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Old 17th Feb 2003, 10:22
  #65 (permalink)  
griffinblack
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: australia
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EOLs

EOLs, or as we say Touch down autos. Quite honestly, I am not convinced of the argument that they are necessary. The skill is conducting Practice Forced Landing (PFL) ie positioning the aircraft "into the hole in the trees". The other skill necessary is to make the landing survivorable once there. These actions can be trained with power terms (practicing when to commence the flare and at what rate). The fact that you intial (pitch pull) a little high/low or overlevel or touch down cocked off -who cares? If you can't make your spot its all a waste of time.

This is the standard that is accepted in the military with highly trained proffesional pilots. I would be suprised if your average Joe civvy would have the capacity to develop skill sets to be consistently touching down without assistance. And if they do concentrate on that limited aspect of the touch down what about all the other stuff associated with positioning the aircraft.

I would fail a guy in a heartbeat if he couldn't get within 2-3 aircraft lengths of the touch down point. If he overleveled or I needed to take over at the pitch pull - I don't give a rats ar.e.

As for skidways. They are more forgiving but my experience with the US army is that they have a poor habit (negative habit transfer) of lowering the lever on touch down. It makes you stop expeditiously but we had one Sepo exchange guy damage one of our aircraft (even after being here for a couple of years) because he lowered the lever on "sod".
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