Sport Pilot Talk

These are really nothing special, but we were at Copperhill with the grandkids (too young to fly yet) and Karen video'd these landings with my iPhone.


https://youtu.be/N4_ZYx5BR0Q


I think these are among the first I've seen taken from outside of the plane. The wind was spilling over those trees to the left of the runway, making it a bit gusty.

Which is my excuse for the little bounce on the first one!

.......

Very nice - text book keeping the nose wheel up to the last minute.

Here's a landing I made a few weeks ago at Clemson, SC. Skip to 5:30 to see the actual approach and landing. I was second in a flight of two. Winds were 10G19 with a crosswind from the right.

You can see the gusts keep pushing my nose off to the left, and then I bring it back in. You can't see that I was also working the throttle quite a bit, though you can see the prop changing speed.

The last gust hit just before touchdown, and pulled the nose out again. I corrected and just stayed with it, and the touchdown was actually very nice, gentle, and well aligned. But it was a lot of work, and ate up a good bit of runway. If I was not on the ground by that next turnoff, I probably would have gone around for another try.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRxtrlhKfuE

Nice landing.

But...

It looks to me one reason it was so prolonged was the amount of power you were carrying - if I'm reading the tach correctly.

I try to have the power back to idle by 50' or so - in your case around where the runway was under you. That shortens the amount of time you need to wrestle with the crosswind. It seems like you didn't pull back to idle until on the ground.

Not the end of the world - just trying to give constructive feedback!

FastEddieB wrote:Nice landing.

But...

It looks to me one reason it was so prolonged was the amount of power you were carrying - if I'm reading the tach correctly.

I try to have the power back to idle by 50' or so - in your case around where the runway was under you. That shortens the amount of time you need to wrestle with the crosswind. It seems like you didn't pull back to idle until on the ground.

Not the end of the world - just trying to give constructive feedback!

Yeah, I did have too much power in. The gusts made me want to keep speed up, when I really should have just made my approach normally and make all corrections with my feet. The nose attitude is pretty flat, where in the CT there's normally a pronounced nose-down attitude on approach. Ah well, they can't all be perfect, and it worked out okay. Given the conditions I'll take it.

I was actually hoping for feedback, since I knew as I was making the landing it wasn't "textbook".