Marc_B Posted April 24 Report Posted April 24 There's always been a perennial divide on those who feel that touch and goes in a Mooney are taboo, and those who have practiced them safely. But a comment recently made me think of how we train landings and how we review landings. A significant amount of time with initial pilot training is focused on "pattern work" and skills you learn with sight picture, muscle memory, correlation of pitch/power/speed, etc. But for some, if you throw a curve ball and have a go around, balked landing, or something that "breaks the flow" it has the potential for short circuiting the "pattern" and results in mistakes...i.e. gear up. But then I think of my typical cross country IFR landing and it's almost never a "standard traffic pattern" unless I'm coming into an uncontrolled field and traffic flow suggests I have a standard pattern entry flow. In fact, when training IFR I pretty much never flew standard patterns, and my IFR flow is different than standard pattern work flow. Basically leaves me with the impression that while pattern work is valuable and is jam-packed with several valuable lessons...it's not "good enough" to encapsulate the variety of situations that a traveling pilot will face. Crosswinds, short approaches, I'll call your base way out in BFE, cleared straight in, go arounds and balked landings...these flows take more time and can't be repeated as quickly...but are invaluable to work on all the same. Just thinking out loud and wondering how frequently your standard traveling Mooney pilot feels that a standard traffic pattern is actually exactly what they arrive with? 1 Quote
Rwsavory Posted April 24 Report Posted April 24 When I’m traveling it’s usually to a towered airport. You’re right, it is very rare to get a standard pattern in that situation. Quote
201er Posted April 24 Report Posted April 24 “Pattern work” isn’t a practice for real world landing approaches. It’s a simulation of all phases of flight in a short time: taxi, takeoff, cruise, approach, and landing. Although the real world approach to landing is often different, the skills and methods are largely the same. I think the only thing that ought to be communicated to students more clearly is that not everyone flies a standard traffic pattern. The other flight school planes around surely do. But the jets, turboprops, and planes coming in cross country typically don’t. 1 Quote
M20F Posted April 24 Report Posted April 24 There is a reason why you need 50hrs of PIC cross country for your instrument. As @201er points out pattern work is for getting a new pilot used to various phases of flight. It does build muscle memory and in the correct way (law of primacy). When you start doing cross country you learn how to apply the building blocks from the pattern work to solve new challenges. This is correlative learning. Show me wax on, wax off, paint the fence…. 2 Quote
Vance Harral Posted April 24 Report Posted April 24 Pilot safety is best enhanced by focusing training on the types of operations the pilot actually flies. Sounds like for you, that's a lot of IFR (not necessarily IMC) to busy, towered airports. Other pilots really enjoy flying circuits, working on smooth, precision touchdowns at less busy, uncontrolled airports where they can do a lot of them. Neither mission is more or less important than the other. There's a natural assumption that owners of "traveling airplanes" are largely in the first set, but I haven't actually found that to be true. In my work as an instructor, I've run across plenty of Mooney/Beech/182/etc. owners who just like making $100 hamburger runs to the same set of nearby, non-towered airports. Sometimes they'll contact me for training on getting in and out of Big City Tower because they don't do it very often. But when I follow up after an initial lesson, some of them decide on the basis of the experience that they just don't want to do that, because it's not fun and isn't mission critical to them. This is actually one of the most complicated things about being an instructor. I get contacted by a lot of clients who want training on "Thing X" (towered airports, instrument procedures, slow flight and stalls, whatever). But you have to understand their motivation to serve them: do they actually want to do Thing X and need confidence, or have they been convinced by peer pressure they should be good at Thing X despite not actually wanting to do it? This is complicated in part because Thing X might be fundamentally important (i.e. likely to cause an accident), or they may be afraid of Thing X but discover they actually like it once they get used to it. So to address your question directly, I'd gently suggest it's somewhat meaningless. There is nothing magic about a Mooney that makes a standard traffic pattern typical or atypical. It's about the pilot, not the airplane. 1 Quote
donkaye, MCFI Posted April 24 Report Posted April 24 From my experience the standard pattern procedure can be taught in a couple of hours. Where the hangup usually appears with a good number of transitioning pilots is the last 5 seconds. Too many people incorrectly think and act as though the transition from approach to flare can be done rote. It cannot. So I spend a lot of time going around the pattern waiting for the last 5 seconds. It is simple for me to see when they "get it". Too often this takes many more hours than I think it should. After the "get it" and signoff, with a little more solo time a person may modify their "approach" to landings. I don't usually fly a pattern like I teach it. I teach for simplicity. Get the rote first, combine that with understanding, go for application, then correlation after signoff. Doing it this way, adapting to the variations of things that can happen on a cross country are much more manageable. 1 Quote
