Do landings just click one day?

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Joe Williamson

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So I have been practicing touch and go’s a lot lately to really get good at landings and for some reason it is just not clicking yet. My instructor said that it will just click one day and then they will come natural. Is that true? I have 17 landings so far and am going out again on Saturday to practice them some more.
 
Yes but it's not like a switch flips they just gradually get better and you forget that you were ever struggling with them so you'll have an epiphany months after you quit worrying about them and you'll think to yourself oh crap I remember when this used to be a challenge and then you'll laugh at all the new pilots who suck
 
It'll click, but almost certainly not after 17 landings. That's not very many.

For me it helped when I diagnosed (with my instructor) what part of landing I wasn't doing right (e.g., aiming for a certain spot on the runway, getting the descent rate right in base/final, hitting centerline, handling cross-wind, overzealous flares, general nervousness/second guessing myself, not "owning" the plane with my instructor onboard, etc). Once you identify some of the specific areas it's easier to practice them until they're no longer weak spots. It's just a repetition game.

You've got the right attitude though, just keep going up and practicing and then it'll finally click :cool:
 
Proper speed in the pattern and final. Use the throttle! Nail that airspeed on final.

172s with just a few rpm above idle settle onto the runway so smoothly at the end of flare.

You'll blend the short/soft/normal landing techniques into something that works with what you're flying.

On bad wx days, talk through mechanics with your instructor. Sometimes it helps to not be in the aircraft and task saturated to get a deeper understanding or drill into questions you have.
 
In truth, I imagine most of us "arrive" more often than we grease one on. I don't think any of us ever lose that "oh, ****, now I gotta land this thing" feeling every time we take off. A plane can humble any of us at any time, usually when we least expect it.

I was on a Southwest flight a week ago when the pilot "dropped" the 737 onto the runway. No gust, no storms, just stopped flying too high above the ground.

Every now & then we all pull off onto the taxiway after a bad landing to see if something fell off the plane. In the meantime, just keep plugging along & let us know how it's going on your 170 landing.
 
I just totaled up a page in my logbook this evening. I had two landings today; #799 I rounded out too high and plopped it on. #800 was a squeaker though.

I used to do 10 touch & goes in an hour session. I probably had more than 100 landings before they were consistently acceptable. Only recently am I starting to think I have it figured out. I'm pretty sure there'll always be stinkers though.
 
Yes! Unfortunately the next day you’ll wonder how you even passed your check ride. FWIW I have found a strong corollary between flying and my golf game
 
Tom Wells said:
overzealous flares
Click to expand...

So this seems to get many. It finally clicked with me, when I realized you don't actually flare the airplane, you fly the plane down to the runway and then enter "slow flight" trying not to climb and not to descend. The plane will just settle onto the runway.
do final at V_BG, and then after round out just slow the plane down it will eventually stall and if that is 6" above the runway you will have the "perfect landing"
(keep in mind most flight instructors are not even that good...)

I was around 80 when I soloed, but that really does not count because I flew about 1 flight/month for close to 4 years because that is all I could afford at the time...
if you do it more frequently it should take less, plus the instructor will know you better.

I am at about 500, and still need to keep practicing...

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
 
Seems that when anyone is looking I cannot land an airplane ... but ... the other day two (yep two) helicopter pilots watched me make a real greaser of a tailwheel landing. I thought that perhaps I was getting back in the groove but a few days later, with zero witnesses, I leveled it a bit too high and had a bit of a drop it in arrival.

So to answer the question ... yes, sometimes they squeak, and sometimes they squeal!

Hang in there it'll come & go ...
 
Joe Williamson said:
.....just click one day and then they will come natural.
Click to expand...
Hi.
Landings will not actually Click, by themselves, it will always be a dance, and at times, depending on the Wx, CG, Make of acft... it can be a new dance every time you go up. Just keep at it and stay with plane, it gets easier as you get withing Ground effect, which scares most beginners.
Read post #5.

Make sure you can get complete control of the acft in slow flight, you can also practice landings at 1-2000 ft AGL.
Add to the above post, the Always set your Seat position in the same spot (have the same view over the cowl), Numbers make sure you know them, Pitch+Power=Performance, (make sure you Reeeeally understand that concept, if not understood have your CFI show you on the ground), and Stable approach, from Dwind, Base and in particular on Final. Always do things the same way.
Have your CFI do a (some) landing/s, take a sticky dot and place it on your windshield to match the Touch down point on the Rwy, make sure you remove it after use, if that is not your plane. As you progress you will Not need the dot bur when you first learn it's very difficult to keep track of it.
If you do all the above right, there should be very small changes, control Speed with pitch and Altitude with power, that you have to make to the control input.
You will get it, 17 landings are not very many, but if you keep changing every time you go up it will take longer to get it.
 
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I LOVE landing airplanes. My absolute favoritest part of flying. In the Navy, we would sometimes do 17 landings PER FLIGHT. Wanna see a kid wrung out!! Ha!

But I also remember it was a forty gazzilion step procedure we had to memorize in T-34Cs. Took about all the mental capacity I had to do ONE. And you’d firewall it, go again… just break out in a cold sweat trying to remember all those steps…. You’d hear guys say ridiculous things like “so there I was… blah blah blah…. So I JUST went and landed.”

Whaddaya mean JUST landed? That’s like an act of congress that takes two days to complete…. Wow!

Do not fear. Your brain WILL assimilate what’s going on and it WILL click. The greaser vs “arrival”, well, that whole discussion is lost on me. I, STILL, to this day, every once in a while FLOAT DOWN THE DAMN RUNWAY AND GREASE IT ON!! BLECK!!!! Just feels, well, squishy. You’ll just have to learn to accept those. Sorry, just part of flying!

