Tweaking the throttle on approach

Tony wrote:
The kindly and greatly respected Uncle Al over on the sci.physics
newsgroup offered an observation as to the intrinsic worth of a
poster's contributions that I've taken the liberty paraphrase here,
regarding MX's observations re complex aircraft. Not only does he know
more than we do, he also knows more than the FAA!


Mx is an epiphany of chronic abusive trolling ignorant persona.

Mx is a snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick up Mx,
drive its beak into Mx's Lilliputian brain, and upon finding it rancid
set Mx loose to flutter briefly before spattering the ocean rocks
with the frothy pale pink shame of its
Ignoble blood. May Mx choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of his
own trite, foolish beliefs.


I cannot believe how incredibly ignorant Mx is. I mean rock-hard
ignorant. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury ignorant. Surface of
Venus under 80 atmospheres of red hot carbon dioxide and sulfuric
acid vapor dehydrated for 300 million years rock-hard ignorant.
Ignorant so ignorant that it goes way beyond the ignorant we know into
a whole different sensorium of ignorant. Mx is
trans-ignorant ignorant. Meta-ignorant. Ignorant so collapsed upon
itself that it is within its own Schwarzschild radius. Black hole
ignorant. Ignorant gotten so dense and massive that no intellect can
escape.

Singularity ignorant.

Mx emits more aviation ignorant/second than our entire galaxy
otherwise
emits ignorant/year. Quasar ignorant. Nothing else in the universe
can
be this ignorant. Mx is an oozingly putrescent primordial fragment
from the original Big Bang of Ignorant, a pure essence of ignorant so
uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics
that define maximally extrapolated hypergeometric n-dimensional
backgroundless ignorant as we can imagine it. Mx is Planck ignorant,
a quantum foam of ignorant, a vacuum
decay of ignorant, a grand unified theory of ignorant.


Mx is the epiphany of ignorant.



On Mar 7, 12:05 am, Mxsmanic wrote:
Ron Natalie writes:
And flaps...it has to have flaps.
Don't small single-engine planes have flaps?

The number of engines doesn't matter. By the way a twin with two
HP wouldn't be HP either.
High-performance, complex ... when did the FAA set these standards? It must
have been when the Wright brothers were around if they are this low. To me,
an F-16 is high performance, not a Baron. And a Space Shuttle is complex (or,
arguably, a large jet airliner).

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.


While I'm trying very hard to ignore anything related to MX, I'm very
glad to have read this one. You only left off one of my favorites,
dumber then a box of rocks.

Tim writes:

That's because you have no idea what happens in the real world.

Maybe I'm just smarter than a lot of pilots, if they call a Baron "complex" or
"high performance."

Compared with ms flight sim on a computer an ultralight is high
performance and complex...

Try it.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Tony writes:

Mx is the epiphany of ignorant.

This post reminds me of a short story by Harlan Ellison.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Pixel Dent writes:

Just consider it a term of art.

I've concluded that it's just another one of those arbitrary anachronisms that
seem to haunt the FAA.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Jim writes:

Any plane with retractable gear and prop control is considered
complex.

Does adding an FMS change anything?

The reason a C172 is used as a trainer in real life is because it is a
very easy and forgiving airplane to fly. It is a good plane for
landings because of the high wing. And because you don't have to worry
with the gear or prop control you can concentrate on the fundamentals
of a stabilized approach and then when mastered move on to more
complex aircraft. Maybe a single engine retractable. I don't remember
if the Baron 58 in a multi or single engine.

It has two engines.

It still surprises me that moving a lever to extend or retract gear makes an
aircraft complex. An autopilot or GPS is a lot more complex than a gear
lever.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

On Mar 7, 6:03 pm, Mxsmanic wrote:
chris writes:
It has retractable gear and variable pitch props, means it's complex.
Not to mention multi-engine.

The FAA seems to have a low threshold of complexity.

The term complex has little meaning where I live - if I transition to
say a Twin Comanche, I will need separate training on and ratings for
retractable gear, CSU and multi. Each has it's own ins and outs, as
I think I will find out shortly when I go for an Arrow rating - that
has retract and CSU.


You would be very ill-advised to try and start your flight training in
a twin. There's way too much stuff to cope with when you're trying to learn
how to take off, fly s+l and land..

I've heard of other people doing it, although it seems to be rare. If that's
the aircraft I wanted to fly, wouldn't it be more practical to just start with
it to begin with?


I have heard of one person who did it, but I think for the majority of
people it would be hard to cope with all the stuff you need to deal
with to fly a twin,

Best to learn on something small, slow, forgiving, and you can move up
later. I found even going from a C152 to an Archer, I got way behind
the aircraft - too much happening too fast, and the Archer doesn't
have two engines, CSU's or retract. And the difference in cruise is
only 35kt or so, but enough to get me seriously behind the aircraft!!

What sorts of things were you losing track of in the Archer?

What I found was that it felt substantially faster, it climbed a lot
quicker, and was harder to slow down. I also found the fuel
management to be extra complexity I didn't need..
For an average circuit in a 152, I would be waiting for it to get to
circuit altitude, had time to do my checks, and it slowed down quickly
with flap out. The archer, on the other hand, I found I had to turn
downwind, level out, pull the power back, and trim, all at the same
time, then pull the power right back or I would run over the guy in
front. Then when I put flap out it didn't slow down. Then you have
to somehow slow down and get down at the same time.

