Whether you've been grounded due to the recent winter weather... or just haven't flown much in the past year due to COVID.... keep your mind sharp with some great flying tips. This week's episode is a bit of a potpourri, as Bobby and Wally run through some excellent pointers on flying the airplane!
Set the technology aside this week. Leave the iPads behind and power down the GPS... because we are focusing on good old stick and rudder skills in this week's episode. Let's talk about the best part of aviation... hand flying the airplane!
Clear prop! Number two following twin traffic on 3 mile final. JB using runway 25 on a 4-mile final.
This is Behind the Prop with United Flight Systems owner and licensed pilot, Bobby Doss. and it's co-host: major airline captain Designated Pilot Examiner, Wally Mulhearn. Now let's go behind the prop!
What's up, Wally? Hey Bobby, how are you? I'm good. this week We're going to cover a kind of a potpourri of things that we were talking about as it relates to flying the aircraft. Maybe not letting the aircraft fly you. But maybe you flying the aircraft. Try and share some of our tips and tricks or maybe your wisdom With some of the pilots that are out there listening to us Talking about a number of things. so this all came about because we were brainstorming on things to talk about looking at everybody's kind of topics that they had written in to us to talk about and we stumbled across one that was talking about leveling off or tips for leveling off. I remember when I was a private pilot My CFI used to tell me all over and over and over again level off before you touch anything else. And I think one day click when he finally told me. We're going to always do it in this order. We're going to pitch power and trim. And I’ve heard that saying many times since then but I think that's what made a really click for me. Why is why is leveling off in that order so important, Wally? And how many times do you see it down the wrong way.
I see done wrong A lot In you know we're under the airspace here in At this airport. so as flying with applicants and students When I do some flight instructing a lot of times, we just need to get out from underneath the bravo or at least to the Under the four-thousand-foot shelf. so we're just trying to get out of the way and we want to get to a place in a fairly expeditious manner and So basically You know a lot of times you know have the applicant maybe climbing and maintain two thousand fly heading of such and such. And I’ll tell them I say listen We just need to get out of the airspace and we just need to go about twenty miles up here. and Inevitably they will You know it as they're approaching two thousand feet, I'll see their hand over there on the throttle and they pull the throttle back and word about nineteen hundred and fifty feet and we've got throttle pulled back to maybe twenty-two hundred twenty-one hundred Rpm something like that. and the airplane is just struggling to climb and then when we finally do level off You know they're you know we've got a very high pitch up attitude and we're doing very slow air speed. so You know all you have to do is just get up there and as you said pitch power trim, you know. immediately Just put push the nose over and zero out the climb rate and watch the airspeed increase and then when it does increase. I'm you know and then pull your power back to your desired power setting and just keep in mind What I see with is that most applicants is they're just used to flying slow and You know when we log time in her logbook were logging time. We're not logging miles. All the requirements are based on flight Time so go and slow is actually a good thing for the most part most of the time. But when you actually get out and you're using the airplane as a tool to get places there might be situations where you want to go fast. You need to get there quicker. You want to get there before the fbo closes and you can't get fuel or whatever you just you just need to get there faster. You've maybe you have to use the restroom so getting there Faster might be a good thing. So you know when you get into that phase of your flying career if you will You're going to have options. The airplanes don't have one speed much like your car. You can draw down the highway at sixty-five, Seventy-five, eighty-five. Obviously faster speeds You're going to get there quicker and you're probably going to burn more fuel. Slower speeds more economical from fuel standpoint. But it's going to take you a little bit more time.
And I think as we've talked about this off the air and as part of the show. It took years for me to start really thinking about this from the standpoint of going somewhere or whatever mission I might be on. What's going to be best for me in this mission whether it's time whether it's fuel whether it's a combination of both I probably wasn't looking at the performance charts three years ago like I do today hence private or my instrument training because it's always whether it's right or wrong.
