do the landings first and then take off last. Well, if you've got any questions or comments, come up and see, Jim. And if you don't have any, tomorrow morning, 8.30, we have another presentation right here. And remember, it's cool, it's calm, and it's comfortable. Join us again. For another safety program. And for those who want credit, don't forget to go out that back door and around to the trailer, and they'll set you up at faasafety.gov. So you get credit, Wings credit for this presentation. All right. Thanks very much. So long. Don't get excited. I still have your crutches. And that'll be $10 a crutch.