Sunday, December 23, 2018

N712MF 2.1 Some landing practice with Sergey

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. :)

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