Aircraft Landings - All Types - Safety?

Aircraft Landings - A Lesson(s) to Remember

Here are a series of  videos of Aircraft Landings. They show  information about patterns flown in landings; night and day landings; poor landings; dangerous landings; landings close to massive obstructions; Aircraft Carrier landings and possible visual illusions associated with landings.

Enjoy!

Collage of Landings!

This is scary - hang onto your hats!

Aircraft Carrier landings and takeoffs. Good shots.

Excellent emergency landing! Enjoy great flying.

Good landing. Great view of how a lighted runway appears from the cockpit.

These videos vividly illustrate what cross wind landings, poorly executed, compound tactics for pilots. I sincerely hope you learn lessons about approaches, aborted landings, crashes and, of course, good recoveries and a excellent emergency landing.

Visual Illusions - The Trapezoid Problem

Trapezoid Visual Illusion in Airplane Landings

In daylight, when approaching a runway for a landing in a small plane the runway appears to look like a trapezoid. When landing at a small airport we fly a pattern that looks like a elongated rectangle that consists of "downwind leg", "base leg" and "final approach leg."

The "final approach leg" is important for several reasons. 

• We learn to start the approach at a specific altitude.
• We learn to begin the turn, into the "final approach" , at a distance and height from the end of the runway that allows our plane to land safely without increasing the power. (No dragging out the approach over several miles)
• We learn to visualize the shape of the trapezoid when everything is done right to enter our "final approach leg."

The safety lesson? What if we practice flying at night and test our abilities to land safely by performing several landings to practice and sharpen our skills.

The runway is outlined by lights. We can see the shape of the trapezoid at night. We are familiar with how it looks. Like an old friend.

Heres the illusion. What if we fly into a larger airport where the runway is twice as long and twice as wide and we are cleared for a "straight in" final approach from one mile away to the end of the runway?

The runway has the same shape. We are at the proper altitude on final approach and we begin to cut our power just like we did back at our old familiar home base airport for this night approach. 

Think about this illusion. Where will we actually land?

Thats right, we will land far short of the end of the larger airports runway. The shape of the outline of the larger runway will appear to match the  size and shape of the small runway where you practiced. Thats the illusion.

We are deceived and the result is a crash landing if don't recognize our mistake in time.

PNT and Navigation

Global Navigation System and PNT

What is it? The FAA Global Navigation System is a Positioning, Navigation and Timing service for airplanes equipped to use the satellite service.

The FAA plans to provide PNT services to improve the accuracy, availability and trustworthiness to support all-weather use of GPS as the primary means of navigation for both IFR and VFR flight.

The basic principles of air navigation are identical to general navigation which includes planning, recording and controlling the movement of a craft from one place to another.

For our environment, airspace, successful navigation air navigation involves piloting a plane from place to place without getting lost, breaking laws that apply to aircraft or endangering the safety of those on board or on the ground.

Air navigation differs on several important points from surface navigation. 

• Planes travel at relatively high speeds which leaves less time to calculate their position en-route.
• Planes cannot just stop in midair for a few minutes to take the time to recheck their position. Surface vehicles can take the time to recheck carefully.
• Planes have limited fuel and, if they run out of fuel it can be disastrous. Not so with surface vehicles, like cars, where, if they run out of fuel they can just sit by the road for help.
• Pilots must have a constant navigational position that is critical to their safety and those of their passengers.

The techniques used for navigation by pilots depends on whether the the plane is flying under Visual Flight Rules (VFR) or Instrument Flight Rules (IFR).

In IFR rules the the plane navigates using instruments and radio navigations devices like beacons or under the direct supervision of and control by air traffic controllers.

In the VFR case, a pilot will largely navigate using dead reckoning combined with visual observations (known as pilotage), with reference to appropriate maps. This may be supplemented using radio navigation aids.

Flying Safely Under A Thunderstorm

Can an Airplane Climb in a Thunderstorm Downdraft

This is a rate of climb problem for a majority of private planes, especially our antique aircraft with minimal engine power.

In a prior post I related my personal experience inside a building thunderstorm before rain reached levels where hail formation began in ernest. Downdrafts were absent, at the time of entry, for me.

Atlanta Center confirmed what I penetrated increased to the category of a Super Cell within 30 minutes after I escaped from the Cell. The velocity of the updrafts and downdrafts inside thunderstorms vary on the conditions at the time of development. 40 ft/sec to 60 ft/sec are frequently mentioned as a range.

Moisture content, terrain, freezing level, cold and warm fronts, obstacles and wind come to my mind. These combinations may, when everything is right, produce mayhem in the skies.

Roll clouds in front of a developed, large thunderstorm can push your airplane into the ground if you are foolish enough to attempt to fly under the storm. The downdrafts can overcome the planes ability to climb. If you enter the roll cloud at cruising speed structural damage can happen. Large hail, if present, is a hazard.

The false information that you can fly below a thunderstorm if you can't fly around it, in safety, is insane advice. You can't predict the condition of a thunderstorm. 

Advice: Do a 180, if you can safely, and fly out of the path of danger. This is a great time for "You to Land and Enjoy a Cup of Joe!" until the problem dissipates or moves out of your intended flight path.

St. Elmo's Fire - Irishman's Delight

Static Electricity in a Thunderstorm

A place not to experience St. Elmo's Fire is inside a Thunderstorm. What is it? Its a greenish yellow glow surrounding a plane enveloped with static electricity. 

Pilots see it on the propeller of their plane, like in a thunderstorm. On a instrument flight into Atlanta I was greeted by a massive black wall when I exited one cloud formation. The massive cloud formation was a building thunderstorm, I hoped, while wondering why I was vectored into it's jaws.

I told my passenger to tighten his seat belt as tightly as he could; The lightening would be everywhere and bright; Water would hit the plane hard, like from a firehouse and St. Elmo's Fire may envelope our plane.

I slowed the plane down from cruise speed (It was a 1964 S Model Bonanza) to approximately 130 MPH, lowered the landing gear and entered the storm - all within about one minute - so it seemed.

I was prepared for the worst and didn't expect to get out of this alive or in one piece. Strangely, it was smooth flying. My passenger was giving me all the details while I was on instruments.

"Look", he said. "The propeller is glowing green, just like you said it would!" St. Elmo,s Fire!

In my scan I noticed the Vertical Speed Indicator was pegged at 5,000 ft./minute. Suddenly, after approximately 45 seconds we popped out of the thunderstorm. I looked at the altimeter and it read 9,500 feet. We entered at a cruising altitude of 6,000 feet preparing to hear from Atlanta Center for information about our destination, Fulton County Airport.

Center was talking with us immediately after we exited from the storm, asking us if we were alright or suffered structural damage. Center lost us just before we entered the storm.

He reviewed our information that indicated we gained 3,500 feet in little over 45 seconds while in the growing storm. The updrafts were very strong. Roughly, the updrafts were reaching 80 ft./second. Well above the maximum climb speed of the high performance bonanza. The large amount of air flowing over the plane created static electricity that we saw as St. Elmo's Fire.

Fortunately, the storm was just building with only updrafts. If it matured and downdrafts were present I wouldn't be here to write this Post. We couldn't control the plane if both up and down drafts existed.