Hang in there!
 
17 landings is not very many. At all. For the 5-hour solo wonders, maybe, but for most of us, a lot more than 17 landings went under the belt before they got easier!

For me, landings didn't really click. But one day, I was coming in on final and I realized that my mind was calm. I wasn't scrambling to stay ahead of the airplane or trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing next or worrying about what I had done in that pattern so far or freaking out about the landing coming up. After that, almost 100% of landings could be qualified as "respectable". Most weren't perfect or greasers, but even pilots with hundreds of hours and thousands of landings rarely have that kind of record. :)
 
There will come a time, with practice, when you will know and be able to visualize in the moment where the gear is and the ground is. It will be instinctive like driving a car and knowing you are correctly in your lane without looking at the yellow line. The biggest factor for landing is speed control! Slow flight is the most important skill to master! If you come in to fast you bounce and have a crappy landing because the wing still wants to fly. If you come in to slow you run out of airspeed and fall out of the sky with a bang on the runway. Proper speed all the way on the approach is key and if you do it correctly when it is time to round out and flare you can look outside safely knowing your speed isnt to fast or slow which will screw up your landing. Again, if your landings are crappy go practice SLOW FLIGHT for an hour and get it perfect, the bumpier the better!
 
Total landings? or landings in type? For me, all my landings were rough and or inconsistent until >200 total. As far as a new type? that now takes 10-20 landings before they click. (I now have 750 landings)
 
For me it was a "CLICK"! I remember it vary clearly. It was my 3rd landing of the day. The first 2 were sloppy, then on the 3rd landing it all came together. After that, landings became almost easy, something I looked forward. The landing that clicked for me was exactly my 50th landing.

Like my CFI kept telling me "Don't worry about landing. No one has left one up there yet"!
 
My personal experience is that it does click, but looking back it isn't a magic switch. It is more like you gradually understand what everybody (your CFI, this thread, etc) has been saying, but now it makes sense due to your experience.

Every bad landing is a chance to improve your landing. I don't learn much on greasers, but on the beautiful bouncers, drop ins, floaters, off-centers, etc, I get a chance to say "ok, so a bit more rudder / aileron to stay aligned" or "Need to keep a better eye on the speed" or "need to really get slow before touching down" or "Yeah, don't slow down THAT much next time" or "Make sure the passenger door is closed properly so the instructor / passenger doesn't fall out next time", things like that.

After a while, your errors become less egregious. So even your bad landings are generally not as bad as they were when you started.

To answer the real question being asked "Yes, this is normal. You're doing fine." <-- Seriously.
 
This is why i love this site. I appreciate you all telling me exacty how it is and being truthful about your own experiences. I am definiterly in the "my mind is scrambling phase" and i tend to float a lot. However the plane is still usable after i land which a lot of you said makes it a successful landing haha. I love the suggestion about practicing slow flight as I have only done that in 1 lesson. I am going up again tomorrow and will start with that for awhile before we go into landings.
 
Joe Williamson said:
So I have been practicing touch and go’s a lot lately to really get good at landings and for some reason it is just not clicking yet. My instructor said that it will just click one day and then they will come natural. Is that true? I have 17 landings so far and am going out again on Saturday to practice them some more.
Click to expand...

25 years later, I still haven't heard any clicks. I still drop it from too high, or bounce from too low. It is particularly embarrassing when it happens while I am trying to demonstrate to a student what a good landing looks like.

The sight picture during the last couple of seconds is critical. You will get used to this, until you switch airplanes and then you have to relearn it. If you are switching airplanes all the time, things can get bouncy.
 
watch some youtube vids of the airline guys landing - it really is art and every landing is different. Sometimes you get surprised, how good and less than good, they can be.
 
17 is not many at all! So don't be too quick to judge yet. I was just minted a PPL last year and went on and got my IR this year. I have about 460 landings spread about 3 different planes. When it got better and more consistent was when I got the final approach speed honed in. And the same speed for one, may not be as good for another person. As an example, I'm flying a PA32 now. When I was learning [the new to me plane], the experienced instructor seemed like he could land that thing at any speed, fast, slow, 1.3 Vso, etc. He taught me more closer to the 1.3 Vso (83 mph). I just could not become consistent very quick it seemed. Then once I began my instrument training, you're generally on approach at a faster speed. That coupled with talking to probably a 1/2 dozen PA32 pilots, I began coming in around 100mph and 2 notches of flaps. It was very comfortable, everything happened at a pace good for me and my landings got consistent pretty quick. When I was flying a 172, I found if I could nail 70 mph over the trees, it was going to be pretty good (usually). Like others have also said, 17 isn't many, it won't magically click like a switch, but you will begin to put the puzzle pieces together as you gain experience to understand how they fit in order to make your landings more consistent.

Think of like golf (if you've played). I had a best friend that was a little worse than scratch. I was a bogey golfer. He'd hit his drive and say "that one sucked, shanked it". I'd look at it (less experienced golfer) and say - damn if my good drives were as good as your bad drives, I'd be totally happy. That's what experience will give you... your bad landings become better and your good landings become super smooth. It's coming... but come back after you have 100 landings and let us know how it's going.
 
The secret is ADM. How many decisions you are making and the speed to you are applying corrections. Or in other words, your processor is running too slow.
 
Joe Williamson said:
So I have been practicing touch and go’s a lot lately to really get good at landings and for some reason it is just not clicking yet. My instructor said that it will just click one day and then they will come natural. Is that true? I have 17 landings so far and am going out again on Saturday to practice them some more.
Click to expand...
17? Lol
It took me probably close to 100 before I was allowed to solo.
 
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