Guess I need more practice...

TangoWhiskey

TangoWhiskey

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Hand-flew some instrument approaches in the G1000 today, and I'm usually a pretty decent stick, but quite frankly, my altitude control SUCKED today. I was able to capture and track the ILS, localizer or GPS inbound course just fine, but I was +/- 200 during my hold, even had one excursion of 300+??! What was that all about. I got it under control with better attention to power and pitch and scan towards the end of the session, but I think I need to go try that again...

The new firmware on the G1000 has a couple neat features I enjoyed... callouts on the PFD of the minimums for each leg of the loaded approach, and it calls "minimums" when you reach minimums (hand-set on the Timer page). Also, a magenta diamond on the outside of the HSI shows you exactly where you need to put the course line to correct for crosswind. I'd always used a comparison of desired track versus actual track, and still do, but this made it super simple, not only for the approach, but also when tracking in the hold (inbound or outbound) to parallel or track the course.
 
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It's amazing how much better folks get at tracking loc/GS when they limit their pitch changes to 1-2 degrees and their bank angles to 5-10 degrees. Unless it's really drilled into them, most folks tend to make 3-5 degree pitch changes and 15-20 degree bank angles and that leads to S-turns down the localizer and vertical S's about the GS. It's really amazing how little pitch control input is needed to track the GS once you've identified the basic pitch/power settings for 500 ft/min at 90 knots (or whatever V/S is appropriate to your approach speed). In addition, when they're chasing the GS with gargantuan pitch changes, they lose track of lateral control and end up pegging the localizer while focusing on GS.
 
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TangoWhiskey said:
Hand-flew some instrument approaches in the G1000 today, and I'm usually a pretty decent stick, but quite frankly, my altitude control SUCKED today. I was able to capture and track the ILS, localizer or GPS inbound course just fine, but I was +/- 200 during my hold, even had one excursion of 300+??! What was that all about. I got it under control with better attention to power and pitch and scan towards the end of the session, but I think I need to go try that again...

The new firmware on the G1000 has a couple neat features I enjoyed... callouts on the PFD of the minimums for each leg of the loaded approach, and it calls "minimums" when you reach minimums (hand-set on the Timer page). Also, a magenta diamond on the outside of the HSI shows you exactly where you need to put the course line to correct for crosswind. I'd always used a comparison of desired track versus actual track, and still do, but this made it super simple, not only for the approach, but also when tracking in the hold (inbound or outbound) to parallel or track the course.
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What firmware/airplane offers the "minimums" callout?
 
I remember my instrument instructor constantly drilling into me...

"Small corrections."

A great idea!
 
and the faster you're going, the smaller and even earlier. It's quite amazing what a difference one stinking degree of pitch will make.
 
Lance F said:
and the faster you're going, the smaller and even earlier. It's quite amazing what a difference one stinking degree of pitch will make.
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When a trainee is having trouble with this, I always re-demonstrate an ILS, and tell the trainee to watch my hands as well as the attitude indicator. "The AI isn't hardly moving at all, but your hands are always moving just a bit. It's like you take out the input as fast as you put it in!," s/he says. "Bingo!," I say, "Small and quick -- small and quick."
 
Ron, I had no trouble with the glideslope or localizer; it was the enroute stuff. I don't know why, usually I'm good at that, I think I didn't have it trimmed out right and was tense. Once I relaxed, focused on my scan and catching / stopping excursions early, it got better.

Tim, I was in a Cessna 172; the version that introduced this was 563.03. This document covers the most interesting changes:

http://www.kywgcap.org/Portals/28/downloads/G1000_Software_Changes.pdf
 
Small changes do wonders even in a helicopters. We ran the ILS down to mins. and the pilot on the controls was too aggresive with the pitch. I asked him with a grin "Is it normal for you to be weightless at times during the this approach?" We were shooting it at about 140 KIAS so it wasn't the smoothest approach but it was more for fun.
 
Lance F said:
and the faster you're going, the smaller and even earlier. It's quite amazing what a difference one stinking degree of pitch will make.
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yup, especially in high performance stuff. i remember riding with my boss when he was prepping for 135 rides in the 421. steep turns were real interesting cause he'd leave the power high. with 300ish horsepower on each side and super light weights any deviation almost immediately busted standards. I was careful to throttle waaaaaaay back on my flight.
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Ron, I had no trouble with the glideslope or localizer; it was the enroute stuff. I don't know why, usually I'm good at that, I think I didn't have it trimmed out right and was tense. Once I relaxed, focused on my scan and catching / stopping excursions early, it got better.

