Touch & Go Advice

[VH-MLE]

Just wondering whether anyone has a guidance document or can point me in the direction on the inherent risks of conducting touch & go's during initial training - particularly in "high-ish" performance single pilot aircraft such as a turboprop or light jet etc...

Thanks in anticipation.

VH-MLE

[drpixie]

That's a big question on little information. Are you going from a Cessna single into a turbine? Are you concerned about touch-and-go v. full-stop and taxi around?

As a general guide, go to the FAA's "Airplane Flying Handbook (faa.gov) - they have lots of sensible (but generic) advice for people moving into higher performance, turbine, or light jet. And the POH for procedures, of course. But it's basically turn your landing config into a take-off config ... you certainly want some experience under supervision/instruction before you go out by yourself.

[Mach E Avelli]

Touch & go in complex aircraft is negative training. With higher speeds, greater weights and less tolerance for delay, the actions required to bring the thing to a stop (ground idle, spoilers, reverse, brakes) are what need to be reinforced, so a long runway where stop & go can be practiced provides more positive training.
Touch & go training is more relevant for beginners needing to learn the aiming point, sort out flare height, maintaining centreline, etc. PPL & basic CPL stuff.
Just remain aware of brake temperatures, so don’t overdo the braking!

[Pugilistic Animus]

The Airplane Flying Handbook is great, lots of plagiarism though, particularly from Hurt and Davies

[dartman2]

On a jet transport aircraft on a T&G you are always above V1 and you dont know how much runway you really have left so you don't change your mind. Numerous examples of rejecting a T&G and it going wrong.

[Capt Fathom]

Just when you thought you had Touch and Goes down pat!

This weeks topic is.....

How many pages will this go for?

[KayPam]

Touch & go in complex aircraft is negative training. With higher speeds, greater weights and less tolerance for delay, the actions required to bring the thing to a stop (ground idle, spoilers, reverse, brakes) are what need to be reinforced, so a long runway where stop & go can be practiced provides more positive training.
Touch & go training is more relevant for beginners needing to learn the aiming point, sort out flare height, maintaining centreline, etc. PPL & basic CPL stuff.
Just remain aware of brake temperatures, so don’t overdo the braking!
Agree to disagree.
I did my base training in February, it was an A319.

And if I was indeed a bit worried that it would feel weird, it felt just like a touch and go in a smaller aircraft.
Provided you have a long runway, it is very comfortable. We dit it on a 3500m runway, but my airline also does it on 2400m and 2800m runways.

After my turn, I took pictures of my colleagues. So I have very precise reconstructions of the events.
A touch and go, with no particular effort of doing it fast, took 1700 meters (from 50ft down to 50ft up)
With maximum manual braking, full reverse, you can bring the aircraft to a stop in about 700 meters.
The actions are very simple, touch down, no reverse, add a bit power, PM retracts flaps from full to 3, 2, TOGA. Simple as that.

[DCThumb]

No issues at all - military do it all the time. Always used the maxim that if power is still at idle, you can stop. Once the power comes on, you are committed to get airborne. Always worth looking at the distance required to stop from threshold speed and make sure you choose a decent length runway to start with.

[Squawk7700]

My instructor in light aircraft early on insisted that I must not do touch and go’s for the first 5 solo circuit landings. Seems to be an instructional technique that’s fading away with these younger generations of instructors coming through.

[scotbill]

Touch and go is necessary with large aircraft to save very expensive time when the objective is to confirm simulator training in the actual landing phase.
Even with touch and goes we used to leave the gear down to assist with brake cooling. Doing full-stops would greatly exacerbate that problem - and of course be costly in terms of brake and tyre wear.

[Pugilistic Animus]

Go around power, go around attitude, go around flaps (if applicable) gear up (if applicable and prudent) with positive climb...

[Centaurus]

Majuro in the Marshal Islands 1976. 7000 ft sea level runway nil wind. Instructor on 737-200 training new pilots to type. Would land and roll through to the end then 180 at the end and takeoff in reciprocal direction. A form of stop and go. Repeated exercise several times times. 40 minutes later taxied to tarmac for crew changeover only to have tyres deflated due fusible plugs operation caused by excessive heat build up.

Might have been wiser to leave the gear down for the whole exercise. But even then without brake temperature gauges there is way of knowing brake or tyre temperatures.

[Always Moving]

And here we go mixing Money and Safety.
May be the old You have 2 bags the empty one is experience and the full is luck..... This i similar......
But lately the scoops are taken by companies with an excavator...... (latest is Boing but count is most of them)

[layman]

VH-MLE

You probably already know this but ...

The RAAF are using the PC21 for basic training. ROLR flights on Flightaware at East Sale are 1FTS students. Seem to be lots of racetrack patterns. At West Sale too.