It's almost always about the training effort right. We're working on. The mission is the training task. We're going to shoot these approaches and we're going to work. We fly to that place. We shoot that approach and that's probably mostly in the hundred ninety not range right. but we're not worried about twenty-three ended. Rpm's this level of lean this level of mixture. We're worried about just doing that Approach right then once we get done with all the test taking all the Examiner time then. We start flying places whether we're renting earth our own aircraft. We need to be smart about how we're going to get there and what we want to accomplish on the trip so once. I start flying Austin a lot to Pick up my daughter. Wow fly mostly in a one eighty-two. I started worrying about where we're the winds. You know you can look at the winds aloft. Of course and that can figure out what I want to. What six thousand six thousand feet is twenty-nine tailwind than eight thousand feet of five. Not tell when. I'm probably going to fly six thousand feet on my back for sure. And I think I think the more you fly the more you start learning those sorts of things but you're not necessarily learning that in training. I'll never forget much like you said about the airspace. We would we would leave here; I'd climbed seventeen hundred feet. And I would pull the power and I’d stop seventeen hundred feet but we'd be doing eighty-five knots and I’m sure my instructor had seen these four or five times already. That day was wishing. I would get out of the airspace so we started doing maneuvers and things. And that's where the pitching the plane forward leading that airspeed rise as you said gaining all that momentum that we've built while we were climbing leading that momentum continue pitching the plane then setting the throttle to the power setting, we want. I fly with a lot of newer pilots. And I don't think they ever know where they want that to be early on in their flying time data snow. They're trying to They're trying to set the power for that airspeed that they've got right And that's not going to do for him but if you get to habit of where you're flying normally in a one seventy-two or a warrior and say, I’m going to fly twenty-three hundred. Rpm's or twenty-four hundred rpm. It gets really easy for you at that point then to pitch over set twenty-three or twenty-four hundred rpm's and then trimmed the plane for level flight or an airspeed. The you want to be at that point and it gets a lot easier to fly the aircraft. Think I’ve seen it, I'm sure you've seen it someone pitch over trimming a little bit changing the power. I mean you're changing all the dynamics of the plane at once. It's probably never going to get trim that way for sure right and one thing that that I found pretty amazing I own a forty-one-year-old plan in nineteen eighty model a piper Saratoga, turbo Saratoga. and It's got a very nice JPI nine thirty engine monitors in it. That tells me percent of power tells me all kinds of cool stuff. but anyway it It's amazing How when I pull out the poh or the airplane and go to the pro performance section and look at the data for a given at altitude. It will tell me what manifold pressure in what Rpm will give me say sixty five percent or seventy five percent power. And I set those numbers. And I look over there at the percent. Power on my JPI and It is always within one percent. If I’m it's If I to get seventy five percent that number will say seventy-four seventy-five or seventy-six. I've never seen it more off more than one percent.
Which means you know your fuel burn and you probably know a lot of really good stuff at that point on what is going to take for you to get somewhere right giving you a lot of the information that I just don't think us in our infancy, our private pilot days earliest days. We're really thinking about those things right. I will usually ask on check rides. I'll say okay. What airspeed are we planning on this cross country and they'll You know the applicant will give me a number. And I’ll say well, Where'd you get that and I like to for them to be able to go into the performance chart and say based on today's temperature and at the altitude I picked. We should get one hundred and six knots.
That's awesome and then hopefully they know they're their winds and know what the ground speeds going to be right. So you said one hundred and six knots. We joked a little bit about before. What does us on us to get back for certain reasons but what is best forward airspeed?
best forward airspeed is something that air traffic control will assign you and it's basically You know Cessna one-two-three fly best forward airspeed and They that basically says.
Hey you're probably leading the pack. They want you to go fast. They want you to get there in there as quickly as they can. Or maybe they You know Done their due diligence and realize that there's a faster airplane and He's eighteen miles behind you. But if you go fast you can still be number one or whatever but I'll give that to applicants on check rides. And I usually kind of get a deer in the headlight Look. they've Especially student pilots. Somebody working on private pilot Is probably not used to that. And I’ll use it for a situation again where we're just trying to get out of the bravo airspace. We're trying to get somewhere and if we can do a hundred and ten knots. We're going to get there a lot, Well not a lot faster but we're going to get more expeditiously than eighty knots.
