Question for CFI Hive Mind.... Performance Takeoffs and Landings

Posted by TxAggieMike@reddit | flying | View on Reddit | 19 comments

I'm curious how many of your CFI's that provide primary instruction are handling the training of performance takeoffs and landings (the short and soft field varieties....)

Are you

Teaching them shortly after the student's supervised solo? Or later?
Do you just teach them to basic proficiency and move along to next big task such as cross country training? Then return to them during practical exam preparation to knock off rust and improve proficiency?
Or do you provide the initial training and then all future training sessions leave "normal" takeoffs and landings behind in favor of a performance one?

Currently I have been doing the training for performance takeoffs and landings after supervised solo, and once reasonable proficiency demonstrated at that time, moving along to next big thing.

But my recent overhaul of my curriculum and work with students readying for practical exam has me reconsidering how to handle this part of training.

What I am seeing happening is significant rust having formed, especially on soft field takeoff and short field landings (asking for ACS standards of course).

I'm considering #3 above, providing the training and then only occasionally asking for a normal. More often ask for soft or short takeoff, and then just about every landing going forward is short field.

I'm open to hearing thoughts and comments from the CFI Hive Mind.

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FlyingScot1050@reddit

I don't have the availability to take on private students so I'll add the disclaimer up front that my sample size is one, my PPL lessons back when. Short and soft field stuff were one of the last lessons prior to pure checkride prep, long after student solo.

I have mixed feelings on this, since on one hand it was absolutely enough to learn to do them to ACS standards, it was fresh enough in my mind come checkride time, and that's what counts at the end. On the other, while I didn't appreciate it at the time, when I went on to my commercial and then CFI I really learned how truly valuable learning soft field well is to all aspects of landing an aircraft. Kind of an abbreviated version of learning tailwheel in a sense, once you master it, especially in a crosswind, a vanilla standard landing will never trouble you again.

Now short field I feel is a bit wasted without an actual short field (2,000ft-ish) to practice on. Between the monster runways they're performed on, most flight schools not wanting to roast brake pads recreationally, and how generous the ACS is on what qualifies as a kosher short field effort, precious few students anywhere from 0-CFI truly experience how short these planes can land, and they're really just performing a spot landing for the checkride. Hell the 'short' runway at Hooks is still 3500 ft long, and you regularly run across PPL holders who avoid it like the plague here because they don't feel comfortable with it, nevermind that the plane they're flying could perform a stop-and-go on that runway just fine.

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Headoutdaplane@reddit

My theory on short field landings is exactly what you said...spot landing. Imagine going into 750' in a loaded 206 and not landing on the very end of the available area, if you use up 200 feet (acs standard) before touching down you have burnt up almost a third of your strip, needed for braking.

Spot landing is way more important than sucking up flaps.

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Galvanizedddd@reddit

I always taught them right after third solo. One flight dual to teach short then a solo to let them practice, dual to teach soft, solo to practice, dual to do all types of landings and a solo.

Then transition to other items such as forced and XC. But throwing in a circuit or two at the end of most flights some performance some not.

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RevolutionaryWear952@reddit

I favor #3

Solo > xc training/night. I introduce them at this time and then from there out 90% of their TOLs are performance.. with the caveat that their solos are just normal landings.

I also have them do a lot of soft field take offs in x winds and have them hold it in ground effect, nose down CL, for an extended period of time. It helps tremendously connect feet to rudders with x wind landings.

I aim to use maneuvers to translate into AC control and landings. XC is to see what flying is actually for. Then it’s polish from there. I don’t really introduce tolerances until checkride prep. At that point in time, If I’ve done my job correctly (my metric against myself), the tolerances are already there. They’ve been doing it all since solo anyway and they’ve been practicing perf TOLs since xc stage. I.e. on a xc what do your perf charts show we can get off in? Okay let’s prove it. Let’s make the first taxiway without balding a tire.

TLDR: I try to take a global approach and introduce them in more of a real life application. For me, it translates into ACS standards over the life of their training far better than block syllabus drill and practice type training.

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bhalter80@reddit

When you're doing transition training to a retract remind the student of the reason to accelerate in ground effect as getting out of the mud and being able to accelerate to normal Vx/Vy before climbing out. I've seen ones climb into ground effect and pull the gear up to reduce drag which is great if it works but 9 times out of 10 it's a recipe for a prop strike

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TxAggieMike@reddit (OP)

Setting proper expectations I am doing in all things.

But my question was more about sequencing of lessons. Not the specifics of teaching the maneuver

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bhalter80@reddit

I figured, I don't teach primary students but I guess I'd look at it from a needs standpoint. They need to know how to do the ppl maneuvers, takeoffs, landings, emergencies to solo safely. So if they need to know short/soft to solo I'd move it up but it will take longer because they won't have the same level of control as they would later in training

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TxAggieMike@reddit (OP)

Short soft isn’t included in pre-solo. Not required by 61.87(d)

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Aggravating-Medium51@reddit

Mike- Any tips for S turns? Today was my first time doing it and I struggled a lot. It was very windy as well. I'm having trouble knowing when to steepen vs shallow the turn. We enter on the downwind, pass the road, and then immediately start a steep bank and then choose a point. Then as we are midway through the turn or so we start to shallow out and then we are on the upwind. Then once we pass the road we start shallow and then steepen the turn? I was just having trouble applying this and want to get it down for next time. thanks

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TxAggieMike@reddit (OP)

It’s mainly a visual maneuver.

