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Old 22nd Feb 2012, 15:44
  #14 (permalink)  
cosmo kramer
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
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Please find a trainer to explain this for you, and then look to your laurels to find your other areas of weakness before they find you.
Quite the double standard, when you then bring this pearl along...
You probably know, and use, the 'slight pitch down for touchdown' technique - you know, that little forward movement of the control column to bla bla bla...
Any aircraft can be landed smoothly by looking out the window and using standard technique. It's all a matter of vertical speed and directional control. No need for any "black magic" nose lowering. You might want to re-read the part of the FCTM concerning flare.

It should go like this:
1) Fix aim-point in window,
2) Check speed, check aim point, check speed, check aim-point (Make adjustments to flight path and thrust and trim to thrust changes at all time), so that you arrive...
3) ...in trim, on path, on speed... 30' ... thrust idle.... 20'
4) switch view to end of runway.
5) Hold against the thrust reduction induced nose down moment, flare a little bit
5) 10'... Use your vision to judge the vertical speed and adjust input as necessary
6) Let it come down, don't hold it off (or lower the nose)
7) Use your feet to align the aircraft with the direction of travel. Even the lowest vertical speed will feel like a ****ty landing if you come down sideways (NG especially intolerant to drift).

Incidentially the above is exactly what is written in the FCTM only in a slightly different wording

I have written this quite some times before:
Most "firm" arrivals are caused by not looking where you are supposed to… out the window!

Instrument fixation (FD, glide slope, PAPI), then followed by the panic-pull-surprise-over-flare when finally looking out and seeing the rising runway and then the classic late 10 feet thrust reduction followed by endless floating and smack down from 6 feet.

The glideslope, PAPI and Touchdown markings are often not co-located, hence all this information may unstabilize the path at the last moment if switching focus between them in the expectation that it's possible to get them all to magically align.
Actually they are all useless information, compared to the much more precise cues one can obtain from just fixating the aim-point in the window. Being where you want to be in a stabile state is the key to a greaser (point 3 above).


And just to beat who-ever to it... nobody expects you to make a greaser from a hand flow CATII approach (like anybody does those now a days anyway).
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