Hank Posted April 24 Report Posted April 24 10 hours ago, Rwsavory said: When I’m traveling it’s usually to a towered airport. You’re right, it is very rare to get a standard pattern in that situation. I've been based since 2007 at one or another untowered field. Most of my travel is to more of the same, with an occasional tower just to keep me on my toes. My last several trips to KFAY, I was told to enter right downwind for 22. Fortunately i had several years of early right-pattern practice going to breakfast. But I find more left or right downwind, or even base entries, called for by towers when not doing an instrument approach. I can recall very few instructions for straight ins at towered fields. P.S.--in IMC, I select and fly an approach; if traveling IFR in VMC, I cancel and fly the pattern. Quote
A64Pilot Posted April 24 Report Posted April 24 Most of my cross country flying is to non towered airports and the majority of the time there is no traffic, so my approaches are usually to base or straight in depending on runway alignment. I don’t do that if there is any traffic, then I do the mid downwind thing. Being old and Retired I don’t do IFR anymore, wouldn’t do enough of it to maintain proficiency. I don’t think the average pilot that has a few years and thousand hours under their belt does T&G’s myself, it’s usually beginning pilots. I don’t think there is anything wrong with them myself, just don’t want to put the wear and tear on the gear to be honest. Quote
Marc_B Posted April 24 Author Report Posted April 24 I guess what I mean is that I agree that “pattern work” is a type of focused training but along with that is ATC coordination, atypical arrivals, crosswind landings, and the core of a stabilized approach to landing. They’re all related but different in their applications. But the idea of training for the real world and really having an understanding of what that is, to Vance’s point, as varied as the pilot and their mission. Certainly, it’s the astute pilot who knows where the holes in their training are and is smart enough to self train or seek out help from a mentor or instructor. But it’s easy to burn fuel with laps in the pattern. It takes more effort to work on all the other nuances. Perhaps a contributing factor to the number of accidents in the landing phase of flight and change of “flow” leading to gear ups. Quote
carusoam Posted April 24 Report Posted April 24 Hey Everybody! Why TnGs can be taboo… memory limitations, distraction, cognitive overload… allows the pilot more opportunity to make a GU mistake… insurance costs spread across the Mooney community always gets a response (true or not). Solutions… always use a checklist, Gumps. More than once. or do the full stop landing. landing reviews… final judgement comes with… how briefly the stall horn peeps just prior to the mains touching. how close to the centerline the nose wheel actually touches down… the time that elapsed between the nose and main gear touching… more than a microsecond is good… Solution for improvement… landing by the numbers. See @donkaye, MCFI’s final approach speed chart for ideas… go around practice is important for Mooneys… because basic training in low power trainers can be really bad for a go around in any Mooney… the Why… Full flaps and low power, moves the center of lift really far back… trim gets set very nose up to compensate… during the go around… using the power should come with a fair amount of experience… more than one pilot has met their demise using full power and full up trim during a go around… the nose wants to point skywards, using a lot of arm strength to avoid a stall… and it is slow to get the trim reduced… manual and electric. Non-towered fields… it helps to know your partners in the traffic pattern… Students and low time pilots have difficulty with situational awareness… they don’t always know where they are, and knowing where a plane on a straight in is going to show up…. Can be asking too much for their skills… they may answer that they are capable on the radio, to find out, they made a simple mis-judgement… one other taboo related to landing… are stalls in Mooneys… Solution… keeping the ball centered is everything. a mis-rigged Mooney can try to be surprising in a stall… flying X-country probably won’t give natural practice in stalls, slow flight, or go arounds… but, they are fun to practice… PP thoughts only, not a cfi… Best regards, -a- 3 Quote
dkkim73 Posted April 24 Report Posted April 24 6 minutes ago, carusoam said: Hey Everybody! Why TnGs can be taboo… memory limitations, distraction, cognitive overload… allows the pilot more opportunity to make a GU mistake… insurance costs spread across the Mooney community always gets a response (true or not). Solutions… always use a checklist, Gumps. More than once. or do the full stop landing. landing reviews… final judgement comes with… how briefly the stall horn peeps just prior to the mains touching. how close to the centerline the nose wheel actually touches down… the time that elapsed between the nose and main gear touching… more than a microsecond is good… Solution for improvement… landing by the numbers. See @donkaye, MCFI’s final approach speed chart for ideas… go around practice is important for Mooneys… because basic training in low power trainers can be really bad for a go around in any Mooney… the Why… Full flaps and low power, moves the center of lift really far back… trim gets set very nose up to compensate… during