Touch and Goes versus Full Stop Taxi Backs

On Fri, 16 Sep 2005 06:59:16 -0700, unicate wrote:

it is a safety
precaution, because their runway is only 1900 feet long.

Now THAT is short! I find it a bit difficult to imagine a flight
school operating from such a runway, or that the airport would not ban
T&G's on its own, quite apart from the danger to students.

My home airport is 2600 feet, and I have met 172 drivers who refuse to
land there because they aren't STOL equipped!


-- all the best, Dan Ford

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"Kevin Dunlevy" wrote in message
...
[...]
Should I force myself to always do full stop taxi backs, even thought
other
pilots and tower personnel seem to prefer that I do touch and goes?

IMHO, it depends on what you want to practice.

I am of the opinion that early in primary training, touch & go's are
counter-productive. Much better to stop, get off the runway, and have the
instructor debrief the circuit. As others have pointed out, touch & go's
don't allow you to practice the full start to finish of a takeoff, circuit,
and landing.

On the other hand, eventually one is actually pretty decent at landing, and
may want to practice variations on the theme. No-flap approaches, short
approaches, etc. In this situation, the interesting part is the stuff that
happens while you're in the air, and touch & go's allow you to maximize the
time spend in the air.

I also find touch & go's useful for brushing some of the rust off, as the
skill that fades earliest for me is the smooth and precise use of the flight
controls; a full-stop landing won't really help me much in that regard, but
getting a high ratio of air-to-ground time in does. Touch & go's are just
one part of a whole slew of exercises one can do to remind oneself how to
control the airplane.

As in nearly everything, there's a time and place for everything. Touch &
go's aren't inherently bad, but there certainly are situations in which they
aren't useful, or may actually reduce the usefulness of the training. Just
keep in mind what your goal is, and how best to achieve it, and that will
guide you with respect to when a touch & go is useful or not.

Pete

IMO, if you are already a confident certificated pilot and flying a
nosewheel plane, T&Gs provide more "multitasking" and therefore more fun
and skill building. If you are flying a tailwheel, there is more value
to full stop, especially in X-wind, as well as T&G.

Kevin Dunlevy wrote:


Should I force myself to always do full stop taxi backs, even thought other
pilots and tower personnel seem to prefer that I do touch and goes? Kevin
Dunlevy

Reasons for not doing T&G's are widely posted in this thread. Here are
two reasons to consider practicing them in any airplane you fly:

1) If you have to abort your landing for ANY reason, being up-to-speed
(no pun intended) on your T&G's is invaluable. Think of a deer or a
bird that might wander on the runway at night that you don't see until
it's almost too late. The T&G practice can come in real handy. Same
thing for go-arounds.

What do I do? It depends on the situation. I practice full-stop
landings, touch-and-go's, stop-and-go's, and any other legal (& safe)
approach/landing techniques I can learn.

2) IIRC, currency and recent experience requirements require full-stop
landings. I know this to be fact for student pilot night landings, but
don't recall what it is for me now that I'm a private pilot. Doesn't
matter since I would practice full-stop landings to be sure I meet the
letter of the law anyway.

My 2-cents. Happy Monday!

Chris



Kevin Dunlevy wrote:
A CFI I had lunch with last week suggested I should always do full stop taxi
backs instead of touch and goes when practicing landings. I've frequently
done touch and goes for about an hour when I wanted to do some quick flying,
but I tried his suggestion. I also ran into an old AOPA Flight Training
magazine that had an article suggesting full stop taxi backs instead of
touch and goes. I generally keep the pattern in tight and can do ten touch
and goes in about .8 or .9 Hobbs depending on the amount of other traffic. I
prefer towered airports for this practice, because there is another set of
eyes looking for aircraft.

Should I force myself to always do full stop taxi backs, even thought other
pilots and tower personnel seem to prefer that I do touch and goes? Kevin
Dunlevy

"Chris G." nospam@noemail wrote in message
eenews.net...
[...]
2) IIRC, currency and recent experience requirements require full-stop
landings.

