Precision Landings and practice

Thanks for the tip John! I'll tuck that little tidbit away.

--
Jack Allison
PP-ASEL, IA Student, airplane partnership student

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth
with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there
you will always long to return"
- Leonardo Da Vinci

(Remove the obvious from address to reply via e-mail)

Peter Duniho wrote:
"William W. Plummer" wrote in

message news:57Mud.555936$D%.476618@attbi_s51...
This thread might expand to include "Glassy Water" landings in
seaplanes
because it is a very precise approach and landing without looking
down.

Not exactly. It's "precise" in the sense that it's important to
maintain
just the right airspeed and power setting, achieving the proper
vertical
descent rate (100fpm or so, max 200fpm), so that you touch down on
the water
gently and with the correct pitch attitude.

But it's nothing like a spot landing. A glassy water landing pretty
much
guarantees that you will NOT land at a precise point on the water.
That's
kind of the point...you can't really tell where you'll touch down, so
you
make sure you're ready to touch down at any moment.

There are, of course, additional "precision" elements such as making
a
normal approach as low over visible terrain as possible, to minimize
the
time spent in the "instrument" phase of the glassy water landing.
But even
so, there's absolutely no element to glassy water landings that have
anything to do with placing the airplane on the landing surface at a
particular spot.
***********************************
Pete
While I have to qualify my position as not having flown on floats for
many years, when I was on the water a lot in northern Minnesota, and in
Louisiana, I frequently found myself landing in places that required a
precision landing regardless of glassy conditions or not. I learned
early on that most of my water landings would be fairly close to shore
with some kind of visual clues. That, opposed to landing out on big
open water like in the middle of a lake? For practical reasons, I can't
imagine landing out in the middle of a lake rather than closer to the
beach/shore? Most of my landing areas were tight and required not only
a precise touchdown spot, but then required turns on the water to stay
out of the rocks or trees. Our home base was often referred to as the
"mudhole" and I flew a variety of floatplanes out of it...including a
Beaver.
For sure it takes some special technique to operate on glassy water and
still be precise but mostly its a matter of either learning the hard
way, or by having someone pass along that information that already did
the mistakes and survived them!
As for landing crossways on runways, I'd have to be careful with some
of the ones I use since they are barely wider than the landing gear
track! At present, I fly mostly off a former USAF base with 150' wide
runways, and given proper wind conditions can make a nice landing and
stop within that distance with no undue wear and tear on C150/172 or
similar.
My students are at a disadvantage flying off such big runways because
when they are faced with a 2000' grass strip, they are petrified. That
is one of the main reasons I take them into 2000' grass and teach them
how to fly the way it used to be.
Even when faced with 9500'X 150' hard surface and taxiways wide enough
to land on crosswise, I insist that they pick a spot for touchdown and
ignore the rest of that concrete. Having operated off of 1200' in more
places than I can recall only serves to reinforce my teaching
techniques and demands for precision on take offs and landings. If you
think thats tough. you should hear me with students in helicopters!!!!
Merry Christmas to you all
Ol Shy & Bashful

Glassy water landings are "precision" the way flight maneuvers like
turns
about a point, chandelles, etc. are "precision". If that's what you
meant,
I can wholeheartedly agree with that.

Also, commercial glider pilots must be able to drop the plane
between
two lines 100' appart. (200' for non-commercial). Think about
that --
you can land across the runway at a normal airport and without
power!

You mean "can touch down across the runway", right? Even in a
sailplane,
one might have trouble actually coming to a stop before reaching the
other
side of the runway (without a decent headwind, anyway).

Pete

wrote in message
oups.com...
[...]
While I have to qualify my position as not having flown on floats for
many years, when I was on the water a lot in northern Minnesota, and in
Louisiana, I frequently found myself landing in places that required a
precision landing regardless of glassy conditions or not. I learned
early on that most of my water landings would be fairly close to shore
with some kind of visual clues.

When one refers to "glassy water technique", the assumption is that there
are no visual cues.

It's true that even in glassy water conditions, one can often find suitable
visual cues (shoreline near the landing site, for example). But in that
case, you don't use "glassy water technique" (even though you could
legitimately call the exercise a "technique").

I'll admit that the poster to which I replied didn't really make clear what
kind of landing he was actually talking about. But the wording certainly
implied to me that he's talking about the "instrument" version of landing on
glassy water, rather than the "visual cues" version (since the visual cues
version is basically a normal landing, hardly even unique to seaplane
flying, never mind specific to glassy water conditions).

Pete

ONLY if it can be judged from pool side. Jay DOES have his priorities
set,
right Jay? g

Welllllll, we can judge the approach from poolside -- but we're gonna need
to take a fence or two down to see the actual landing...

;-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:
Welllllll, we can judge the approach from poolside -- but we're gonna need
to take a fence or two down to see the actual landing...

And the problem with that is??? :-) Call Montblack, he'll gladly help
you tear down those pesky landing-view-limiting fences.

--
Jack Allison
PP-ASEL, IA Student, airplane partnership student

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth
with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there
you will always long to return"
- Leonardo Da Vinci

(Remove the obvious from address to reply via e-mail)

And the problem with that is??? :-) Call Montblack, he'll gladly help
you tear down those pesky landing-view-limiting fences.

A cool development: As part of our airport's absurd "obstruction project"
(they're putting red marker lights on anything that doesn't move, I swear)
they just took down a stand of trees that stood between us and the runways.

Most people would be ****ed -- Mary and I were ecstatic!

(I know, we're sick, sick people... ;-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:

Welllllll, we can judge the approach from poolside -- but we're gonna need
to take a fence or two down to see the actual landing...

Sounds like an ideal place to put a large removable section.

George Patterson
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

Get a little remote cam, point it at the approach end of the runway & pipe
the feed to your Inn. Built in entertainment.


"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:__1wd.504618$wV.22444@attbi_s54...
ONLY if it can be judged from pool side. Jay DOES have his priorities
set,
right Jay? g

Welllllll, we can judge the approach from poolside -- but we're gonna need
to take a fence or two down to see the actual landing...

;-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message
...


Jay Honeck wrote:

Welllllll, we can judge the approach from poolside -- but we're gonna
need
to take a fence or two down to see the actual landing...

Sounds like an ideal place to put a large removable section.

How about a section that operates like a remote control gate?
--
Matt
---------------------
Matthew W. Barrow
Site-Fill Homes, LLC.
Montrose, CO

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:__1wd.504618$wV.22444@attbi_s54...
ONLY if it can be judged from pool side. Jay DOES have his priorities
set,
right Jay? g

Welllllll, we can judge the approach from poolside -- but we're gonna need
to take a fence or two down to see the actual landing...

;-)
--
Jay Honeck


Closed circuit TV, and a Big Screen by the pool, to view the touchdown? g
--
Jim in NC