Dan_Thomas_nospam

On Apr 28, 3:46 pm, terry <tfm...@iprimus.com.au> wrote:

> agreed. its one of my gripes about flight school, they rote learn you
> to fly x speed on base and y on final. in my case I was told it had to
> be 65 kts on final plus or minus nothing. worked half ok with an
> instuctor on board, then you try to fly solo, Im not a big guy. Its
> just too fast. Having said that I do believe the ground effect plays a
> role as well.

That's only part of the problem. The speeds are OK, but most
instructors, and therefore most new PPLs, wait until they're two feet
off the runway before there's any pitch change. If you read the
manuals, you'll find that the standard procedure is to get the power
off and the nose up some at between 30 and 15 feet altitude so that
the thing starts to lose airspeed. As it sinks you raise the nose some
more. If it's done right you get to the surface with no surplus speed,
so there's no bounce and porpoise, no ballooning, no wheelbarrowing,
no endless rolling. Those four things break so many airplanes it's not
funny, and I don't know why current instructors can't teach proper
landing technique unless it's because they're terrified of a stall on
short final. They don't like that stall warning chirping a little
while still airborne. Going to die, they think. So they teach other
ways to break the airplane, like landing way too fast. Why don't they
take the thing up to altitude, apply flaps, get the 65 kt power-off
glide going, and start raising the nose and see just how long it takes
to actually stall? Oh, wait, we can't do stalls, either. Just approach-
to-a-stall so we don't die that way.
They should stick to golfing.

Dan