Full-stop required for night and tailwheel. Otherwise, touch & go is
acceptable.

What's the difference between "currency" and "recent experience"?

I know this to be fact for student pilot night landings

Technically, that's the aeronautical experience requirements for the
*Private Pilot* certificate. Done, of course, while one is a Student Pilot,
a Recreational Pilot, or a Sport Pilot.

But you knew that, right.

Pete

Peter Duniho wrote:
What's the difference between "currency" and "recent experience"?

It's my Monday... you're taxing my brain. I can't remember the
specific differences (if any) but, for some reason I think I was meaning
currency wrt your BFR and recent experience to the 90-day/3 landings
rule(s). In any event, I'll go look it up.

I know this to be fact for student pilot night landings


Technically, that's the aeronautical experience requirements for the
*Private Pilot* certificate. Done, of course, while one is a Student Pilot,
a Recreational Pilot, or a Sport Pilot.

But you knew that, right.



Of course!

Chris

On Sun, 11 Sep 2005 22:56:28 -0700, "Chris G." nospam@noemail wrote:

2) IIRC, currency and recent experience requirements require full-stop
landings

That's true for taildraggers.


-- all the best, Dan Ford

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I am not a big fan of touch and goes for students, since they tend to
reinforce bad habits. You practice the same bad habit over and over and
pretty soon it becomes very difficult to correct it. Nevertheless, I
often don't have much of a choice.

The tower at Tacoma Narrows has a nasty habit of keeping you waiting
for up to 20 minutes when things are busy. That strongly discourages
taxi-backs. I prefer an uncontrolled field when first teaching takeoff
and landing, but then you start building up commuting costs. Granted,
Bremerton is close by, but it is usually pretty crowded with flight
students from Boeing Field. The only real alternative is Shelton, which
is 20 minutes away. That takes 40 minutes out of an hour and a half
lesson. Practicing stalls and other maneuvers on the way there and back
leaves even less time for landing practice.

Besides this, my flight school likes touch and goes and we are strongly
encouraged to do them.

On the plus side, I feel that most students really don't need a whole
lot of landing practice. Generally, if a student is having a hard time
with landing it is because he needs work in some area he should have
mastered first, such as slow flight, stalls, rectangular patterns,
airspeed control, and the like.

Over time I have come to the view that teaching landings is not all
that difficult, whether you do touch and goes or taxi-backs. The hard
part is getting the student ready for learning to land. Once that is
done, the student usually does pretty good landings from the first try
onwards. Even crosswind landings become instinctive.

On Sun, 11 Sep 2005 19:13:20 -0500, "Kevin Dunlevy"
wrote:


Should I force myself to always do full stop taxi backs, even thought other
pilots and tower personnel seem to prefer that I do touch and goes?

I would say that local practice rules. Many small airports prohibit
touch & go's, whether because the runways are short or because they're
trying to cut down on noise.

I've had the airport manager come out and ask me to use the taxiway
instead of back-taxiing on the runway, but I've never had one complain
about T&Gs. (Well, for me they are stop & go's, but the principle is
the same.) But then I know the local airports that discourage T&Gs.



-- all the best, Dan Ford

email (put Cubdriver in subject line)

Warbird's Forum: www.warbirdforum.com
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On 2005-09-12, Kevin Dunlevy wrote:
A CFI I had lunch with last week suggested I should always do full stop taxi
backs instead of touch and goes when practicing landings.

With tailwheel planes or with aircraft with retractible gear, I always
do stop-and-goes. If there is sufficient runway, I don't taxi back
again.

With tailwheel planes, I want to be solely concerned with keeping it
under full control until I'm stationary, not fiddling with
reconfiguration. With retract gear planes, I want to look at the flap
switch to make sure I've not mistakenly grabbed the gear switch.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"