Really Learning How to Land

I’ve gotten really behind in my posts. In my last post, I talked about how I wasn’t sure who my long-term instructor would be, that Jamie was paired up with me, but he had an expiration date. Since he was moving to only work Monday to Friday, ultimately I’d have to find a new instructor. As of this writing in early October, that has been happily solved, but it’s a story for another day. In the meantime, I had flown two lessons with Jamie, and I felt like with him, I had a solid IP who would push me to get better.

I’ve also stopped numbering my lessons. After the fits and starts of July and the first half of August, I really got into a groove where I’ve been steadily flying on average 3 times per week. As I write this, I’m looking at my logbook, and I have a couple pages of entries. We’re now at a point where I think of total hours I have rather than number of lessons.

Speaking of lessons, the flight school’s syllabus has 10 lessons to get to the Stage 1 check. The first couple were about flying straight-and-level, turns, climbs, descents. Later lessons covered ground reference maneuvers, stalls, steep turns, emergency procedures. This would all culminate in two big events: a stage check and my first solo. The stage check is where another instructor runs you through everything you’ve learned, to make sure you’re a safe pilot. The solo is where you finally get to fly the airplane without an instructor.

Maybe there are people out there who can achieve the necessary level of competence in only 10 lessons, but I’m not one of them. The problem was my inability to land the aircraft safely. When I started flying with Jamie, I made it clear to him right away that I couldn’t figure out how to land properly. We worked up a plan for the next 8 lessons. The plan was simple: land the airplane a lot. When I say a lot, during these 8 lessons, I took off and landed the airplane 57 times. Much of this was just flying in circles at airports. Mostly Renton, my home-base, but a few others as well. Multiple people have told me that it takes 100 landings to feel like you “have it”. I don’t know if that’s the definite, exact number, but it’s quite a few.

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this already, but learning to land is a frustrating thing. You take off, and stay in the airport pattern, which involves flying an upwind leg to 700ft above the field, turning crosswind to 1000ft above the field, turning downind (running parallel to the runway), starting the descent abeam the numbers, turning base, turning final, and then landing. Done as tightly as possible, flying the pattern from takeoff to just before landing takes 5-7 minutes. I’ve gotten pretty damn good at this. The entire process has prescribed speeds and altitudes, and I can reliably hit them every time. Then, you go to put the airplane on the ground, where you round-out, flare, and touch-down. That process takes about 10 seconds. You then takeoff, run through the pattern again for 5-7 minutes, just so you can repeat that oh-so-important 10 seconds again. I want the video game version, where when you do poorly, you hit the Reset button and you start again just where you screwed up. (In case you’re wondering, I have practiced flights in the flight sim I use on my PC. While it helped to a certain point, it doesn’t really help with the timing and feel of an actual landing in an actual airplane).

A good friend, who’s also a pilot, gave me some advice on learning to fly. “Ricky”, he said and yes, he’s one of about 4 people on the planet who gets away with calling me that, “it’s not that hard. It just takes a lot of reps, especially when you start”. I’ve found this advice to be useful. Learning how to land just takes a lot of reps. It’s filled with little moments that give you hope, but mostly frustration. On August 29th, Jamie and I decided to head down to Auburn (S50) for touch and go practice. On my 2nd landing that night, Jamie didn’t have to help. He was completely hands off. That was a first. We immediately put the power back in and took off, and Jamie was screaming congrats and trying to fist bump while I was trying to control the airplane on the climb. My next 3 landings were terrible, and he had to help again.

On September 2nd, Jamie and I flew again, and did some stall and steep turn practice. We then did 6 laps in the pattern. They mostly sucked. On the 3rd, I wound up flying with another instructor (Cory). We did some ground reference, then some more laps in the pattern. They mostly sucked too. On September 4th, I finally got some reason for optimism. I flew with Jamie, did some more ground reference, and 3 more landings. They didn’t completely suck. At this point, Jamie was no longer working weekends. On September 8th, I flew with Blake, and on the 9th, I flew with Troy. By this point, most of my landings were hands off. And I was getting really bored of flying in circles. 7 minutes of boredom followed by 10 seconds of excitement. Repeat ad nauseum.

A quick aside from the day I flew with Blake. The weather got really bad that day. It was fine for us, because we were going to stay in the pattern, below the clouds. However, everyone else decided to stay in the pattern too. Once the pattern gets busy, with too many airplanes taking off and landing together, there’s no room for new planes to take off. You get the situation in the picture above, where there were 5 or 6 planes waiting to take off. Once we got sequenced into the pattern, it was busy, where I was frequently cleared to touch-and-go as “number four”. One of those laps in the pattern it got really tight, and the tower instructed us to turn a 360 when we were about to make our base turn. Blake told me he had never seen that before. It was a learning experience.

I’m still not sure what the “key” was in learning the landings. I’m always looking for the tip or the trick that allows me to distill what I’ve learned into something simple. I’m not sure it exists for learning how to land. I think my pilot buddy was right. It takes reps. You have to learn the sight picture. You have to learn the timing of the round-out and flare. You have to feel the airplane sink. You have to learn that the reason you flare is you’re trying to keep the airplane flying, keeping it off the ground as long as possible. You don’t learn this by reading a book. You learn it by doing it over and over and over again.

My last two flights with Jamie were September 11th and 12th. I took some time off work to do some long flights. On the 11th, we did some maneuvers practice, then landed 6 times at Renton. The 12th, though, was amazing. We did an aiport tour of the Northwest. We did landings at Auburn, Pierce County, Tacoma Narrows, and Renton. Thirteen landings in all. Not only was it super fun to travel around, all that landing practice made me feel like I finally had it. At the end of this trip, I said goodbye to Jamie (sniff), and scheduled my Stage 1 check.

I started using a separate GPS device, in partnership with ForeFlight on my iPad to record my flights. Ok, to record some flights, because often times, I forget to hit the doggone Start Recording button. Anyway, I captured the last flight I mentioned, and exported it to Google Earth. The view of that is below. I know I’m a serious nerd, but I think this is pretty damn cool.