Is any of the RAAF syllabus in the public domain?

I’m assuming the RAAF has many days (weeks?) of ground school & many hours sim work beforehand.

[CoodaShooda]

My instructor in light aircraft early on insisted that I must not do touch and go’s for the first 5 solo circuit landings. Seems to be an instructional technique that’s fading away with these younger generations of instructors coming through.

My son's first solo was four touch and go's and a full stop. The instructor had told him to go and enjoy himself, so he did.

[Roj approved]

I tend to agree with Mach E Avelli on this one, there really is no gain from touch and go training in a modern transport type. The sims are all Level D, which means they replicate the aircraft characteristics, to negates the need for “base training”. (Yes, I know it’s not exactly the same, but close enough)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_flight_simulator

I am aware some authorities still require “base training”, but the risk really outweighs the reward as there is no time a touch and go will ever be required. Baulked landing and low level go arounds are a “normal” procedure that all crews should be versed in.

The real benefit from the touch and go sessions that I have done in 4 Jet endorsements has been to up the scan rate, get the mouth music going and manual manipulation, which leaves me with a nice appreciation of the way the aircraft flies. But doing this in the safe environment of the Sim is good enough, no point heightening the risk.

On smaller aircraft, without simulators, on a nice long runway, if done safely, it can provide the student with the above gains. But history will show, it is still a risky endeavour and all care should be taken.

[Pugilistic Animus]

Touch and goes, well I don't think they should be forbidden until after a certain number of full stops.

You do a full stop at my base airport and want to line up again you will burn so much fuel and you won't get on the damn runway until next year...I have seen situations where a touch and go landing would have been prudent right here on PPRuNe.

[ACMS]

Oh boy.............I suppose you want us to wear a Hi Viz vest in the cockpit too....

[DeltaT]

Not all sims are Cat D, so 3 landings/takeoffs 'for real' are required to complete the type rating endorsement for those.

[Capewell]

I did base training in a 320, no issues but then I was closely supervised by a training standards captain and the runway was about 4km long.

Doing it single pilot as the OP mentions would be much higher workload with higher risk factors imho.

The manufacturers guidelines or your company manuals should specify how this operation would be performed shouldn't they?

[Mach E Avelli]

I

Doing it single pilot as the OP mentions would be much higher workload with higher risk factors imho.
The manufacturers guidelines or your company manuals should specify how this operation would be performed shouldn't they?

I have never seen any formal advice on the conduct of touch & go for complex aircraft, though Boeing had a procedure for go-around after touchdown. It mandated that this not be attempted once reversers had been selected.
My early years as an airline instructor had me converting 200 hour CPLs fresh out of the 'sausage factory' on to DC3 and F27. As we did not have simulators, we had to do it all on the aircraft - steep turns, stalls, engine-out - the lot. Being cost-driven meant we had to get them up to a minimum standard for line training in a reasonable time (I think we were allocated 10 hours per trainee). These old aircraft could be a handful at low speed, particularly in a crosswind, so at least half of the allocated time was for take-off and landing training. I quickly surmised that touch & go would not teach them anything useful, as it all happened so quickly they never got to see what the engines were doing, how to handle the throttles smoothly, or when to transfer from ground steering to primary flight control steering, and back again on landing.
In the absence of formal documentation, and presumably because there is no Level D simulator available for the type, I suggest that the OP could develop a simple routine and policy for stop-go training. Simply:
Runway length - at least double the normal TOD/ASD under the most adverse conditions of W.A.T.
Aircraft weight - minimise
V Speeds - try to find 'canned' speeds that work for both take-off and approach, ie a V2 at a take-off flap setting close to Vapp at landing flap - this greatly reduces workload
Checklist for on the runway - limit items to flap, trim, spoilers retracted (if applicable) & reversers stowed (if applicable)
Brake temperatures - if BTIs fitted, monitor; if not, limit number of cycles within a given time
Gear - leave down for brake cooling (but mentally prepare to retract it if an engine fails at a critical time)
Landing checklist - cut out extra 'fluff' but always recheck gear is down & flap as required!

But if the type is supported by an available level D simulator, why do this at all? Operators need to push back against authorities who demand additional base training after a full conversion on a level D simulator.

[B2N2]

Touch & go in complex aircraft is negative training. With higher speeds, greater weights and less tolerance for delay, the actions required to bring the thing to a stop (ground idle, spoilers, reverse, brakes) are what need to be reinforced, so a long runway where stop & go can be practiced provides more positive training.
Touch & go training is more relevant for beginners needing to learn the aiming point, sort out flare height, maintaining centreline, etc. PPL & basic CPL stuff.
Just remain aware of brake temperatures, so don’t overdo the braking!

This right here ^^^
Use your back taxi time to evaluate your performance from your previous approach and landing.

