Landing Practice

Saturday - January 13, 2007
San Carlos Airport (SQL)
10am

Touch – n – go’s baby!!
I am operating in what is called the ‘pattern’ of the airport. This means that when I take-off I call for ‘right-closed-traffic’ and then make a series of right turns to a landing. Basically the ‘pattern’ is a rectangle with the runway as one side of the rectangle. When I take off my climb-out speed must be 75 knots for best rate of climb (Vy). If you had an object at the end of the runway that you needed to clear like power lines, trees, etc you would go with best angle of climb (Vx) which is 65 knots in the Cessna 172SP. You are still going full throttle in both instances but the more you pitch up the nose of the plane the slower the airspeed basically sacrificing your airspeed for that higher climb rate.

I take off flying best rate of climb and straight out maintaining 75 kts until the Oracle campus is just to my right. I make a right turn over the diamond shaped pond in the middle of the campus and at the designated pattern elevation, 800ft, reduce power and maintain 800 ft and 85 kts. This is tricky however to turn and maintain a heading, lower the nose and pull back power all at the same time. I do this pretty well however if there is a crosswind you have to adjust the plane for that and I drift a little off course the first time. I adjust the plane on the second leg or downwind leg and visually fix the runway right in the middle of the wing strut as a reference. I am all the while looking inside at airspeed, altitude and heading adjusting for those crosswinds. We get sequenced from the tower, ‘two one five niner one you’re number two following a Katana turning base to final’. This means we need to visually identify the Katana (brand of plane), number one to land, and adjust the timing of a right turn to the base leg and then final right turn to final approach to land.

When the numbers of the runway you are going to land on appear abeam the aircraft – on the right in this instance – you power down, flaps to 10 degrees and angle the nose down slightly, about 3 degrees. This is IF you don’t have a ton of ‘tin’ in front of you landing as well. The flaps help slow the plane down and allow you to descend without picking up any airspeed. We extend our downwind leg a little until the Katana is flying on final approach passing back under my right wing. We then turn base leg and flaps 20 degrees then soon after we’re on final. When you turn final you want several things to happen. The airplane should be lined up with the runway and more specifically the centerline. There is a glide slope indicator that sits to the left of the runway that you can see from several miles away. This instrument has three different color combinations. If you are white over white you are two high, red over red too low and red over white just right. You also need to adjust for crosswinds which means putting the plane in a ‘crabbing’ position. If you are headed North for instance with a crosswind out of the NW the nose of your plane needs to be angled in that direction to keep the airplane traveling North. You are traveling straight but the airplane is cocked to the left a bit, essentially sliding sideways. As I travel down ‘the glide slope’ I must watch airspeed, which should be 65 kts and where the centerline of the runway lies. Stan is talking to me the entire time and I’m looking pretty good except as I get closer to the threshold of the runway I pull power to idle which I don’t do soon enough and start to get the nose pointed down the runway on the damned centerline AND level out at the right time to flair the plane to set the mains on the runway. I drift down like a dead leaf and we settle with a bump and slightly sideways because I’m not getting the rudder input set properly. We do this ALL afternoon. In my defense it was the first set of touch n go’s I’ve done in two years and there is a ton of airplanes landing or just passing through SQL airspace on their way somewhere else. Tower does a good job of separating and sequencing but when you have a lot of other airplanes in the pattern the rectangle I spoke of starts taking on all sorts of odd geometric shapes. Going long on downwind leg means you have to adjust power and altitude for your base leg and final approach and I am doing well to keep all of that configured when there is no other traffic in the pattern. Buggar all!

When we come to a full-stop landing and taxi back to the ramp at Diamond Stan says that did not go as well as he had hoped. I was a little dejected and was wondering about this whole business of flying. Was I good enough? Do I got any of that right stuff to even fly a small single engine aircraft? I know theoretically what needs to be done to land well however my body is not responding.

My touch – n – go’s were a little…. touch – n- go.