Trimming, Landing & Instructors - HELP!!!

[Okavango]

Hi. I had a terrible lesson (number 14, 14.25hrs total time) last night and need a sanity check. Basic areas where I'd appreciate advice is around trimming (in particular in the circuit), landings and instruction.

Trimming
I've now done 35 circuits and I’m confident with everything in average conditions. My instructor said I was ready to go solo 2 lessons ago though I'm in no major rush either way (at the end of the lesson before last he asked me if I wanted to take it up myself but it was the end of a long lesson so I elected to wait til next time as I didn't see the point in rushing). However - on the next lesson last night, he pulled my trimming apart, continually shouting at me (which made things no easier) as I was ending downwind between 900-1100ft (standard circuit 1000ft aal). This was admittedly my worst flying to date and it's usually spot on - though is this not completely unreasonable behaviour, I'd assume any lift or sink could put you out by 50-100ft and only correct if I go beyond this as a general rule. I do appreciate that I need to tighten trimming as far as possible as any early student would, it's more the conduct (below), which made everything more difficult that concerns me. However, I would appreciate any advice regarding accuracy that should be expected at this early stage.

Landing
After being confident with my landings to date, he then changed tack last night. Best way I can describe my method is to approach stable at 70kts (C152), apply slight back pressure to get 60-65kts over the threshhold then hold everything steady to ~20ft. Then start to flare at ~20ft, levelling at 2-5ft, at which point dropping the throttle and checking any slight drop in height at the time. Then hold steady until I feel the sluggishness and sink from the stall at which point apply gradual back-pressure as it drops, until the rear wheels make contact, then smoothly bring the nose down a second or 2 later. This has allowed very smooth landings over the last few lessons and I've never gone nose in, bounced or dropped the front wheel in any lesson. However, last night my instructor now says he wants me to roundout TO LEVEL AT 20ft. Tried this and we had a heavy landing and bounce - which I recovered and it’s the only benefit I took from the whole lesson. From what I’ve heard from past students, my instructor is known to be a bit twitchy/nervous and this came after he touched the controls in the prior landing and made us balloon. I don't want to question my instructor in any way and always consider he is in the right - but does my technique sound wrong? How many circuits are normal? At this rate I see no end to the exercise.

Instructor
Related to the above, I found his conduct last night to be completely unsatisfactory, and raising your voice in my view has no place in a cockpit, aviation in general or instruction (unless safety is concerned). I kept my calm throughout the lesson and said we could speak when we landed, which we did and I let him know my thoughts and that the issue is one of consistency of instruction. He said "if it's any consolation, it's normal to fall out". I don't believe this should be the case - is this everyone else's experience of instruction/FTO’s?

Would appreciate any advice on the above as at the moment this has ruined the experience and whacked my morale (though will be back!!). Thanks.

[BackPacker]

Well, you're a student pilot but you're already landing - and taking about it, and reflecting on it - like a professional pilot. Obviously I have not seen you fly and have to base everything on what you posted here. But I'd say: don't change a single thing. Just be ready to adapt your style a bit if circumstances (wind!) change - sometimes a little more speed is in order, and sometimes you might want to close the throttle a little sooner or later. But your basic technique seems to be pretty good. So don't worry about that.

If the instructor not only shows dissatisfaction with your landings, but even starts to shout at you, ruining your confidence, it sounds like the instructor has a problem, not you. If he touches the controls and thereby ruins the landing instead of improving it, I wonder what's going on?

Is switching to another instructor, even if only temporarily, an option for you? Did you talk to the CFI about this?

Remember that you are the customer. You are the one that needs to learn to fly from an instructor, not the other way 'round.

[172driver]

Reading your post (but of course not knowing you or your flying), this sounds like an instructor problem more than anything else. If this situation doesn't change very rapidly (i.e. at the next lesson), I'd say change instructor - this attitude only undermines your confidence. Not a a good thing in any learning environment.

HTH

[Pilot DAR]

I was yelled at by an instructor once, and an apology was promptly issued by several people. If the instructor lost his/her cool, that was not acceptable. I suppose everyone gets to make a mistake once (hopefully not once per student), but never again. If you were his crew, would he yell at you? Does he feel that the performance of someone else in the cockpit who is performing a required task, will improve after a yelling? Being the higher order of calm yourself, you are responsible for taking it all in stride AT THE TIME, and finishing your task with reasonable safety. Afterward, an accounting is due.

As for the trimming and landing, you're putting way too much thought into this.

Trimming: As much as possible, based upon your experience in the aircraft type, anticipate trim changes, and trim accordingly, in advance of/during/or just after configuration changes. Regognize that some upsets (turbulance) are not a reason to retrim, so don't. Don't fly the plane with the trim, just use it to help you fly with ease.