No doubt. And I think I hear a lot at this airport, Where we have quite a jet traffic and probably student pilots learning and they're on a base the turned base and the air traffic controller knows They're getting overtaken by fifty or sixty knots and that might be five or six miles. But they got to get here as fast as they can't or they're going to have to go round let jet land and it creates it creates delays for everyone. But I think I was. I was impressed when my instructor one time. A long time ago we had to get back before the runways. We're going to be shut down for some maintenance activity And we thought we were going to get shut out the airport and he said. Let me have the controls. We're going to get there quick cannon. I was Impressed you know we normally tool rounded ninety knots when you're doing all these maneuvers you want to stay below maneuvering speed etc. right and then you you come back as fast as you can. You're probably pushing one fifteen when they teen. That's that's going to get you back a whole lot quicker right.
Yeah absolutely.
so With that we've talked a lot about things that we can control the aircraft. One that we want to talk about today is going around. one of the things that I think many pilots Don't do a great job of. I'm not perfect by any stretch but I think I’m pretty cautious in the pattern. Let's talk about some tips on going around. And what should we be thinking about as a GA pilot maybe putting some professional techniques in our toolbag as we think about going around.
Yeah, well going around It is something that I think we all need to know is almost always an option. And I say almost Because I mean I guess there could be a situation where maybe low fuel and you just really need to put this airplane on the ground. but other than that going around is pretty much always an option and You know if you're coming in and the approach is stabilized and not going well and you're going to land, You know, well Out of the touchdown zone Rounds pry good idea. and it should always be something that you're ready for. at my airline We're actually required to verbally Brief the go-round procedure on every approach so As we're briefing the approach, we go through the whole Approach briefing talk about the runway. What approach were doing minimums all that sort of stuff and We finished it up with Actually what the go around procedure is and So we're just We're just going through the call outs and we actually make the call outs and in you know. Talk about the go-round procedure. Knowing that is it is always an option You see I one thing. I see on instrument check Rides is in again most of the airplanes that that I fly in for check rides are one seventy Twos and warriors are Cherokees archers. Maybe but their airplanes that most people fly their approaches at about ninety knots And in reality, real world we're not talking about the training world but real world You probably land on ninety eight percent of your approaches. In the training world you probably go around on sixty or seventy percent of them probably. So one thing I see is having difficulty transitioning from that ninety-nine-approach phase to the sixty-five not landing face and these airplanes won't land ninety knots. You can come in and We're just going to fly down the runway and fly down the runway and fly down the runway and then Hopefully when we're halfway down the runway. The applicant makes the decision to go around. or You know it's probably not going to work out really well. so you know it's something that we all need to have in our back pocket is a go around and we need know how to do a go around.
I mean and it's you know you're going to have to look in your p. o. H. to see what the procedure is. But I would venture to say that ninety five percent of the airplanes. It's going to be max power you're going to push the power forward. If you're in an airplane that has a carburetor and you've got the carburetor heat on To get max power, The carburetor heat has to come off. so the carburetor eats going to come off and then you're going to have to work with flaps Whether it's immediately go to a flap setting or whatever but again all that's line is in your POH but it's something you need to be ready for.
and what I guess when you see it, Do you think that students are people that are making that go around The decision are making a way too late? Like maybe you can share with us from a from a professional pilots opinion. Where are you guys trying to make that decision? The go around decision?
well at again at my airline at five hundred feet. We make the flying pilot makes a call and he calls stable And if he can't say that it's stable, we're required to go around at that point. And we have parameters of what a stabilize approach looks like and I. I won't get into that because that's You know it's going to be different for different airplanes.
But that might be something that people think about in their own flying world. You're in a Cessna and you're not stable of five hundred feet are you thinking to yourself. This is probably a good time to go round.