[Capewell]

I have never seen any formal advice on the conduct of touch & go for complex aircraft

The touch-and-go procedure is fully explained in our company manuals ( A320 FCTM) but it's a multi crew operation...

[FPDO]

Best advice I got was to land on the runway apply power and take off again!

Worked every time :)

[Pugilistic Animus]

Go around power, go around attitude, go around flaps (if applicable) gear up (if applicable and prudent) with positive climb...

Made a little error, the above is for a go around not a touch and go.... Touch go is flaps to takeoff setting, then power and attitude, finally gear up
sorry 'bout that.

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[josephfeatherweight]

No issues at all - military do it all the time.
I'm a bit late to the party here, but interestingly, many of the jet transport types operated by the RAAF are NO LONGER doing touch and go training.
This was phased out, certainly in the VIP fleet, which at the time was BBJ and Challenger 604. They don't do touch and go training on the Falcons either.
Before it was phased out, the minimum runway length was 8000 feet for a 604 touch and go and with a new "student" pilot, having flown nothing other than a CT4 and a PC9, there were occasions when you were grateful for that length of pavement!
I'm not sure what the rules are for the other 737 derivatives in the RAAF inventory (eg Wedgetail/Poseidon) or the A330 (KC30) - perhaps someone knows?

[Ascend Charlie]

I used to enjoy being at Avalon in 1972 watching 707 and 747 doing circuits.

[layman]

josephfeatherweight

Do you know if they perform touch & goes in the sims or is it ‘all’ stop & taxi back for the next circuit?

Many years ago (2005?) I happened to be at Canberra when a 604 was doing circuits on 35. I’m thinking it must have been ‘touch & goes’ as they seemed to come around fairly quickly.

I found out later the final landing was after a no flap approach. It was noticeably quicker over the fence.

[josephfeatherweight]

Do you know if they perform touch & goes in the sims or is it ‘all’ stop & taxi back for the next circuit?
I'm reasonably sure they don't bother with touch and goes in the sim - if they want to practice take offs or landings, it's very quick to reposition the sim as required.
The 604 was certainly doing touch and goes up to 2014 (and probably into 2015/2016) - the practice was ended, i understand, as a safety mitigation.
Certainly when I was in the RAAF, there were a number of safety "instances" that occurred during touch and go training, that evidently led to them opting for stop, reposition and go.
I remember being a bit miffed when I found out they weren't doing T+Gs anymore - I thought, "How is a junior pilot going to get some landings under their belt?"
But, in hindsight, it was a reasonably dynamic maneouvre for a junior pilot and I recall the manufacturer saying that "these aircraft really aren't supposed to do T+Gs."
Indeed, the most recent biz jet type I've flown doesn't even have a procedure in the FCOM for a T+G.
Canberra was a challenging place to do circuits - high terrain to deal with, often unpleasant turbulence and "spurious GPWS cautions" when trying to conduct visual circuits.
I found out later the final landing was after a no flap approach. It was noticeably quicker over the fence.
Whilst that is possible, it was very likely a "Flap 20" approach vs a "Flap 45" - this was practiced because single engine approaches were flown at Flap 20. A Flap 20 approach is flown 14 knots faster.
But, it could have been a Flapless approach - we went through a stint of "Flap Fails" that lead to these. About the only time a 604 flies an approach like a "real jet" - at Flap 45, it flies final with its nose pointing at the ground like a C172!!

[Checkboard]

Touch and Go in a high performance aircraft.

Cons:

The student is maxed out by the manoeuvre, and has no "quiet time" to absorb the lesson of the last approach and landing.
The instructor is maxed out re-configuring, and has no time to observe the errors of the last landing, or de-brief them.
The chance for flap selection errors increase significantly.
Runway performance requirements are a guess, it's not possible to calculate them given the variables in touch down and re-configuring (makes it a bit dodgy legally, and insurance wise, if you're not calculating them as well.)
With no V1 calculation, there's no trigger for correctly handling a real-world problem like a blown tyre or bird-strike induced engine failure.
Brake temperature becomes an issue quickly.
It's adverse training. Train how you fly, fly how you train. It induces negative transfer of skills - a lack of awareness for reverse thrust and brake application on landing and a lack of awareness of checking correct acceleration and V calls on take-off.


Pros:

The company saves a minute amount of money in training time (no money in airborne time).

[josephfeatherweight]

Excellent summary by Checkboard - particularly the reference to runway performance - it is indeed a guess, hopefully mitigated by the use of a very long runway.
The only part I would query would be the brake temperature reference - more of an issue for "stop, reposition and go", no??

[Checkboard]

Edit - tyre temperature, not brake temperature. Worse because tyre temp isn't monitored - you're looking at a failure of the sidewall.