Bad landing
Posted by Nearby_Ad_1191@reddit | flying | View on Reddit | 21 comments
Hi everyone, (low time student pilot 10 hours)
Had a pretty shitty landing today on my behalf, where I landed a little too hard, leading to ballooning.
In previous flights where I ballooned, I then continued to hold back pressure and wait for the plane to settle, but today I instinctively applied a little forward pressure after ballooning instead.
This lead to the instructor (rightfully so) stepping in and taking control very abruptly. It was clearly voiced by the instructor that applying forward pressure in those circumstances is a big No No, and even though I know that, in the moment it just happened to be an instinctive thing.
We spoke about it afterwards and it was all good, but still hard not to beat myself up about it.
Any words of encouragement, or even stories of other people doing similar stuff at all?
Cheers in advance.
OrganVoiceMusicMan@reddit
I'm a CFI with 400 hours. I f*$%ed it into the runway today. And I'm sure I'll f*$k it into the runway again soon. Keep at it and it'll just get better (but from what I'm reading in this thread you will never be bad-landing free haha).
Nearby_Ad_1191@reddit (OP)
What did you do to fuck it today if u don’t mind me asking?
OrganVoiceMusicMan@reddit
I fly a C182 and it's pretty nose heavy so we have to land with some power. I pulled a little too much power right before touchdown which caused the nose to drop. I pulled back on the yoke to keep it up and we lost too much airspeed.
PedrosSpanishFly@reddit
Like everyone says more is the only way. Ans if it helps I’m going to have a bad one too. Don’t know when, but I know it’s coming.
OneBetter6909@reddit
I had a crappy landing yesterday. It happens. Can you reuse the airplane. Then it was a good landing. Seriously debrief with your CFI on ways to improve
chupchupandaway@reddit
All part of the process. You’re only ten hours into it. There’s gonna be more shitty landings to come. You’ll make progress, you’ll regress, you’ll plateau and eventually you’ll be flying and landing on your own and still be making the occasional shitty landing. Every mistake is an opportunity to learn and improve. Don’t beat yourself up over it.
kytulu@reddit
Be me... A&P/IA with 11 hours, flying back from fixing a different airplane. Logging some night cross-country time. Came in for the landing and bounced hard. Nose starts to come down. Before I can begin to correct, the CFI grabs the yoke and hauls it back.
We dump lift and absolutely Ryan Air'd into the runway. After we taxiid back to the parking area, I had to do a quick inspection of the landing gear to make sure we didn't bend anything.
skunkworks172@reddit
This has never happened, all of my brand new students always landed perfectly on their first attempt and then on for the rest of their flying career
skunkworks172@reddit
Also this is sarcastic obviously, here’s the best advice I can.
While you’re learning to fly a plane, think of landing like slow flight. I imagine you’re flying like a Cessna or Cherokee which touchdown usually somewhere in the 40 knot airspeed range.
The moment you enter ground effect, try and not land the airplane. Look down the runway and use as much pitch as necessary (usually cowling just above horizon) to slowly dissipate airspeed while flying down the runway in ground effect. Once the airspeed approaches 40ish knots, you’ll find that the controls are much heavier to generate the amount of pitch you’re trying to maintain; this is the point you let the plane settle onto the runway by relieving the pitch.
The greater your airspeed is entering ground effect, the longer this process takes. If you enter ground effect at 80 knots, you now have to slow down 40 knots or so. This will make more sense when you’re training short fields; you are trying to keep the approach speed as low as possible so that you have to bleed only a small amount of energy out on landing.
It’s all about energy. You can touch down at 80 knots but still have the energy (high airspeed = high energy) to fly. Think of ground effect as the place where you dissipate this energy.
thegillie@reddit
Had a landing so bad my CFI quit
Nearby_Ad_1191@reddit (OP)
😂 and you still persevered? What stage are you up to flying wise?
thegillie@reddit
I’m licensed now 😂 just wanted to give you some hope
LastSprinkles@reddit
Lots of good advice already here, but just to add my 2c if you ballooned most likely the thing to watch out for is your approach speed. Keep the speed to the POH numbers and you will minimise ballooning. To balloon you need excess energy. You can also bleed that off in the flare but it's easier to get consistently good landings if you keep the approach speed just right (with the exception of gusty winds). Talk to your instructor about this.
VileInventor@reddit
Go listen to I need love by Barbra Mason and forget about the bad landing. You’ll have many many many more.
HighVelocitySloth@reddit
10 hours? Do it more
DiplomatIan@reddit
Just don't pitch forward. That's the only thing you did wrong. Everything else will get better... some of the time. Sometimes the landing's gonna suck. But if you just train yourself out of pitching forward, everything will be ok.
Nembourgh@reddit
Before switching to plane I was a crop dusting helicopter pilot, I was landing every few minute, so in the end I had more than 15.000 landing, I was cratering the helicopter from time to time or floating because I was coming a little bit too hot, sooooo.... And now I'm on the 757 and still trying to not fuck the landing every once in a while.
Don't be too hard on yourself, it will come with time, trust your instructor, try to analyze what happen, sure sometimes you will be like " what the hell happened", but that is aviation every landing is unique and enjoy the process
alexmoose454@reddit
Wait until you accidentally flare 50ft over the runway at night. Now that’s a bad landing
7layeredAIDS@reddit
You should see what I did to the runway at La Guardia. Reported it as a sinkhole in my ASAP.
FlatulousStanko@reddit
Was this back in March? Lol... PIC landed so hard the FA made a comment over PA!
Weasel474@reddit
Hey bro. I'm at a few thousand and just readjusted the runway elevation in SLC. Bad landings happen.