Yeah. I mean I go round from five hundred feet is probably going to you know has a much higher likelihood of being successful than a go around it at five feet.
It happened come up recently when a fly with someone that I was with but is it ever too early decide to go around?
No.
yes, so even if you're on the down win and you're getting blown over on the runway and you want to choose the extent I mean you could say I’m going to go around way in advance. Yeah, there's no reason. And what I what I fear is a fly school owner That's got a bunch of one Seventy-two and warriors is at someone's going to try and fight one down on the ground that's never going to work out Well. Yeah, I can't I can't think of anything. That's going to be good for the student pilot or the renter or the aircraft That's going to be. I got I finally was able to work this way down. Yeah, my saying. I know I’ve said it to you. Some point six minutes is not that long right you can make another lap in the pattern. I can't ever a reason with someone to say it's six minutes is not going to be worth it. I can assure you so you make the decision to go round. I like the earlier the decision the better. And you'd probably know if you're stable. Lots of training instructors and students we talked too high or too low too fast or too slow. And if you're probably having that conversation it's probably time to go around. Yeah, yes not once you get to the numbers am, I going to float am.= I going right. That's way too late in the process, right. And so you know we all know it and if you don't know yet you're going to learn it. The best leanings. That you're ever going to have the smoothest sleekest Landings are going to be the ones where you were flying Seventy-one knots from one thousand feet all the way down to the runway and it just so happens that the landing was really good not because the landing happened good but because the approach was stable right and was all the way to the ground.
Right good Landing is always the product of a good approach.
No question and that takes a lot of time and technique. You're going to some of those. Some of those things was released two wins and how you approach a crosswind and how do you. How do you make up. Maybe if a little high in the downwind or on your first turn. how do you change the characteristics of the aircraft that stuff that stuff. You'll get better at that over time, right. flaps and different winds settings and those sorts of things but Once you learn how to fly stable approach really well, your landings will get much better as well too. absolutely.
So, We've talked about a couple of things as it relates to us flying the aircraft not letting the aircraft layoffs. We talked about leveling off. We talked a little bit About best forward Airspeed go rounds. What other things and we didn't prep this part, What other things do you see Pilots struggle with the might be more like the planes flying them than They're flying the plane?
Well this this goes back to a little bit of a previous episode Where we talked about flight controls and I see I see a lot of Lack of proper rudder input on a crosswind landing not lined up with the centerline of the runway and You know I'll go back to that previous episode. The question I brought up. How much rudder do you need. And the answer is whatever it takes and if you need eighty percent rudder well you use eighty percent rudder. and just not used to doing that. So that's something, Where I you know, I might say to the applicant. Geez why did we Why did we land sideways? I mean that's a little Maybe over dramatic about it but You know they're just not used to putting in that much rudder input and they’re maybe not used to landing in in that much of a crosswind.
I'm sure it's the centerline and those things that may be private pilots newer pilots struggle with or even maybe rusty pilots. You might have been a great crosswind landing Ten years ago but have been in a plane the ten years you might have also forgotten. How much rudder it takes It is important that we square up that that access of the aircraft as we go into land that aircraft. Yeah, that's going to make that mining lot smoother.
and the other thing is just not landing on centerline. You know I. I joke with applicants. Have we got a One-hundred-foot-wide runway, if We land on the centerline, We've got fifty feet either side of us. And I say listen as a tax payer you pay for the whole runway So land in the middle of the used the runway. Don't land on the left side Nolan on the right side. The land on the middle of it for whatever reason It seems like people like to land on the left side. More than the right side but Yeah, I mean the it's in the acs talks about landing on runway centerline.
