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Seeing Is More Difficult Than It Looks
I used to know that there are three ways to tell if you are getting old. The first one is that you become forgetful. Uh, uh, I can't remember the other two. Maybe the story went that memory is the second mental skill you lose with age. You ask, "What was the first?" "I can't remember."

That said, I was watching Alan Alda, of MASH 4077th fame, go through a memory test on PBS last week. The program began with Alda watching the making of a video with a young couple partaking of a picnic lunch on
the shore of a body of water. Later the producer staged selected scenes of the video for the taking of still photographs with certain elements different.

Alda was shown the still photos and then was given a memory test in which he was asked to discriminate between how the original video production differed from the photos. Alda's memory mixed up the two sources of information to the point that it was obvious his mind could not tell which was which.

The purpose of the experiment was to show that mental images from different sources can be twisted and confused. That this can occur under controlled test conditions only verified for me the confusion of visual images flying students get from their lessons. There is ample reason to believe that the confusion can be made to carry over into all the other senses. In my experience the least likely to be crossed up is the sense of smell but my wife often accuses me of being contrary.

A student pilot can be expected to get widely varied sight pictures of the landing approach, roundout, and flare. Imposed on this is all the landings he has watched on TV, seen in movies, and watched at the airport. To this, add any toy airplane landings as a child or a model maker. Top this background with spoken images and procedures from pilot friends and multiple instructors. Read Stick and Rudder, Ron Machado as well as Kershner. Mix in a portion of MS-5 or s6 flight simulator and is it any wonder that students have difficulty with landings. Alda had it easy with only two image sets and still blew half his answers.

The problem, in my mind, is that there is an image conflict just as Alda had only compounded by multi-sensory perceptions. The student pilot is not sure of just what image to use in a given landing. There is enough difference between every landing so that no one image can be relied upon as a constant. What's more the kinesthetic sense is completely new, unanticipated and peculiar.

The student pilot must begin the most difficult learning process of all, unlearning. Airliners do not land as training aircraft are supposed to land. For most student only the written word accurately portrays what takes place in a good landing. Changing the written word into the desirable visual image does not come easily. There is tremendous psychological difficulties in believing that to make a good landing, you must make the runway disappear from view. You are asked to believe that the sought for sight picture does not include the runway. A good landing is a tremendous act of faith.

The instructor may have presented a particular concept of control movement over and over in the process of teaching landings without apparent effect on the student. Then for no apparent reason a brief statement gives the student some unexpected insight into what is supposed to happen. For every student this seems to come at a different time and in a different way. Whatever it is, it should be bottled.

Before I became involved in flying, I was involved in teaching children with learning difficulties. I became a much better teacher of children through teaching flying. I became a much better teacher of flying by teaching children. Just as children must believe they can learn, so must a student pilot believe that he can land an airplane without seeing the runway. Once a student believes in the teacher, most any learning process is possible.

There is another memory aspect which can add to a student's ability to perform as well as he would desire. I recommend that immediately before landing practice, an inter-airport flight, or any set of maneuvers that the student review not just mentally, but orally what he expects to do and how he expects to do it at all discrete points of the flight. This process should be an habitual process for recharging the batteries of short term memory. Don't believe that this recharging can be bypassed any more than could a preflight. The better and more complete your near term flight review the less likely are you forget pertinent information. Practice of the right kind makes perfect.

One more important aspect of a student pilot's training is the study process. You do not fully understand an instructional video in one viewing. You will not fully appreciate the nuances of meaning and implication of a book in one reading. A good example of such a text is the government publication known as the Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge. One sentence of this student textbook is often re-written into a chapter in others. This book is the concentrated orange juice of student pilot literature. I have likened the text to water buffalo meat. Even in quarter inch cubes it will require considerable chewing before it can be swallowed.  My time in India pays a dividend.

The final question is what can you or your instructor do to facilitate the learning process? Repetition alone is not enough. Rewording or restating material may help. In education there is a term called 'readiness'. A student can be exposed to material prior to being ready and it will be essentially a wasted effort. For some concepts a foundation must be laid. The student must be nurtured with peripheral material that will increase the student's awareness and readiness to learn. Students will vary in awareness of the kaleidoscope of sights, sounds, sensations and concerns that make up a flying event. What happens will be made up of many memories, some false and some true. Eventually, as in much of life, it comes down to what the student chooses to believe as memory.

Just yesterday, I gave a lesson in landing during weather minimums.  See End of 6.23.  No previous flight exposed the student with the evasion of clouds, evasion of local pattern restrictions, altitude variations and associated disorientation that required use of heading indicator for orientation.  There is no other way to present the variations of sight skills required except in actual conditions.  Don't know of any simulator capable of doing this.  The student was ready and enjoyed the experience as did I in his enjoyment.

Visions You Get While Landing
For the student, landing is an process of extreme stress. Stress focuses the attention. The instruction of landing must be designed to reduce stress. The student will only look, see, recognize, and understand what is involved in making landings when stress is reduced to a minimum of influence. The art of looking, seeing, and recognizing in a landing requires a moving scan, not as moving as an instrument scan, but a planned movement from the space over the cowling to the distance of the runway end and the horizon. All that happens, happens in the windshield and over the cowling. Knowing what you are seeing, and recognizing the significance of what you are seeing is what will give you the pertinent information required to fly the plane through the roundout, into the flare, along the float and into the stall prior to touchdown.

