I am not the sort of bloke you would immediately describe as “mystical”, not in the Shirley MacLaine sense anyway. But I am a big believer in the concept that everything in the universe is connected; that every action has consequence and nothing happens in isolation. That’s about as mystical as I get.
My not-so-original theory was borne out the other evening when I ventured out for an hour’s circuits in an Archer. It was a sedate, clear evening with nothing but blue all around and a circuit as sparsely populated as the grand stand at a Sheffield Shield game; a perfect set-up for me to put together a string of greaser landings.
So I have no excuse for the first landing being an absolute mutt.
From the moment I arrived on final I was too high, resulting in me being as stable as a bowl of soup on a trampoline and carrying way too much energy into the flare. We got down. It was safe but it wasn’t pretty, and I didn’t have a malicious crosswind to blame either. I just got it way wrong. It did instil in me a determination not to do it again. It was simply an anomaly, I told myself, and the next landing would be superb.
It wasn’t … the same thing happened again. Too high on final, hanging on the flap all the way down. This time I pulled the power sooner and nailed my target speed. A better approach, but still decidedly ugly. Circuit number three was given over purely to diagnostics with a resolve to go-around if I didn’t get it right. I watched every number on every dial, pinned the circuit height, cross-checked the QNH and eyeballed the runway with an accusing stare.
Downwind was way too close to the strip! I was doing left-hand circuits and positioned the Archer as if I was going right-hand circuits. Being too close shortened the base leg, which in turn meant that in the normal set-up I didn’t lose enough height before turning final. Everything after that was a compromise.
But there was no crosswind, and if you were able to detect the slightest zephyr it would have been straight down the strip anyway. Why was I constantly getting too close? It took another circuit before the penny thundered onto the floorboards: it was the aeroplane!
Well, not the aeroplane as such, but rather a characteristic that your correspondent had neglected to take into account. The flying school has three Archers on the line: two blue and one red. The two blue ones have similar propellers, but the red one has a different prop. It makes it a joy to fly and she climbs like a mountain goat with a burning backside. It was the red one that I was flying that day, and the landings were ordinary because I was not compensating on the crosswind leg. Follow me here.
My usual routine flying single-engine, fixed pitch lighties for 25 years has been to climb to 500 feet, turn crosswind and continue up to circuit height, which I would arrive at just before it was time to turn downwind. But in the red Archer, the rate of climb was such that circuit height was coming much sooner, but I was still turning downwind just after levelling out! Result: a downwind leg significantly closer to the runway.
On the next circuit, I levelled out, counted to 10 and then turned downwind. At last the greaser landings that I sought at the beginning were starting to come.
Although all the flying instructors out there will have better stories to tell, for me this was the best illustration I have ever come across of how flying consistent, stable circuits give you a better chance of nailing the landing. As a PPL, I didn’t immediately make the connection between the wonky crosswind leg and the rubbishy landing; the two were miles apart in the timeline.
I had made a change to the crosswind leg, and the knock-on effect of doing so had made for a bad downwind, which in turn made base too high and the accumulation of the error meant that final never stood a chance of being stable. And this was on an evening that was perfect for circuits. What would it have been like with a stiff crosswind or a lot of mechanical bumps coming from the range to the west?
I have learnt a couple of things here, one of which is that a good landing is the result of getting the entire circuit on the button. Other mistakes were made, like not picking up the downwind problem the moment it happened, then not watching the altimeter on base.
The other thing I have learnt is that my mystical concept of connection in the universe appears to have some substance, and that flying is particularly vulnerable to it.
Just don’t call me Shirley.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch