On Oct 14, 9:44 pm, Kirk Ellis
wrote:
After dealing with the doctors and the FAA for the last six months I
finally got my class 3 renewed. It's been a year since I last flew.
and I can't believe how fast that time went by.

So this month I am getting back into the cockpit and in addition to
all of the standard maneuvers, I feel I especially need to work on
emergency off-field landings. I've had my ticket for over 8 years,
but financial concerns always seem to keep me from flying as much as I
would like. So I do not get to practice as much as I should. Which
brings me to the point of this post.

While doing emergency off-field landing practice I am still trying to
get some consistency in planning the descents from different altitudes
to be at 1000' agl heading downwind and abeam the touchdown point.
Seems like most of the time I was doing them last year, it was hit or
miss. (perhaps a poor choice of words).

Trying to put all the variables together to put the aircraft in the
right place at the right time on a consistent basis is still an
elusive endeaveor.

Do you experienced pilots just have a sixth sense about how to get the
aircraft exactly where it needs to be? Is it something you consciously
analyze throughout the descent or just instinctlvely do?

Kirk
PPL-ASEL

No it is not a sixth sense. It is the right combination of numbers and
sight picture. Sight picture only helps when you are fairly low (ie
500' AGL) and on final approach. During downwind or base you don't
have a good sight picture to tell whether you are going to be too high
or too low. You have to rely on your altimeter and use several
'target' altitudes until you turn final. I use 1000' for the abeam-
point, 800' for turning base and 600' for turning final. How you get
down to 1000' is completely up to you, but you have to be facing the
right direction at the right altitude. If you are doing 360's to lose
altitude you should know how much altitude is lost in one turn. You
have several tools at your disposal to control altitude such as flaps,
airspeed and slip. On a normal approach (with power on) I aim for
400-500' for turning final. The trick is not to nail everything
precisely, but to learn to identify deviations and make early
corrections so that you don't get too far off track. After turning
final, you do everything based on sight picture. Aim for 1/3 down the
runway, but when you get close and the landing is assured, slip or
flap aggressively to put it down on the numbers.