Well, kind of like whirlybird, I thought I was the worst student for this ever... In fact I packed in flying the 172 and went and flew gliders for a bit.
Best thing you could do is rule out the most obvious faults :
1. Keep the speed, rate of descent under control. Nice smooth approach, and you can sometimes get good landings by accident. I used to drive my instructor mad by doing 2 brill landings, 2 average ones and 1 dicey one.
2. Flare at the right point. I try and flare 2 seconds before I would otherwise crash into the runway. 1 second before is just too late... The two second thing seems to work well in any situation.
3. Make sure you have a good enough view of the runway once you've flared. Get a couple of cushions or something and improve your view. This was the key to fixing my problems. You can't land on something you can't see, at least not at this point.
4. Be calm, relax, have the instructor follow you through on the controls, rather than being poised to takeover if you mess it up. Make you know who **is** flying.
5. Don't practice more than about five or six landings without a good break and discussion. Land and talk about it, if it is not going well. Get another instructor to help, if yours is at a loss.
Anyway, hope this helped. I am solo in a taildragger now, and pulled off a couple of nice wheel landings the other day. So, whatever happens, it **can** get better, if you let it!!!
GOOD LUCK !!
[ 09 August 2001: Message edited by: kabz ]