First start with wind at your back, and recite this mantra: wind using me AWAY from road, more bank. Wind pushing me INTO road, less bank.

Make sure you are at a slower speed (like 80 knots), well trimmed for that speed, and at the proper altitude.

As you approach your reference line look for 2 spots.

A spot about 1/2 mile down road from where you cross, that’s where you will cross going other direction.
A spot in between these 2, but 1/2 mile on other side of road. This is your “fly over” point when you are parallel to road.

Cross the road and start banking enough to fly to your “parallel point” you picked out. Don’t neglect your feet and coordinated turn.

Continue the turn, now “aiming” to cross the road at your half mile point.

Because the wind was trying to push you away from the road, a respectable amount of bank is needed.

As you approach the road, start looking for your next two flyover points. Be wings level as you cross and immediately start banking the opposite direction.

Add enough bank so you are perpendicular at your parallel flyover point. Because the wind is trying to push you into the road, less bank is needed than the other side. And don’t forget your feet.

After flying over parallel point, adjust bank so you flyover the proper crossing point. Have your flyover points picked out as you cross.

All the while you’re doing this., don’t forget to check with your “dance partner” (the airplane) to make sure you’re at correct altitude and speed. I teach an 8-count of eyes outside for 7 counts, and a glance inside for 1.

If you are off altitude or speed, make a SMALL change of the correct input and be patient for the change to happen.

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Aggravating-Medium51@reddit

Thank you mike. Really good advice

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redditburner_5000@reddit

1.) I'd demonstrate them and have the student attempt them simply to have the exposure and understand that "other than normal or crosswind" takeoffs and landings were safe even though they look and feel different. I would not hold a student back from solo simply because they couldn't do a short field takeoff or landing.

2.) Yes, more or less. I would call it "acceptable proficiency, but not necessarily to ACS." Safety orientation and conservative decision making for reasons they can articulate to me is much more important than being +/-100' on steep turns during their solo and XC phases.

3.) No. I would have a lesson or two dedicated to performance takeoffs and landings, and then spot check them through the XC and pre-checkride flights. If a student needed extra practice, maybe we'd do another 1.5 of just one type of operation. The briefing is key, ime (as with any new task). If you give a good pre-brief with the whys of the task, the flight will go well more often than not and the student will go home with a positive experience. If you just yolo it on the fly, the student will have a harder time and be afraid of the task the next time around.

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TxAggieMike@reddit (OP)

Commenting to your comments...

1) Holding back their solo because of performance takeoffs/landings was never my intent.... nor did I imply that. Not sure where you got that was my practice.

Performance TO/LDNGs is an after supervised solo item in my curriculum.

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redditburner_5000@reddit

That wasn't a comment on your practice, and I didn't think that you would given your post history here. Sorry. Didn't mean to imply that you would. That was a general comment.

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MostNinja2951@reddit

Do you have a proper short field nearby? Having your default airport for pattern work be the local 2000x25' grass strip would certainly keep them from forming too much rust.

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TxAggieMike@reddit (OP)

For Short, yes... 52F has 40x3500, so it's "short ish"

And for Soft, the club allows us to do grass, so in good conditions, I'll take them to T76

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FlyingShadow1@reddit

In my complete personal experience I've found my students to not struggle with soft-field and short-field landings because I'm a very big stickler on energy-management before I let them solo. Since I'm always making sure they understand the stable approach, round-out, and flare process it makes it easier to tell them "Hey for the short field you can let the plane sink safely instead of keeping it in ground effect if you're going to pass your point" OR "if you're about to land short of your point and you hear the stall horn you can add some power and stretch out the landing". My most recent PPL student did a short-field landing exactly on his declared point the first time.

Usually what I have to teach that's new to them is the soft-field take-off. Even the soft-field landing is easy, I just tell them to keep a little bit of power in and not bring the plane to the stall horn while flaring.

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SkyhawkPilot@reddit

I teach them after solo. Sometimes right after, but more often than not, I know the student wants to get out of the pattern after working on landings, so we do some XCs instead, then revisit the soft/short operations.

I have a document I use for each student's notes that's coded by where they are in the syllabus. I simply look at what landings we did last flight, and then I say, "okay, let's have today's landing be a normal landing." It also varies on conditions - if we're landing on a short runway you betcha we're doing a short field takeoff and landing.

The normal landing also has a -0/+400' tolerance on the ACS, so I want students to be held accountable on that.

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rFlyingTower@reddit

This is a copy of the original post body for posterity:

I'm curious how many of your CFI's that provide primary instruction are handling the training of performance takeoffs and landings (the short and soft field varieties....)

Are you

Teaching them shortly after the student's supervised solo? Or later?
Do you just teach them to basic proficiency and move along to next big task such as cross country training? Then return to them during practical exam preparation to knock off rust and improve proficiency?
Or do you provide the initial training and then all future training sessions leave "normal" takeoffs and landings behind in favor of a performance one?

Currently I have been doing the training for performance takeoffs and landings after supervised solo, and once reasonable proficiency demonstrated at that time, moving along to next big thing.

But my recent overhaul of my curriculum and work with students readying for practical exam has me reconsidering how to handle this part of training.

What I am seeing happening is significant rust having formed, especially on soft field takeoff and short field landings (asking for ACS standards of course).

I'm open to hearing thoughts and comments from the CFI Hive Mind.

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