the go around… using the power should come with a fair amount of experience… more than one pilot has met their demise using full power and full up trim during a go around… the nose wants to point skywards, using a lot of arm strength to avoid a stall… and it is slow to get the trim reduced… manual and electric. Non-towered fields… it helps to know your partners in the traffic pattern… Students and low time pilots have difficulty with situational awareness… they don’t always know where they are, and knowing where a plane on a straight in is going to show up…. Can be asking too much for their skills… they may answer that they are capable on the radio, to find out, they made a simple mis-judgement… one other taboo related to landing… are stalls in Mooneys… Solution… keeping the ball centered is everything. a mis-rigged Mooney can try to be surprising in a stall… flying X-country probably won’t give natural practice in stalls, slow flight, or go arounds… but, they are fun to practice… PP thoughts only, not a cfi… Best regards, -a- Are you an AI? You summarize every post.... Prompt: "Please review the gear rigging thread and summarize it in the style of Andrew Caruso". 2 Quote
dkkim73 Posted April 24 Report Posted April 24 Just now, dkkim73 said: Are you an AI? You summarize every post.... Prompt: "Please review the gear rigging thread and summarize it in the style of Andrew Caruso". This is *NOT* a criticism. Rather an acknowldgement. 1 Quote
Hank Posted April 25 Report Posted April 25 Anthony has been here forever, and is generally acknowledged as the Dean of Mooneyspace. I joined in 2008, @carusoam was already here . . . . 1 Quote
Hank Posted April 25 Report Posted April 25 3 hours ago, dkkim73 said: Are you an AI? You summarize every post.... Prompt: "Please review the gear rigging thread and summarize it in the style of Andrew Caruso". 3 hours ago, dkkim73 said: This is *NOT* a criticism. Rather an acknowldgement. Anthony has been here forever, and is acknowledged as the Dean of Mooneyspace. I joined in 2008, he was already here. 1 Quote
Hank Posted April 25 Report Posted April 25 My method of preventing gear ups is simple and repeatable: Abeam the intended point of landing, drop gear and reduce throttle to initiate descent. Feel the "thump" and watch the green light come on. On base leg, confirm green light. Turn final, check airspeed, altitude and VASI / PAPI lights, adjusting speed and descent as needed. Look and point at the floor indicator (lit at night for visibility). IFR is somewhat different: A dot-and-a-half before glideslope intercept, or at the IAF, drop gear and set power for descent. At breakout, check green light. On short final, no later than crossing the fence, look and point at the floor indicator (lit at night for visibility). Pointing at the floor indicator and saying "gear down" has saved me twice, averaging almost once per decade. So it's an infrequent occurrence, but it would likely end my flying days, so I'm all about prevention! Note that both instances of "almost" happened away from home--one short flight (no tower) and one 3-hour XC (towered) away. And yes, from time to time I do touch n goes, sometimes alone and sometimes with a CFII (during training, and now IPCs and Flight Reviews). 2 1 Quote
carusoam Posted April 25 Report Posted April 25 6 hours ago, dkkim73 said: Are you an AI? You summarize every post.... Prompt: "Please review the gear rigging thread and summarize it in the style of Andrew Caruso". hey dkk! That’s pretty funny..! the longer the threads… the more fun the summary became. for about a decade and a half, I was able to read every post ever written… welcoming each member, as they came aboard… it was a fun way to learn, or check old memories… to see what I forgot, or didn’t quite learn the right way… the best parts… meeting thousands of MSers on line… then running into them in real life, at various fly ins… helping so many people find an answer to a challenge they were having… or a service they were looking for… I happened upon MS… in the early days. I had just sold my M20C, and was starting the search for the next Mooney… in some places… I left cryptic markers. To help remember people… and find them again… if you can’t remember Cody as the person to answer questions about Mooney propellers… do a search on prop guy… and see how often he shows up… Or search welcome aboard and your screen name… see if you can find your own first post! keep in mind… MS had a weak search function at first. Finding a three letter word like ‘guy’ was a bit challenging… running a google search from outside MS has always worked better… hmmmmm… imagine being replaced by AI. my post count grew by thousands every year… We would celebrate the post count at each 10K milestone… hoping to make that post a memorable one… I always look forward to the next post… some posts are more fun than others… inviting various people to a thread… using the important @ symbol in front of their screen name… it’s been about 18 years or so since this all began… next stop… post number 50k. it’s been a fun flight! Best regards, -a- 6 Quote
dkkim73 Posted April 25 Report Posted April 25 10 hours ago, carusoam said: next stop… post number 50k. it’s been a fun flight! Wow, that's very cool. I have been impressed by how much you know about all the various models and their quirks, maintenance, etc, not just your own. Also appreciate how generous you are with your time in helping newcomers (e.g. me a little while ago). Hopefully I will get to meet you and some of the others at one of the meet ups. Best regards, David 1 Quote
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