Power-Off 180s

Energy management. That's what Power-Off 180s are all about. For those of you who don't know a Power-Off 180 is a simulated engine failure to landing. On downwind abeam your touchdown point you pull the power to idle and try to land with in a certain distance from your touchdown point. While many people do this maneuver for their Private Pilot training it isn't actually required for you to pass a check ride.

To pass your Commercial check ride you need to do a Power-Off 180 Accuracy approach and landing. The key word here is accuracy. What does accuracy mean? From the PTS "touches down in a normal landing attitude, at or within 200 feet beyond a specified touchdown point."

Why is this so difficult for students? Again I'm going to say energy management. Thinking back to your long days studying physics you obviously remember that there are two types of energy, Potential and Kinetic.

The bare bones description of potential energy is energy that is stored within an object, energy that can be converted to other forms of energy. Kinetic energy is the energy that an object has due to its motion. A good way to think about this is altitude above the ground is stored energy, potential, which can be traded for airspeed, kinetic.

Back to the maneuver at hand. Depending on the airplane you need to time your turn to base depending on your sink rate. I'll use the C172 and Piper arrow as my two examples. Both of these aircraft start the same way, pull the power abeam your touchdown point and start pitching for your best glide speed. When you pull the power on the C172 you need to keep going on your downwind leg for a bit, however on the Piper Arrow you need to almost always start your turn to base right away.

Base leg is the most important part of this maneuver. This is where you determine if you have the right amount of energy. If you are going be high you square off your base turn to final turn, if your low you are going need to turn towards the runway and shorten your pattern.

So why is this difficult? Well most students don't understand that you aren't judging whether you are high or low but rather judging your sink rate. Do you have enough energy to make it to the runway? Do I have enough potential energy, altitude, that I can trade for airspeed to make it to my landing point?

If you are too high there are a few things you can do, slip the airplane, square off your base turn, or add flaps. However the one that not a lot of people know about is slowing the aircraft up to below best glide speed. If you pitch down to loose altitude you are going to gain airspeed, kinetic energy, and float past your landing point. However, if you pitch back, you increase your induced drag(drag due to lift and AOA) . Because of this increase in drag you will now be able to descend faster.

This is a very difficult maneuver to perfect but a very important one. In a real engine failure emergency you don't want to miss your only landing area by floating long or coming up short.
Link to a youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nCDyL3toEg&feature=related

Garmin G1000 what???

Recently the University of North Dakota made the decision to switch its fleet from piper warriors to Cessna C172S equipped with Garmin G1000 glass cockpits. For those of you not already familiar with the G1000 it is a great tool for pilots. It consists of two 10" displays that are split up into a PFD(primary flight display) and an MFD(multi function display). These two displays are powered by multiple different devices. There is an AHRS(attitude and heading Reference system) which controls the attitude indicator, and heading indicator. The ADC(air data computer) is for all the pitot static instruments, airspeed, VSI, altimeter, wind vector, and TAS. Other pieces of equipment are the engine instruments, magnetometer(for heading information) and GPS and Comms.

The PFD shows all your flight instruments; airspeed, attitude indicator, altimeter, VSI, heading indicator, HSI, turn coordinator, and a small map if you want it. The MFD can do multiple things, as the name says. Usually is will show the engine instruments on the left side of the screen and a map covering the rest of the screen. There are also small steam standby steam gauges in case you loose your PFD and MFD.

The G1000 is amazingly simple and effective and dramatically improves situational awareness. However, for a private pilot who should be focusing on the outside references to fly the aircraft I have noticed that they are becoming more and more focused on whats happening inside the aircraft and not outside.

Because of this one of my favorite things to do to a private pilot student is to turn the contrast on the PFD all the way down so that it is basically a black screen. This forces the pilot to look outside and fly the aircraft with outside references and by feel.

You would be surprised how much students rely on the PFD to keep the aircraft level. Initially it takes a little bit for a student to keep the airplane level and on a heading but very quickly they pick it up. I've also noticed that because of this when you do turn the screen back on the students aren't looking inside as much. It improves their piloting abilities and makes everything they do better.

The G1000 is a great tool but we need to be able to fly an aircraft without it. To feel the aircraft, to hear the aircraft and understand what it is doing.

