Stabilised Approaches

[Yenn]

With a single engine and low inertia plane such as our ultralights it is madness to fly a 3 deg glide slope, but you can still do a stabilised approach.

 

I was always amazed at the approaches made at Raglan Old Station, which has a deep creek at the approach end of the strip with a road across the runway centre line about 1.5m below threshold height. It was common to see a plane go over the road at 2m and land within 50m of the road.

 

 

[Student Pilot]

I just land.

 

It's interesting to look at some of the older Aircraft handling notes, they say throttle off and land.

 

After the intial training, part of the slightly more advanced stuff is looking outside and feeling your speed and using the Aircrfat attitude as an indicator, rather than constantly watching your dials inside. In lighter stuff I rekon you should treat them like a Tiger or Auster and do what thay say "Throttle off and land". A glide approach every landing, that way it keeps people in the circuit and "Seeable".

 

To me there's too much theory and not enough practice, just get out and do it. I've been at it a little while now but I still really enjoy circuits, go out and go round and round, it's great fun.

 

 

[Guest pelorus32]

SP,

 

here's a question for you: Do you have a "slot" for lack of a better word that you want the aircraft in as you slide down final? Do you "know" what's right and when it's not by the picture and the feel of the a/c?

 

I'd reckon that you've been around a lot longer than most of us as far as this is concerned and you'd have done a bucketload more landings than most of us. I'm betting that the repeatability that you want is got by being in some sort of groove - airspeed, sight picture, attitude.

 

I'd guess that I'd have my eyes on the clocks for less than 1% of my time on final. The thing is when I do look at the clocks it's just confirming what the a/c is telling me anyway. So I'd call that a stabilised approach.

 

Regards

 

Mike

 

 

[Student Pilot]

There is a sort of sweet spot for any Aircraft on approach Mike. In any machine it's a bit faster than stall speed, just faster so that the controls are firmer and not that sloppy feel you get just before the machine starts to mush or stall.

 

I'm not an instructor and find it hard to describe this.

 

It's more an attitude and aiming point more than anything else, get used to the nose down position on a glide or approach and keep it there. There are clues for speed such as noise, control feel, other than speedo. With a glide approach you can allways fine tune the last bit with the throttle.

 

As I said I have no instructional expirence. If you feel a bit uneasy about this my advice would be to go with an instructor (expirenced) and fly a few circuits with everything covered up. You will be surprised just how well you do.

 

One other thing you need to learn is how to do a fast approach so in busy areas you can keep the traffic flowing, there's not much worse than coming into the circuit and some old mate has set up on a 5 mile final doing 50 knots. Here's where most ultralights (older generation not newer stuff) can throttle off and wash a lot of speed off or if your in a newer slicker one wash speed off in the base and final turns so you can still slow up over the fence instead of ballooning all the way down the strip.

 

It's a matter of practice and more practice but if you haven't been checked for a while it might be time to do a check with an instructor, just to make sure your not practicing the wrong things.:big_grin:

 

SP

 

 

[Guest Juliette Lima]

SP,

 

Terrific stuff...the thought of enjoying circuits again.....now back to what used to happen before before I got bogged down in theory.

 

Thank you,

 

JL