Landing: Feel the plane. It already knows how to fly, it does not want to crash either. What is it telling you by feel? Does it feel like it wants to descend in only partial control from 20 feet up? Does it feel like 70kts, slowing to 60 over the numbers sets you up for a good landing? The object of landing, is to have the aircraft stall wings level, and smoothly stop flying just as it touches the runway in good control, with lots of room ahead. That requires slightly differing techniques in different aircraft, but the end result is the same. If you got a stall warning horn as you gently touched, you probably had a great landing too, and had to explain to some pleased passengers what the stall warning sound was. Once you cross the numbers, while keeping the aircraft under complete smooth control the whole time, cause it to smoothly decelerate from then on, and once it gets within a foot of the runway, gently try to prevent it from touching. You know it's going to at some point ('cause the power is nearly all the way to idle now). It would rather fly, let it as long as it will! You're paying for the use of a plane to fly it, not taxi it, get the most for your money! And don't worry about dragging out your landing roll, it will decelerate nearly as fast in the air, as it will on the ground, until the latter stages, when you start to use just a little brakes.

One day you'll be flying a type you've never flown before, and you'll have to figure it out for yourself. This technique is the same for most tricycle wheel planes, though some react to it a little differently than others!

Everyone has a bad flight if you did not bend flesh or metal, it was nothing other than a learning experience, take it that way. Sounds to me though that you learned that another instructor would be a good idea!

Cheers, Pilot DAR

[WALSue]

Personally I'd see about switching instructors/schools.
I've never had a bad instructor but I have found that I learn a lot better (I assume due to confidence) with some over others.
Good luck with everything

[cjhants]

agree with what`s been said above about FI, have a chat over a coffee with him/her and clear the air.

i have always thought of trimming as a bit like power steering on a car. you could do without it, and its perfectly possible to fly a circuit with the trim in the centre. its just much easier if you can get it trimmed properly in all phases of flight. if you can get it trimmed to approach speed early on finals, you can concentrate all your efforts on landing, and however many hours we have, landing still requires all of our attention. even then, most pilots will tell you they probably make good landings less than 50% of the time. its a black art that has been discussed on these forums and elsewhere extensively.

when i first went up with the CFI at my club, he told me i was flaring too late, although the FI i had in nearly all my training was happy with the way i was landing, and so was the examiner. so its not unusual to get differing opinions, as i am sure you will find on here!

good luck, and enjoy your solo when it happens.

[Okavango]

Thanks all

Thanks all. I'm keeping an open mind at present as he's usually ok though will change instructors in any case at some stage soon just for the benefit of experience. It's just obviously a sensitive stage at present as you need not just your own confidence but theirs as well. Regarding the ballooning, I asked him why he did that (as an honest question wondering why he felt the need to touch the controls) and I suspect he thought I was questioning his skill/judgement.

[Human Factor]

However, last night my instructor now says he wants me to roundout TO LEVEL AT 20ft. Tried this and we had a heavy landing and bounce....

Not surprised. I start to flare my 737 at about 20ft!

[Speedbird48]

Okavango,

You are doing fine, or at least you are able to think through the flare and landing process very well. You appear to be doing well for your experience level. But, as others have said I have not flown with you. Your caution at not wanting to go solo after a long hard day is also commendable.

The flare at 20ft is downright crazy, and again as has already been said you are not in a 737 etc, but probably a 172?? A stable approach starting at 70, and slowly bring it back to 60 at the threshold is just what is needed with the final check at about 2/3ft with the power off.

Get another instructor. He/she may have been having a bad day, but to shout or deride a student is not acceptable. There are others out there and the Chief where you are at present needs to know ASAP. That instructor can kill the schools business stone cold.

Get over it and carry on to bigger and better things. It is all worth it in the end. Good luck.

Speedbird 48.

[Okavango]

Thanks again. This is in a 152. I don't think he wanted to flare at 20ft, just level out and I guess then approach at a much shallower angle/decent rate (and therefore it wouldn't be all one joined up process how I had been doing it until then and how I felt comfortable). Either way it just seemed control authority was being lost too soon and the process felt more drawn out than necessary (to my admittedly inexperienced brain). I come to this from a hang gliding background so I do have a feel for how wings behave on approach/flare though is it the case that he could be worried about hitting some sink or some other effect? (I guess hang gliders are comparatively more responsive due to the low inertia). The best way I can describe his reaction is like when you're the passenger in a car and you feel the driver is getting too close to the car in front - so I can kind of appreciate where he's coming from, though lack of consistency is not helping me and to me my previous approaches felt right (and had been acceptable to him).

[IO540]

Firstly, I would dump the instructor.

Another angle is that you must have sweated buckets during those 35 circuits. You probably did not learn very effectively as this is a very high stress situation. Circuits should be flown only to consolidate procedures, not to learn anything basic about flying.