Tim, I was in a Cessna 172; the version that introduced this was 563.03. This document covers the most interesting changes:

http://www.kywgcap.org/Portals/28/downloads/G1000_Software_Changes.pdf
Click to expand...

Exactly what I was wondering, trim is definately our friend here.
 
KennyFlys said:
I remember my instrument instructor constantly drilling into me...

"Small corrections."

A great idea!
Click to expand...

The mantra I got was baby steps . JUst like in "What about Bob". Don't want any of that death therapy.

Using the feet only for small lateral corrections helps too.
 
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Chip Sylverne said:
Using the feet only for small lateral corrections helps too.
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That's how I was taught, so long as it's not a huge deflection you should be able to make corrections across the loc with just your feet. That'll keep the changes a lot small and more controllable. Of course, you have to be a little more judicious in your use of rudder with passengers...they don't like getting thrown from wall to wall for some reason.
 
Lance F said:
and the faster you're going, the smaller and even earlier. It's quite amazing what a difference one stinking degree of pitch will make.
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Especially in that Lear you fly... ;)
 
A couple of things come to mind.First, I remember one piece of advice a stage-check instructor during my IR training gave me: "Cessna put an armrest on that door, why not use it..." his point being, with your left elbow on the armrest and the yoke held with thumb and two fingers of the left hand, if you can't maintain decent control, then you aren't trimming properly and are likely overcontrolling. It has served me well.Other thing is establishing "ruts" for key phases of flight, combinations of power and pitch which yield specific performance. Joh Eckalbar writes about them as being sort of preset modes for each phase of flight, and they can be real workload reducers. I am putting together my "ruts" for my plane. Another benefit is, if you set your power to a particular setting and the performance does not match what's expected, look for a configuration issue (like, say, gear's still up?).$0.02.
 
IR lesson three this morning working on holds. Our review consisted of the same mantra....."small, gentle corrections, don't think about it, do it". The Elite RC-1 sim is so darn sensitive. My CFI said learn to fly the sim to PTS and you will fly the aircraft fine.
 
Ron Levy said:
Oh, yeah, one other thing -- fingertips, not fist-clenching.
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That was quite a lesson for me the other day flying with a student in the DA-20. She was giving that stick such a death grip, I dared not offend her. It was quite a chore to teach her how to trim the plane for pressure and let go. After that, it was trying to get her to keep her thumb off the trim switch so she was flying the plane with the stick and not the trim.

In discussing this with another CFI, he told me of a student who once said... "That's how the autopilot does it?"
 
That CFI should make sure the student knows how the autopilot works. It will run trim to release pitch pressure - but it makes small changes with the pitch servo, not by running the pitch trim.
 
Everskyward said:
Especially in that Lear you fly... ;)
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That's the point. I was doing airwork Thursday including steep turns - 360 deg turn to heading, 45 deg bank, 250 kts, 13,500'. I figured out about 3 deg up pitch worked. Get to 4 deg and leave it for a couple of seconds, and you're 300' over altitude just like that. It's humbling, but Ron is so right, lots of tiny corrections (and scan like h**l). And as far as trim is concerned, get the pitch where you want it and then trim to remove the pressure. It's very difficult to try to use the trim to get a pitch that works.
 
TMetzinger said:
That CFI should make sure the student knows how the autopilot works. It will run trim to release pitch pressure - but it makes small changes with the pitch servo, not by running the pitch trim.
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That's what I said... gotta talk about those servo thingies.
 
Lance F said:
It's very difficult to try to use the trim to get a pitch that works.
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Trim is your friend, but it is very sensitive. I click it a few times rather than trying to hold it down.
 
Lance F said:
That's the point. I was doing airwork Thursday including steep turns - 360 deg turn to heading, 45 deg bank, 250 kts, 13,500'. I figured out about 3 deg up pitch worked. Get to 4 deg and leave it for a couple of seconds, and you're 300' over altitude just like that. It's humbling, but Ron is so right, lots of tiny corrections (and scan like h**l). And as far as trim is concerned, get the pitch where you want it and then trim to remove the pressure. It's very difficult to try to use the trim to get a pitch that works.
Click to expand...

There's a reason jets have the 5" or bigger AI's.... "pretty close there" doesn't get it for setting pitch.
 
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