WOW

Today I got to see something that not many people get to see. First let me set the situation, Grand Forks international is located about 9.1 miles directly east of Grand Forks Air Force Base. GFK AFB used to be a tanker base but is now being transitioned into a UAV(unmanned aerial vehicle) base. They started operating Predator UAVs just this summer. Because of this they need put up a temporary flight restriction(TFR) every time that the UAV flies so it can get up into class A airspace with out interfering with civilian traffic. This TFR extends from the top of the Class D airspace at GFK AFB upto 18,000' MSL.

Usually airplanes are not allowed through TFR's under visual flight rules but because of the high amount of training and our relationship with departure we are allowed to transition through as long as we request it and are in contact with departure.

Today my student and I were practicing XC ops and we departing to the west directly over the base. After we took off we contacted departure and asked for a transition through the TFR. "Sioux 24 cleared through the TFR at or above 3,500 due to Predator ops" was the response from departure. So we climbed up to 3,500 and flew directly over the middle of the AFB.

I knew that since we were cleared above 3,500 that the Predator was probably returning from a mission. Little did I know that when I would look down at the approach end of runway 17 I saw something spectacular. The Predator UAV on short final!

As I completely started ignoring my student, like any good flight instructor does, I watched the Predator touch down and start his ground roll. Little did I know that he wasn't done, power came up and sure enough the nose started to lift up. A touch and go! WOW must be fun!

I've written about them before and I am continually amazed and interested in UAV's and UAV operations.

Side note: a Predator B UAV landed at OSH earlier this week making it the first Predator landing at a civilian airport. The link includes a video if you interested.

Controlled Crash

It's amazing when you think about the risk that all of us pilots are taking. Trying to land an airplane going somewhere between 50 and 70 kts onto a 100' wide(or less) piece of concrete. Really it is an amazing feat, one that has claimed many lives.

With practice this becomes routine and almost a none event. So what makes it so difficult? Let's add some crosswind, since the wind is never directly down the runway ;), how about a short or soft field, how about an unstablized approach?

How do we get this experience? Practice, practice, practice. Recently I read an article by master flight instructor Rod Machado on letting your students get experience. To put it briefly he talked about how an good flight instructor lets his students make mistakes and learn from them.

He mentioned how he talked to a student one time who mentioned that his instructor had NEVER let the student completely land the aircraft. That is the instructor was always on the controls and helping the student out. Is this good for the student? No.

Rod made the point that a good instructor will let his student make the mistakes and learn from them. Granted a good flight instructor knows the limits of his plane and won't let the student get into an unsafe position but will let him get close enough.

Since I've read this I myself have realized that you need to let students make mistakes. Let them see what happens from control inputs, or lack of and how to correct for it. Like Rod said I believe this is not only beneficial to the student but also shows the ability of a good flight instructor.

ATC

I know this post is could be taken as a touchy subject. I am very cautious about writing this because I respect and admire the work that an air traffic controller does when controlling multiple aircraft in a relatively very small area. They are almost always at the top of their game and provide a confidence to the pilots of both large and small aircraft.

However, the reason I'm writing this is because I recently had a situation where a controller was either having a bad day or just not happy to be there. Because of this it caused my aircraft to be put in a dangerous near miss situation and the controller to belittle and yell at other aircraft throughout the flight.

We were practicing night landings for the first time with my student. After going to the practice area and working some maneuvers we headed back to a busy controlled airport for landings. Entering the pattern I initially noticed that we were a following an aircraft who is on a wider than normal downwind. Which is fine by me especially since we don't want to cut off an aircraft at night.

This continued for about two trips around the pattern before ATC started to get upset with all aircraft over, well, basically everything. "All aircraft your downwind is Way to wide" "N***** it sounds like you still don't understand what I said" "N***** this is going to be a full stop landing for you." etc. etc. etc.

In the middle of all this I'm trying to teach my student how to do night landings. Which on about the 5th attempt as we turned to base I look back on downwind and notice an aircraft inside of us and closing fast at our altitude. I glance at my ADS-B and see that he is almost 1/2 mile and at our altitude closing. This is where I take over and push the nose forward and loose about 500' and put us extremely low to avoid this near miss.

Now again please don't get me wrong. I sincerely respect and admire the work of all ATC. But sometimes we all have bad days, in the world of aviation we need to leave our troubles and feelings at home. Lives are at stake, we are required to be the most professional of professionals. This goes for both pilots, large and small, atc, FBO employees, line operations, security, and everyone associated with aviation. Don't risk your, mine, or other peoples lives because you are upset.