I went out with my friend Sergey who is a CFI-Sport for some landing practice at E16. We probably did at least 6 landings in total. Here's what I learned --
- Normal
- Takeoff
- All okay
- Landing
- CRAP checklist
- Turn off carb heat on final so you have power available for go-around
- Even with a short approach, call out final in a non towered airport because people expect this
- Short field
- Takeoff
- Do not rotate too early or too late
- Stick back when brake hold at full throttle
- In the SportStar, don't use any flaps
- Landing
- Keep 50 knots (or just under) on short final
- Once dialed in, use attitude to indicate airspeed
- Remember you are on the back side of the power curve
- Nose down means you go further
- Do not nose down and add speed
- Excess energy causes float
- Use throttle to adjust glideslope
- Soft field
- Takeoff
- Nothing really new - it's pretty easy
- Landing
- All my landings are already pretty much soft field technique
We did a lot of practice where I messed around with the short field technique. We tried one midfield power-off practice for an in pattern engine failure, and with all the power-off approaches I've been doing, it was pretty much a no brainer.
On the way back to KRHV, I tried to glide down and ended up with too much energy and had to go around. That went okay, but Sergey's point was I could have rescued it had I perceived my extra energy earlier on, slipped for a while, climbed to dump speed, put down the flaps, then helicoptered down. As it turns out, I ended up going around and starting the go-around with full flaps, which is a difficult thing to do in the SportStar with all that drag. :)
