Page 24 - Volume 15 Number 2

What do I mean by “fly your seat?” I mean make your seat be the airplane’s centerline. When you fly a Piper Cub or a single seat warbird this is a given ... you are indeed sitting on the airplane’s centerline, on its longitudinal axis. Now make your own seat – whether slightly left or right of the actual longitudinal axis – be the axis you care about, the one you make move with the aircraft controls. I will let you in on a secret: If you fly so as to put the runway’s centerline right between the butt cheeks sitting in your seat, the airplane’s nose tire(s) will be closer to the centerline than if you “left room” for the airplane. (And, yes, with practice and understanding you can slide your seat just far enough left or right that indeed the airplane’s nose tire is tracking the centerline stripes.)
Have you been taught this important technique? When first transitioning into an airplane that you have not flown before, do this when taxiing out for departure: Put your seat exactly on the taxiway centerline and set your sight as far down the straight taxiway as you can. Now pick a point on the windshield, the glareshield or the instrument panel that aligns exactly centered in your line of sight to the far end of the taxiway. What if no obvious point can be found? Then lick your thumb, reach forward and place a thumb smudge on the windshield. That’s the longitudinal axis for your seat!
Now let’s make our “perfect” landing. First, we need to comply with the criteria presented on the Landing Distance charts in the POH if our results are going to be anywhere close to what the manufacturer thinks they will be. The charts present an “Approach Speed.” This is the speed at 50 feet above touchdown as the round out and flare begins. The term “Approach Speed,” to most pilots, refers to the speed they target from the Final Approach Fix (FAF) to the Missed Approach Point (MAP). But the term on the landing distance charts refers to the 50-foot speed and is calculated as 30% above stall speed in the landing configuration (1.3 X Vso, in most cases).
With this speed at 50 feet above touchdown, power levers now being reduced to idle and the tires rolling on the runway surface 1,000 feet further forward, an actual touchdown speed is not presented on the charts. However, my discussions with the Beechcraft test pilots as well as my personal experience and observations leads me to believe the touchdown occurs between 10 and 15 knots below the listed Approach Speed.
It’s helpful that most precision approaches – ones with vertical reference – use a TCH (Threshold Crossing Height) very close to 50 feet and that solid paint stripes denote the point 1,000 feet from the runway’s approach end. Those can be wonderful aids in our quest for the perfect landing.
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KING AIR MAGAZINE
FEBRUARY 2021