I have 150 hours of Archer time now, and am perfectly comfortable with
doing all of the above, but it was harrowing to begin with!!


If you are floating you are going too fast or trying to hold it off
too long. From reading your earlier post, you identified the VSo of
the Baron as 75.

That's the lower limit of the white band, which (IIRC) is the VSo with flaps
extended. I usually stay above Vmc (the first red line) on landing, and I
usually won't rotate until I'm above Vyse (the first blue line) at take-off.
The engine-out scenarios I've practiced are harrowing and I always like to be
going fast enough to deal with those. (I haven't practiced engine failure on
landing yet, however.)

I have no idea about that stuff, but if you're happy with it...


My research came up with 69-72 as stall speeds.
Which makes VSo x1.3 = 89-93kt.

That's very often my speed at touchdown. I never try to stall into touchdown,
despite what I've read here. My theory is that being at stall speed gives you
no options, even if it's the slowest possible touchdown speed. In an
emergency, I want to be able to leave the runway again, but I'm not going
anywhere once I stall.


You really want the aircraft to be going slow enough to stop flying on
it's own. Remember if you want to leave the runway again you'll have
to put power on anyway.

You probably don't want to be going for a full stall landing in a twin,
so come in at about 90kt, raise the nose a bit to flare and let it settle
onto the runway.

That's what I do, more less. I descend until about ten feet or so then hold
the aircraft level and set throttles to idle (they are slightly above prior to
that). That causes the aircraft to settle downwards and as it does so I
flare. If my approach was stable and if it's not too windy I can barely feel
the wheels touch. If I've been crabbing for a crosswind this is also when I
straighten the aircraft out.

Sounds good to me..


Why do you say a stall landing is inadvisable "in a twin"? Would it be
different for a single-engine plane?

If I got this right (twin drivers please confirm or deny this), there
is a lot of weight up front with those engines hanging so far forward,
which makes holding the nose off a real bugger, and especially on
things like Twin Comanche's they tend to stop flying with a bit of a
bang, so you are best advised to just fly it into the runway...


Don't try and hold it off, that's what a Cessna pilot should do, but
probably not a twin pilot.

Here again, why the distinction between single and twin?

I am a single engine pilot, please see above for my admittedly limited
understanding..


Just make sure your mains touch before your nose wheel.

That's usually not a problem, although in landings that have collapsed gear,
sometimes the nose gear goes first. It seems that a hard landing in the Baron
tends to pitch the nose downward so that the nose gear hits even harder than
the main gear, and then it breaks. (Incidentally, MSFS doesn't count that as
a crash, but the aircraft is still unflyable afterwards.)

You really don't want to break gear off in sim or real life :-)


Mind you, I am not a twin pilot so that could all have been
rubbish.

I don't understand why 1 vs 2 engines is such a big deal.

See above..

I have heard of one person who did it, but I think for the majority of
people it would be hard to cope with all the stuff you need to deal
with to fly a twin,



Oops.. I meant to say.. It would be hard to cope with all that stuff
while learning the basics of flying, like circuits, approaches,
landings...

Judging by what I experienced, the average student pilot would
probably find anything much more complicated than a 172 or Archer to
be just overwhelming. More things to remember = more things to
forget :-)

You would be very ill-advised to try and start your flight training in
a twin. There's way too much stuff to cope with when you're trying to learn
how to take off, fly s+l and land..

I've heard of other people doing it, although it seems to be rare. If that's
the aircraft I wanted to fly, wouldn't it be more practical to just start with
it to begin with?


I also forgot to mention that since vastly experienced pilots still
die from getting it wrong after an engine failure in a twin, how do
you think a newly solo student could deal with it??

On Mar 7, 12:05 am, Mxsmanic wrote:
Ron Natalie writes:
The number of engines doesn't matter. By the way a twin with two
HP wouldn't be HP either.

High-performance, complex ... when did the FAA set these standards? It must
have been when the Wright brothers were around if they are this low. To me,
an F-16 is high performance, not a Baron. And a Space Shuttle is complex (or,
arguably, a large jet airliner).

In real life, most of it makes sense.

For example, the high-performance part is related to how much plane
you can safely handle, although perhaps it should've been tied more to
top speed instead. Under, say 120kts, most pilots (even students) can
keep up with the airplane. But if you go faster, then you have to
think ahead much more, and that takes experience. Obviously yes,
this is true in spades for F-16s

There's also the extreme example of a prop airplane with a 1000HP
engine, that'll twist you like a corkscrew if you don't know what to
do.

The "complex" definition is another example of checking someone's
experience and knowledge, although perhaps it should've been broken
down separately into retractable and controllable-prop requirements.
But a lack of knowledge isn't necessarily dangerous.

Multi-engine, OTOH, really requires training to stay out of trouble.

Tailwheel endorsement is another example of license add-ons.

Kev

Mxsmanic wrote:
Tim writes:


That's because you have no idea what happens in the real world.


Maybe I'm just smarter than a lot of pilots, if they call a Baron "complex" or
"high performance."

Maybe. But I don't think that has anything to do with your delusions
about being able to fly a real Baron.



Compared with ms flight sim on a computer an ultralight is high
performance and complex...


Try it.


I have. It is a nice game. I prefer the real thing though. They have
very little in common.