Teaching student is by far one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do. Specifically teaching my current student to land is even harder. My student has about 18 hours now, and was handed down to me from another guy who left the school. I have been working with him trying to figure out what bad habits he has, and how on earth I am going to break those habits. Let’s see, where should I start?
1) On the takeoff roll, he is reluctant to add full power right away. I watch him eat up half of the runway using partial power before he adds max power. This is fine on a 5000 foot runway, but makes me nervous if we go somewhere shorter. He also doesn’t believe in centerlines like I do. He has a tendency to veer off the runway centerline on the takeoff roll. I have to at times add right rudder to keep us aligned……
2) On the climb out he is good, except that he is a bit absent minded and flustered, and has a tendency to miss his xwind altitude. We turn our xwind at 900 ft msl…..and all too often I have to remind him. His xwind turn is pretty good. But when he turns his downwind he blows through his altitude (1200 msl) and doesn’t configure the aircraft like he should. Can be a bit frustrating.
3) Once we sort out the airplane on the downwind, the fun is just starting. Our base turn is a diving high speed affair. A little scary. It usually takes some coaching from me to sort out the issues on base and final but he usually recovers alright.
4) The last part of the puzzle is the landing flare. Or rather lack there of. He feels as though he needs to land on all three wheels……I do not concur. Those of you who know how to land know that it is customary to land on the main wheels and let the nose wheel fall…this is done through the use of backpressure on the yoke/elevator. Initially he will start to flare normally. Then he will either put in too much backpressure---in which case we balloon 20 feet in the air, run out of airspeed, and drop like a rock. Or, he lets out the backpressure and we drop like a rock and land on all three wheels at once. Not a real healthy thing for the airplane.
Anyways, I just wanted to share some experiences I have had in the pattern the last couple of weeks. Ill keep you updated.
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3 comments:
The elusive landing technique! It's one of the hardest things to impart to a student. Where they focus their eyes in the flare is critical - make sure they look at the end of the runway. Another thing I found helped people learn landings was doing them at night early on. I'm not sure why this works, but I suspect the darkness strips away the distractions and pares things down to the basics, visually.
One thing I read somewhere and that I found helpful when I got frustrated with a student was that frustration results for unrealistic expectations. So let them balloon, bounce, and go around 'cause all of that is going to happen once they have soloed and you both need to know they can handle it.
Nice blog, btw. Keep it up!
Nice blog indeed!
I'm not a CFI (yet) but have heard of a technique that has supposedly helped in similar situations.
Have your student fly a few feet above the runway in landing configuration but instruct him not to let the wheels touch down. Bring power back to idle. As airspeed bleeds and he pulls on the nose to maintain the aircraft aloft he should in theory perform a decent flare and put the thing down on both mains. Something about trying to keep it off the runway in this exercise makes for greasers I've been told. This is also good to help students stop fixating ahead and look all the way down the runway instead.
Thanks guys. I am loving being a CFI. I think sometimes I learn more than my student does. Strange but true. My latest blog here is a good one. Elec failure was pretty interesting. always learning.
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