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Old 1st April 2008 | 16:02
  #41 (permalink)  
Yankee Whisky
 
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 156
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From: Montreal
SLA

The SLA technique involves you imagining an angle between you and the touchdown point. If that angle is increasing, you are going to land long. Conversely, if that angle in decreasing you will undershoot. This requires you to fly an almost complete curving approach to the touchdown point. it may sound like what you do already, largely because you have worked it out for yourself. But in my experience, it is tought very infrequently at club level. From my experience of teaching it, students picked it up very quickly - and once mastered they made sucessful glide approaches nearly every time. The primary skill is judging the changing SLA. It's not as difficult as it first may seem.


I am a glider pilot with over 3000 "deadstick" landings and I have used the shortfield landing technique nearly 100% of the time. The reason being that the experience gained this way will give invaluable help when you're in a pinch on a cross country field selection.
I also did over 6000 landings in Birddogs (L-19's) and the landing technique I use for a deadstick is to do exactly as the military. You never loose sight of the intended touch-down point and use all your facilities to bleed off height whilst not allowing yourself to get below the glide slope, as could happen in a standard circuit. I have been lucky to not have had a real engine failure, but I prefer to have either a windmilling or a stopped propeller because with either situation I adjust my technique in judging the landing approach. I think a windmilling propeller functions as an airbrake (braking v.s. pulling prop) and I will leave the aerodynamicists to figure out which produces more or less drag when compared with a stopped prop. Of course the 50 degr flaps on the Birddog help !
An important thing to remember is that airspeed must be bled-off at the time the wheels touch the ground with the stick in your stomach. I know of a few pilots who did not do this and nosed over causing substantial damage to aircraft and ego! Excess speed can be a big liability in a small and muddy field.
So far (touch wood) I have been successful using this technique.

Yankee Whiskey
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