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Old 3rd Jun 2017, 12:46
  #50 (permalink)  
Local Variation
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Lestah
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I have had 2 FL in my years, both quite along time ago. In the intervening years, I have been guilty of failing to keep currency on PFL. I re-addressed that at the start of 2017 ploughing in alot of time to refresh the skills and I was shocked at how rusty I'd become.

In around two thirds of the cases, I would have either overshot or undershot the field. This was pretty much all down to the judgements made around the base to final turn which I was undertaking in a conventional way. Much discussion with the CFI followed and his comment is once downwind, start a constant turn all the way round to final. Do not fly box turns. Undershooting must be avoided at all costs. Height can be lost to avoid overshooting via various methods already discussed in this thread....the most basic one demonstrated to me was push the bloody nose down hard. Don't worry about the speed build up. Getting it in is the over riding priority.

Another point worth making is fresher training. Most training involves flying to the training area, getting upto 2,500 ft plus and closing the throttle. All very dandy with plenty of time and prior knowledge of what is about to happen.

My own fresher training had the throttle being closed at a thousand feet after take-off. No prior knowledge, no warning, no HASELLs. This was not an EFATO drill. Recover, where would you go..get on with it, would you get in.....happy?... done. Back upto a thousand and climbing away. Then straight the way again, closed throttle. And so on. After the initial shock and the brain struggling to understand is this EFATO or PFL? it really helped alot in decisive decision making and more accuracy in flying it to the field. In at least one case, dive bombing style.

There is no one size fits all approach to this and you have to adapt. Judgement and skill are what it's all about. I now practice PFL every 8 to 10 weeks.

Last edited by Local Variation; 3rd Jun 2017 at 12:49. Reason: Spelling
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