Hey guys!
Jon from fly8MA.com and today I'm here to talk to you about low approaches to the runway.
Making low approaches down the runway without actually landing.
And that is a great tool to practice when you're getting ready to do touch-and-go's
with your instructor, just getting ready to start learning how to land the aircraft.
Instead of just going right in and trying to bring the wheels down to the ground, we're
instead going to fly lower and lower and lower down the runway.
Today we're going to be flying the airplane down the runway with proper crosswind correction
put in, by the way, keeping a wing down if we need to, keeping some rudder in there if
we need to, and then just tracking center line, using power to keep the airplane in
the air off the ground.
If we get too low we'll add power, if we get too high, we'll reduce power, always managing
our airspeed.
We're a B in our touchdown point so we're ready to go through our landing checklist.
PPFF, power back to 1700, pitching for 80 miles per hour, I do that just by holding
my nose up right where she was, not letting it drop or climb at all.
So just keeping that nose up there, bleed the airspeed down to 80, I'll go ahead and
trim to help me hold at 80, trim back to neutral there.
And then put in 10 flaps, and turn my fuel pump on.
That'll start a nice, gentle descent here.
About 300-500 feet per minute.
Watching my runway there off on my left shoulder, all I care about here is airspeed and runway.
That's all I care about.
I can tell my altitude, just by looking out my window, I know if I'm high or low, just
by looking out the window.
But watching my runway, that gives me my heading information, watching the airspeed, that gives
me how much energy is left in the airplane.
Right about 45 degrees off of our left shoulder, we'll go ahead and turn a left base."Traffic
Cherokee 07Whiskey, left base runway 23, Venice Traffic."
I'm going to keep my hand near the throttle since we are coming in closer to the ground.
If we ever get too close to the ground, or something goes wrong, we'll just add full
power and climb away.
Leveling our wings here, going to 25 degrees of flaps, still looking good.
You'll notice we've got a pretty slow ground speed here at base.
That's going to be a good indication that we're probably going to run into a right crosswind
on final here.
Maintaining airspeed, watching the runway.
Airspeed and runway, that's all we really care about here.
Use power for altitude if I get a little low, I'll bump some power in, if I get picked up
by a little thermal and I get too high, I reduce some power.
We're clear on the right, nobody else is on final.
"Venice Traffic Cherokee 07Whiskey final runway 23 low approach, Venice Traffic."
So I let everyone know that we're just a low approach, we're not a touch-and-go, we're
not a full stop, we're just low approach on runway 23, not necessary to include that but
it's a helpful little bit of information to let them know.
We can see we're just slightly high here above glide, so that's okay, better high than low.
I'll try to reduce a little power her to get back on glide slope, and when I do get back
on glide slope, I'm coming down and when I intercept glide slope, I want to bump some
power so I don't continue to go below it.
There's glide slope, bump a little power in, expect a few little thermals over the blacktop
here and over the road, and then probably some sink over the inner-coastal there, over
where the cooler water is.
Right on glide slope, as I get closer here, I'm going to go ahead and transition to a
side slope slip, so we're slipping sideways through the air, putting in left rudder, right
aileron, because I've got a crosswind coming from the right and I want to track straight
down that runway.
Now I'm just using power to hold myself up in the air.
Normally I would want to reduce power here to come even lower and let the wheels touch
the ground, but I'm going to leave a little bit of power in, not so much, just enough.
Probably about 1500-1700rpm-- somewhere in that range.
Just enough power to keep the airplane cruising down the runway at a safe airspeed-- about
70 to 80-- just a few feet off the ground.
There's about 30 feet.
I'm going to take her down to 10 feet.
20 feet.
And about 10 feet.
We could take her down even lower here if we wanted to.
We're just using power and pitch to work this here.
I'm keeping my right wing down, tracking center line, looking all the way down that runway,
and focusing at the very end of it, focusing on those trees at the end, trying to just
continue flying the airplane down the runway as far as we want to go.
We're getting a little low, I'll add some power in, keeping that energy in the aircraft.
And with the last thousand feet of the runway there I'm going to go ahead and add full power,
go around, immediately climb away in Vu.
Once we've passed through 200 feet, I'll go from 25 flaps down to 10 flaps.
"Venice Traffic 07Whiskey, up on runway 23, Venice Traffic."
Passing through 200 feet, 20 flaps down to 10, and holding Vy. 85 mph here.
Just keeping that nose right up on the horizon there, and I'm pushing forward a bit here.
I'm fighting the trim, I don't want to bother reaching up and trying to reset it.