Every student is looking, some students see one or more of the significant factors. You are not going to make consistently good landings until you see all the significant factors of each landing phase. You are not going to be safe to solo until you know that when one of the factors is missing you must go-around. you will be ready to solo when you see what you are looking for and recognize that everything is in place for a safe landing.

You can explain a landings as consisting of five major parts, final approach, roundout, flare, touchdown and roll-out. The actual teaching of these parts causes each part to blend with those preceded and with that are to follow. There may be no distinct boundaries. The more nearly constant the pilot can make each of these parts blend smoothly with the others the better. It takes multiple exposures to each part before the student to change looking into seeing. The 'look' of every landing is different even though the same elements are present. The more constant you are able to maintain the approach speed and descent angle, the sooner you will begin 'seeing' what must be seen during the approach. You will 'see' the region between the nose and the runway. You will look for and find the line that remains still. You will 'see' the threshold move forward and back. You will 'see' the horizon appear, hold constant, and disappear in every landing in a somewhat the same-but-different manner. You will 'see better' using your peripheral vision.

When you can recognize all the parts of any given phase of the landing are properly arranged AND you can make the small changes in the controls needed to keep things either where they belong or changing into the next phase you are in control. You will be looking, seeing, and recognizing what happens to the nose and MAKING the gentle progressive changes in the controls needed to put the nose where it belongs. It is not just looking, or seeing. Rather, it is having the stress threshold level of the landing reduced to a level where you can recognize and do what it takes to make the desirable transitions happen.

There are several advantages to maintaining power into the final approach. Power will maintain carburetor heat sufficient to effectively prevent carburetor ice. Existing power will allow a smoother and quicker application of full power in a go-around. An abrupt application of power is far less likely to load up the carburetor. The power will allow a higher nose attitude at a slower airspeed. As the nose comes up so must rudder pressure move in to prevent landing to the left of the center line.  This will reduce the amount of pitch change required into the round-out. Power gives the pilot a variable with which to adjust the glide path of the approach. I teach power-off landings as an emergency maneuver, a required skill, but not the norm.

A good learning procedure is to maintain 1500 (C-150) rpm throughout the entire landing even through touchdown. This use of constant teaches the necessity of a very light touch on the yoke. This teaches how smoothly the yoke can be moved in blending one part of the landing into the next. This teaches how the entire landing process does not need the nose wheel. This teaches that the runway will disappear from view but still be there at touchdown. Finally, this teaches that the smooth reduction of power until touchdown gives the pilot another variable in the landing process.

What you see over the cowling is directly related to how many times the correct landing view has appeared and how many times it has been recognized. There is a considerable difference between looking, seeing, and recognizing. For the first few landings the student is looking but not knowing what to look for. Only multiple approaches will change just looking into seeing the many references that are available. Recognition of these references will take still many more multiple landings. Once landing references are recognized in one landing they and all their cousins are more readily located in subsequent landings.

The final approach, with power presents the runway as a trapezoid who's dimensions will vary with the approach angle. This view is the first and most important visual reference available to a pilot. In front of the runway trapezoid, between the top of the cowling and the threshold of the runway, exists an area of ground. The size of this area will remain relatively constant on a stabilized approach. If the area begins to decrease in size, it means that your approach path is going to take you beyond the threshold. If the area seems to increase and flatten it means that you are going to be short of the threshold. Your glide path is too flat and tending to be short. Recognizing being high, short, or just right is preliminary to knowing whether to make a slight power reduction, let it ride, or applying full power. The safest correction for being short is always full power for a period while maintaining a constant approach speed. Dragging into the runway with ever increasing power is not the way to go.

The second element of the landing, the roundout, normally occurs over this area prior to the threshold. This is also an area of student anxiety. The path you are flying takes you into the ground and not the runway. The final moments of the approach must be blended into the round-out. The round-out requires breaking the eyes away from the threshold to the far end of the runway. Where you look during the last few moments of the final approach will affect the round-out. Look too close to the airplane and you will over-react because the ground tends to balloon all at once. Now the round-out will occur too high and quickly. An abrupt increase in altitude along with an abrupt loss of airspeed will occur. This is a balloon prelude to a hard landing. GO-AROUND. Any other reaction can easily result into an accident. Look too far way and you may fly into the ground. The round-out cannot be taught at altitude because so many of the flying, visual and psychological aspects are missing. The student needs to feel ground effect, sense the ground/runway presence, and overcome the stress and tenseness of anticipating what comes next. With every element of success even on the worst of landings the student by survival is accepting the inevitability of ground contact. Success is the greatest reducer of stress known to flying.

The change in visual reference point at which the pilot must make for the round-out is the same point for the pilot to anticipate the elevator control movement. This will cause the approach glide path to transition into the round-out. The roundout is a relatively level parallel path anywhere from a few inches to a few feet above the surface. The initial change in the pitch attitude is used to slow and stop any descent. The roundout should occur so that the wheels of the aircraft are about hip high in level flight parallel to the ground for students.

 

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