As a building leaping ATPL, you have probably fogotten your mere PPL days
Oi, I'm not
that old! I hope it's still in there somewhere
I accept your point about not wanting to hammer the nose wheel in first. But surely teaching the right techniques from the word go would be far more constructive to a good landing? Fly the approach at the right speed, land at the right speed and you will vastly reduce the chances of a destructive arrival! I don't know I've never been an instructor.
I regularly fly with First Officers whose
sole aim when landing is a smooth touchdown. They fly 10 knots fast down the approach, they do not reduce power in the flare and consequently spend a rather excessive time at about 5 feet. Sometimes they achieve a smooth touch down. Most of the time, and I mean about 90%, they end up either:
A. Running out of runway or;
B. Smashing the poor lady in anyway.
3 times in as many weeks I've had to take control and go-around; Twice for loooong flares which would have resulted in a touch down outside the TD zone; Once for a looong flare which touched down
just inside the TD zone but because they still had power on they bounced!
I'm talking about a 30 ton turboprop (Dash 8 Q400) with not very good brakes but I think the same principal can and should be applied to ANY aeroplane and any runway.
We fly into a range of airports with strip lengths varying from 1100m to 4000m. Now, with 4000m to play with you can get away with this technique, it's still not right though. The worrying thing is when you try the same technique, out of habit, into a shorter strip which I believe is what you're alluding to in your last post. You have to land in the touch down zone or the P45 will be looming over the horizon just behind the hedge.
To the original poster. Don't be lured into the fact that a good landing is a smooth one. A good landing is at the right speed in the right place. There are 2 principal reasons for this:
A. At the right speed you will stop in a shorter distance.
B. The aeroplane will stop much better using the brakes. So extending the flare, in an attempt to touch down smoothly, is reducing the effectiveness of your stopping ability and reducing the amount of room you have to stop.
Should anything go wrong, like a brake failure for instance, you will have given yourself the best chance you can. Whereas a long, fast but smooth landing will have drastically reduced your safety margins and increased the potential for damage to you and your aeroplane...but hey it WAS a good landing wasn't it?!
A perfect landing is at the right speed, in the right place and it's a Fonz (smooth greaser!) but they rarely happen, unless you fly a 146, much to the chagrin of many a pilot around the world.