I'd rather just keep my hand on the throttle and keep it pushed all the way in.
We're clear to turn left crosswind here.
"Venice Traffic Cherokee 07 Whiskey, left crosswind runway 23, Venice Traffic."
As we roll onto the left crosswind, once we get our wings level, we'll go ahead and go
10 flaps down to zero and turn our fuel pump off.
There we are, wings level on crosswind, airspeed's good, positive climb rate, positive airspeed,
flaps down.
Flaps up, actually.
Panel down, flaps are retracted.
And we'll go ahead and turn onto the left downwind.
"Venice Traffice Cherokee 07Whiskey, left downwind runway 23, Venice Traffic.
And we're going to do the same exact thing again here.
We're going to do a low approach using power to control our altitude, just holding the
airplane just a few feet off the ground as we get lower we'll put a little power in.
If we touch a wheel, let's take that opportunity to take power all the way out and make it
a touch-and-go.
Wouldn't that be great?
We'll go ahead and do PPFF to configure for landing, power back to 1700.
Now I already trimmed, I never fixed that trim, so now all I have to do is slowly release
on that back pressure without letting the nose pitch up or down on me.
And eventually, I can let go, the nose stays right there and we pitch for 80 automatically.
Flaps at 10, and fuel pump on.
We're on a nice, gentle, slow descent right at 80 mph.
45 degrees off our left shoulder there, once we get 45 degrees, we'll turn on a left base.
On base, 25 flaps.
And on this one, we'll make a low approach just like we did before, but I got a feeling
we'll get really low in a good position, and when I like it I'll just pull power back to
idle, the right wheel will touch first and then the left wheel, and I'll just hold it
off, follow through, and make it into a full stop landing.
And we're clear to turn our left base, no one else is around here.
"Venice Traffic Cherokee 07Whiskey, left face runway 23, Venice Traffic."
Alright, we're on left face, we're going to 23, we'll go to 25 flaps here.
Power for altitude, pitch for airspeed.
Never using this to go up.
This controls airspeed.
Throttle controls altitude.
Add power we'll go up, reduce power we'll go down.
Really get that stuck in you're head.
Never use this to control altitude.
It will go terribly wrong, because what happens is, you get low, so you pull back to go up
and then you get slow, so you sink a lot more.
We'll go ahead and get our approach stabilized here at 80.
A Nice stable approach is the secret to a good landing.
80 mph, nice steady descent rate, everything is looking good.
We're clear on the right-- nobody else is on final, we can go ahead and start turning
final for runway 23, here."Venice Traffic Cherokee 07Whiskey, Final runway 23, Venice
Traffic."
I didn't tell them touch-and-go, full stop, low approach, or anything like that because
we're not really sure what we want to do just yet.
I don't know how this one's going to turn out.
Pushing forward just a hair there to keep my speed up.
Right on glide slope, using power to manage my altitude, power to manage the glide slope.
As I get lined up here, eventually I'll transition to that right wing down, left rudder in, to
keep my nose going straight down the runway, and put the right wheel down first.
Looking all the way down that runway, focusing at the very end of it, using my peripherals
to help gauge height.
Even though my focal point is all the way at the end, I might not be able to see over
the nose, I'm still focusing down at the very end, and using the peripherals to gauge how
high I am, and also my yaw left and right.
Bringing that left rudder in, bringing that right wing down.
We're a little bit below glide slope but we're clear of all our obstacles so we're going
to go ahead and come down towards the runway now, holding that 80 mph all the way down
into ground effect.
Looking down that runway, making all the little, tiny corrections we need, making as big a
correction as you need on the flight controls, but look how I'm moving them around.
I'm immediately canceling myself out so I'm making very small changes in attitude to the
aircraft.
Very small attitude changes, but plenty of changes on the flight controls, whatever I
need to get the aircraft to respond immediately to what I want, but not making big attitude
changes.
Because if I just put a change and hold this up, look at that, now we're climbing up like
crazy.
I want to make lots of small, little corrections.
This looks really good here so I'm going we're just going to go ahead and reduce power.
Right wheel is down, left wheel is down, the nose gear is down, and we're rolling all the
way over, following through, and there is how we turn a low approach into a landing.
So, low approach and high-speed taxi combines to make a really nice landing.
If you can taxi the aircraft fast, and you can fly it down the runway just a few feet
off of it, you can land the aircraft.
We'll go ahead and turn off here, and let everyone know we're clear of the runway.
As we get clear, here we'll make our radio call.
"Venice Traffic Cherokee 07Whiskey is clear of runway 23 at Echo, Venice Traffic."
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