If you want to learn about basic flying e.g. trimming then go off somewhere peaceful where you can mess around and do it there.

I don't like the current PPL training process where students bang circuits until one could wring the sweat out of their clothing (one can hear the stress on the radio calls) before they are set off solo. I can see it makes for the cheapest PPL but I would never teach it that way round. Some recent research in the USA appears to support this - they found they can do an ab initio PPL/IR in about 50-60hrs and it's nearly all dual, no solo.

[EGBKFLYER]

IO - I agree entirely. Not enough time is invested in the basics before the pressure is ramped up in the circuit. Part of it is poor instruction but I think it's also down to some instructors bending to pressure from students to 'make progress' and get on to taking off and landing etc, rather than spending another session on trimming or other basic skils.

Okavango - dump the numpty and find yourself a proper instructor with some teaching skills!

[stillin1]

I suggest you consider having a chat with the guy before you go for a possibly knee jerk reaction and bin the instructor. Sounds to me like what you were doing at the beginning was just peachy for the stage you are at. Perhaps the guy was just having an off day and is now tinkering with techniques where it is not needed. You do not say weather he is an old and bold or a newish chap. His shouting etc IS inexcusable and HE should have apoligised right away. However, does it merit giving him the boot after what sounds like some decent instruction up until this hiccup! Clear the air and reasses?

[SNS3Guppy]

I'll be the odd man out and assert that yelling can be a tool which is useful and on occasion necessary, though certainly not the norm in every day instruction. It does have it's place, however.

Not having been in the cockpit, I won't be so quick to condemn your instructor without his point of view on the table. I will say that very often when a sort of plateau has been reached, when the student and instructor aren't on the same wavelength, it's a good idea to try it from a different perspective. It may be just an hour with a different instructor to get a little different insight will be all you need. Changing instructors unnecessarily can set you back as you relearn the same things from different techniques...it can do more harm than good (I had six instructors on my way to private pilot). Trying one for an hour or two, though, can give you some valueable insight before going back to your regular instructor pilot.

There's a world of difference between instructing and teaching. Instructors administer a syllabus. Teachers promote understanding and learning by delivering the material to you in a way you can understand, and accept. What you need is a teacher. You may have one right now; only you can tell that.

I think painting by numbers is okay at first (do this at this altitude, pull the power to here, yada, yada), but early flying is more by feel. When is it timeto flare? When the picture out the window begins to look very much like it did when you were taxiing and taking off. Memorize that picture, and you have the landing picture. As you get close to the ground and see it rising around you in your peripherial vision, your goal is to get the ground to stop rising around you and transition a feeling of moving forward. In other words, you stop sinking and start moving forward. It's easy to get caught up in the "hold it off" feeling, and that comes right back to wondering how high you are, and so forth. All you're doing is putting the airplane back where you found it. It was on the ground when you found it, you spent time memorizing this as you taxied and took off and you're just returning it to the same condition.

It's really nothing more than the same feeling you have when you drive over a bridge, in a car. The car starts down the bridge, reaches ground level, stops going down, more moving forward, same sight picture around you as you had before you went up the bridge in the first place. Just in the airplane, and you're descending on air instead of pavement.

Don't be too hard on yourself as your learn to feel the wheels and feel the ground. It's a learning process. I've been doing this a long time now, and it's still very much a learning process. Each time you move to a different type of airplane it's a whole new learning process. Each time you switch seats in the airplane it's different. When you fly an aft-loaded airplane (such as taking off for the first time with passengers on board), it's different. The timing to flare is different. The amount of control travel is different. What's not different is that feeling...of returning the airplane to the same place as where you started.

When we transitioned pilots in tailwheel airplanes, we found that one of the easiest ways to get them accustomed to the wheel landing attitude was to prop the tail of the airplane on a stand or in a truck bed, and have them sit in the airplane. Memorize what it looked like. Then all they had to do when landing was return the airplane to that same sight picture...remember what it looked like when peering out of the airplane, and make it look like that again...using whatever control input (pitch, power, flap, etc) it takes.

Don't become too frustrated. Thomas Edison took 2,000 tries to invent the lightbulb. Some said two thousand failures. He didn't give up. He later said that each one was a success, because each time a design didn't work, he'd eliminated on more possibility, and thus brought himself closer to finding one that did work. Flying is the same way. Each trip around the pattern, each landing, each flare, is exactly the same way. Like a sculptor chipping away all the parts that aren't the statue, you're defining how to fly an airplane with each trial and error...and that's exactly as it should be.

For what it's worth, I start my flare at 30' in the 747, and I'm stuck something like 150' above the pavement...and it's a surprise every time when the moment of truth arrives and the wheels actually touch. There's still nothing more enjoyable for the sheer pleasure of it than making a good landing in a light, single engine airplane...where you really are in charge, where you really do use art in motion, and where you really do simply put the airplane backwhere you found it once more.