It's also I think important a taxi we talk about the flying aircraft. And maybe taxing The aircraft's real to I see a lot of sloppy taxing. And I know people are learning around here but there is this, I fly with people who are working on their instrument And I’ll fly with them just to see be their safety pilot. Let them practice. Whatever that might be. And I will ask him Why are we on the centerline? Are you intentionally choosing not to be on the centerline? That would be what I would be trying to intentionally do. A salas centerline. So for not on it are you. Is there the sloppiness about you or this laziness. I don't know I hate those. Maybe your condescending words but why not be on the central and there's a reason why settle on there As an aircraft owner who's had people hit hangers and other things because they weren't on the other side of the yellow line that knew they were going to be safe for them. There's a reason those lines are there. They're there to protect and they're there to make sure you're getting all the use of that runway or taxiway in this case. Yes, right. absolutely no reason to let the aircraft taxi you And you should always be thinking cross win. And those sorts of things being control of that aircraft. Anything else that you see on a common basis? Let's talk briefly about trim. Sure everybody has a lot of opinions on tram. But do you find I find when someone says Can you take the controls, Maybe were shooting at approach They want to look into play. They give me the controls. I am shocked at how much they're having the choke. The oh to stay. We've been flying straight and level for the last five minutes as they've been preparing for this approach asked me to hold the control so they can look at a page or something. I take controls. And I’m floored that we I’m holding back so much. we find that?
Yeah, all the time. I'm currently instructing. A couple of students Both commercial and see if I students and You know when we get into steep turns And if they're struggling with the steep turns, I will just say just let go of the airplane. and just take your hands off the yoke for a second. and I’d say ninety percent of the time that they're struggling with steep turns and when I say struggling. I'm talking about holding out students. Steve turns because airplanes out of trim. And I said well you know. You're going into this with You know strike one. You're walking with strike one. So yeah. Get the airplane in trim. The airplane needs to be in trim. Should not you know flying straight and level should be no work anywhere one or two fingers tops needed on the right sure right.
I want to flew at a commuter airline. I flew An airplane turboprop airplane that Didn't have an autopilot and we had a flight attendant and it's funny because The flight attendant jump seat was in the back of the airplane and we knew when she was walking up front. Because we could the nose will begin to pitch down and you'd have to reach down put in a couple of turns of nose up trim and you did say okay here She comes and I was You could tell.
that's how it works. I shift my seat forward back. Yeah. exactly assessment exact But it's it is if you if you fly and you find that you're really pulling or having a lot of back pressure a lot of forward pressure. You're probably not using the trim appropriately. What I love to do is have someone who's struggling at any stage in their in their pilot career. Come fly with me in the one eighty-two very sophisticated autopilot again that plane. We'll get two thousand feet. I'll hit autopilot. Pick a heading and that you watch how the autopilot flies the plane. It's very different than the way human flaws plane right. We're pulling and pushing and turning and twisting and you know we're doing a lot to try and maintain. you hit autopilot, That yoga's kind of settles in turn will barely moves to settles itself out, and then there could be a big gust of wind, Big bump in the big bump in the air and that job done do anything but to settle right back down and here we go again. It's really interesting to show someone how little the inputs are riding autopilot. When it's making some significant adjustments for crosswind and other things but it just flies the plane straight and level without a lot of heart without a lot of hard work. I can right.
Well, That's a pretty good episode on a number of things of you. Flying the aircraft's instead of letting the aircraft why you hopefully that will help you at whatever stage you are in your flying career and as always were looking for good show ideas or content that you want to talk about. we have a long list To share with everyone. But if you have other ideas please don't hesitate to send them either bobby or Wally, or both of us. at bobby@behindtheprop.com or wally@behindtheprop.com and we will get them on the air for you for sure. Anything as We wrap, Wally. nope. That's it perfect. As always fly safe would stay behind the prop.
Thanks for listening. Thanks for checking out the Behind The Prop podcast. be sure to click subscribe and check us out online at BehindTheProp.com behind the prop is recorded in Houston, Texas. Show creator and host is Bobby Doss. Co-host is Wally Mulhearn. This shoe is for entertainment purposes Only. and not meant to replace actual flight instruction. Thanks for listening and remember: fly safe!