I suspect you're doing better than you think...perhaps your instructor's tone is used to show that he expects well of you too. Whatever the case may be, keep at it. Much like a bicycle, at some point it will all "click" and fit together. You'll see.

[TotalBeginner]

I started to learn to fly when I was 19 and gave up when I was treated badly by a new instructor. He took me for my first nav ex and turned me into a nervous wreck. Tutting, shouting, barking orders etc.. This 40min introduction to NAV felt more like 4 hours. The strange thing was that after we landed he commented on how well I'd done...? It didn't matter though, I went home feeling crushed. It was the worst lesson I'd ever had and he was only supposed to be showing me the techniques used for navigation.

Anyway, it was nearly 4 years until I decided to give it another go. This time I went to a different school. I had 2 instructors from start to finish, and they were brilliant. They gave me invaluable advice, criticised where necessary but above all gave me the confidence to fly well and pass my skills test.

[Shunter]

Shouting and bawling has no place in the cockpit. I came back from a nav-ex as a student, and as we settled in downwind I lifted my chart up and gently dropped it behind the seat as it was getting in the way and was at that point superfluous (C152, no door pockets, very snug with 2 big blokes in it). The guy went absolutely mental.

We got on the ground and, being the occasionally abrasive type, I told him that being an instructor and being an obnoxious d1ckhead were not mutually exclusive. Never flew with him again. If you're not getting constructive support from your instructor, say something.

[ChrisVJ]

Interesting contrast as time goes on.

I learned to fly 45 years ago when teachers threw blackboard erasers and no teacher, in school or in the cockpit, would have been sanctioned for shouting. Somehow we did all learn to fly. Some of us even developed a tolerance for shouting and sometimes we even recognised that it may have been appropriate.

Being rather old fashioned and having to maintain order with five teenage boys in the house I have occasionally raised my voice. (Well, maybe rather more than occasionally.) It may or may not be a result of their upbringing that, while some of my boys are a liitle dozier than others they all manage to pay attention when yelled at and discern the required action without getting flustered.

Once we took a friend of my daughter's on a sailing trip with us and as she had sailed with her parents and everyone else was busy I asked her to hold the course while I went and untangled the jib. Just about when I am hanging over the rail fighting three hundred square feet of sail she goes dramatically off course and I am knee deep in rushing water and hanging on for dear life. Of course I yell something like "Get the h*ll back on course" When I get back to the cockpit my daughter has taken charge an our guest has gone below because she was "upset." I am proud to say that I think my kids cope well in such situations.

I was 18 when I got my PPL and I probably would not have had the nouse to change instructors. In fact I had very good instructors and they did not shout anyway though there were the occasional sharp words.

That is all really beside the point though. You are a customer and you are buying the time. If it is in any way not what you want then change it without hesitation.

My eldest son is now learning to fly but he may not have so much choice. He is learning in the Canadian Air Force!

[RatherBeFlying]

I prefer steep approaches in small aircraft as it makes it easier to identify where I will meet the Earth and less likely to get involved with wires or trees. And if the engine acts up, I can still make the runway.

Flaring too high on a steep approach with the engine at near idle can lose airspeed and drop you in from too high

So you do have to flare lower, but this can be hard on a nervous instructor, especially if his last student came in on the nosewheel

[Lister Noble]

I had excellent training at an excellent local school.
Just two instructors,one for the first 15 hrs or so and the CFI for the rest.
One day they were really tied up and I had an hour with a very experienced pilot, but not so good instructor, that they used on very rare occasions.
I was practising turns when there was a loud crack as he hit me with his clipboard around the back of the head.

"There,look there,look there,that's where he will come from!"

Well it may not have been professional but I've never forgotten it, each time I turn.
Lister

[Pilot DAR]

I don't agree that yelling should be tolerated at all, unless it's simply a situation when the other person cannot hear, and that does not happen to often in cockpits anymore. If a person, in an emotional situation yells (or uses the clipboard for a purpose other than intended), they have lost control. So, they either lack the ability to remain in control, and keep control of themselves, or they just don't care. Either way, that's not what I want to learn.I never yell at anyone else, why would I yell at another pilot? When recently taking type training, I continued to fail to remove my hand from the throttle during takeoff as directed, it's jut violates my instincts over 30 years of flying. But my mentor had a reason for this direction. After being quietly told a few times, subsequent reminders were not yelling, they were a gentle nudge on my elbow. My mentor has no aspirations for the airlines, he is 76 years old. I will learn from him al I can, when ever I can, including being polite and effective in the cockpit. Why would we teach adversarily? It just legitimizes such poor behaviour in the cockpit for future pilots in multi crew environments.Pilot DAR