Practice Routine for Keeping Skills Sharp?

Lndwarrior

Lndwarrior

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Gary
I want to go practice today and I was thinking about what skills to work on. I was wondering if someone had worked out an efficient practice routine?

I'm imagining something that would kind of flow together to make the most efficient use of time in the air. Kind of like the type of process that an aerobatic pilot uses for a routine.

It may start with a particular type of takeoff, then some various types of practice during a long climb-out, then at altitude a series of practice routines, then a multi-step descent with various maneuvers during a step down, etc, until landing.

I could put something together myself but sometimes it's nice not to have to figure stuff out when someone already has a plan.

TIA
Gary
 
I don't have a particular routine, so to speak. I will sometimes pick a few things to work on if I'm flying just to be flying (as opposed to trying to get somewhere). I might practice slow flight for a few minutes once I'm established enroute. Once I get to my destination airport, maybe a VFR pattern or 3. First one to a go around, next one a no flap power off, and make the full stop a soft field or short field. Very rarely do I fly without working on "something" though. If I feel like I'm lacking in an area, I will make a flight specifically to brush up on those tasks.

Now, time to go find a nice crosswind...
 
I think this depends heavily on the individual pilot, but something I made that helps me is a "proficiency binder" that has all of the PTS standards for private and IR in it. It's part of my preflight planning kit and it's a good thing to review every so often and work on the things that you either don't feel comfortable with, or fee like may make you uneasy if required to perform it for some reason

One area that can never get too much practice is short field and power off landings and stall. You'll never know when you'll need to make a real power off and or short field landing so it's good to practice that. If I'm alone and have time after a flight I'll do a few turns in the pattern and request short approaches and do a few power off landings and also do a few short field landings.. I'll just tell myself, land on the numbers and off by the first taxiway or something.. I don't do too many of those for the sake of not killing the brakes and tires, but it's good to stay proficient there

...AND, in light of the recent events at SEE, always be comfortable with how your plane flies at the edge of the envelope, especially near, at, and being held in a stall. You should probably practice those with a CFI so you don't kill yourself, but you should fee very comfortable with all types of stall maneuvers
 
mscard88 said:
Emergency procedures.
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Great point. Electrical failures and smoke / fire does not get enough attention. The plane will fly perfectly fine without electrical power, but you may be left with just a compass and some pitot / static gauges.. know the standard pattern entry rules, where to find them in the AFD if you are not at your home base, and know the light gun signals

Also doesn't hurt to have some phone numbers in your cell phone.. worst case scenario maybe you can at least call the tower or ATC and communicate with them.

**Not sure the level of rating held by the OP, but as a tangent to the whole loss of electrical thing above, then if you do instrument flying lost comm procedures are good to be sharp on.. what route to fly and what altitude and what to do. That could make the difference between panicking, freaking out, and causing a middair or crashing vs a very controlled event and getting safely back on the ground
 
I can agree with practicing emergency procedures.

Slips are also good to keep on top of when you don't need them.

But for landings I try to do soft field all the time. Even on a 3,000ft paved runway.

You'll never be questioned for gracefully stopping before the precision approach markers. (Unless they told you to keep your speed up for some Fokker coming up your rear ;))
 
Compare your takeoff and landing distances to those in the AFM/POH...Runway lights are usually 200 feet apart.

If you're instrument rated, practice the procedures that you don't normally fly...VOR or (gasp!) NDB approaches, including arcs, procedure turns, and holds, all using the ground-based devices. Whatever your airplane is equipped to fly.

Needle, ball, and airspeed for an hour or so, with an approach at the end.

Short field landings over an obstacle...the VASI/PAPI is normally 50' above the threshold.

Dead reckon a flight...don't just say, "well, I was 5 miles off". Figure out how many degrees it was. Be sure to make all of the appropriate corrections.

Make a flight by pilotage, no electronic navigation.

If you normally fly cross countries at 7500 feet, try 1500 AGL.

Bottom line, do something you don't normally do...keep your operational envelope from shrinking to almost nothing.
 
Go out and do the maneuvers you performed on your checkride. Not sure what certificate you hold (assuming private), run through stalls, steep turns, turns around a point and emergency procedures etc.
 
eman1200 said:
nope. practice what you feel you need practice with.
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I'm with eman. If I know I'm about to head to OSH then I practice the arrival for the different runways (altitudes and speeds, etc). Heading to Gaston's I practice the short field t/o and landings. Other than specialized arrivals I practice instrument approaches or just fly.
 
I don't have any routine but one thing I always do is 'slow flight.' If it's Flight Review or for any reason I have a CFI with me I like to do 'hanging on the edge of a stall' and practice gentle turns while there.
 
Radar Contact said:
I'm with eman. If I know I'm about to head to OSH then I practice the arrival for the different runways (altitudes and speeds, etc). Heading to Gaston's I practice the short field t/o and landings. Other than specialized arrivals I practice instrument approaches or just fly.
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Yeah, I should have practiced a tight right-pattern approach for Runway 27 at Oshkosh. Fortunately, I got the easy route...Fisk Avenue and a left base entry for 36.

All you VFR-only guys out there, go up with a safety pilot and do some foggles work. Could save your butt if you inadvertently find yourself in IMC.
 
Anything you don't do a lot. That's going to change from person to person and maybe even month to month fir the same person.

And don't limit it to stuck and rudder skills. The mental game is an important part too. For example, when's the last time you flew to an airport you have never been before using primarily pilotage, and did a few landings there.
 
Practice trying to hand fly, keep your heading/altitude while trying to look up some random airports AWOS and other frequencies and write them down.
Then do it again giving yourself a specific altitude and heading to change to while looking them up.

You're going to have quite a list here shortly :)
 
I don't have an autopilot in my Zodiac (I had an STEC-30 in the 172) so hand flying cross-country is great practice for everything. I flew from Oakland down to Palm Springs and back this past weekend, stopping at Brackett (KPOC) yesterday on the way home to visit my niece and her family in Pomona.
 
Practice the areas,you think your weak in,if your not sure ,spend an hour with a CFI. I try to practice a maneuver or two ,while flying the hundred dollar Hamburg flight.
 
I usually follow the same routine for my proficiency flights:

1) Normal takeoff, cruise climb to practice area.
2) Perform a left 30º bank 360 for the clearing turn followed by a right 30º bank 360.
3) Perform a left 45º bank 360 followed by a right 45º bank 360.
4) If the above maneuvers are where I think they should be I'll move on. If I think they were sloppy or not within PTS I'll do them again.
5) Configure the aircraft for slow flight. Perform a left 30º bank 360 followed by a right 30º bank 360. Same as (4) if I'm happy I'll move on.
6) Perform a power-off stall and recovery.
7) If (6) was satisfactory then clean the aircraft up and perform a power-on stall and recovery.

The above usually takes about 20 minutes depending on traffic, etc. I'll then fly back to the airport and perform various short/soft field takeoffs & landings. This is an abbreviated flight, but it's pretty efficient to remove the rust. YMMV...
 
Instrument work (IIMC)
If you're not flying instrument often, you should have a very simple and very quick course of action if you find yourself in instrument conditions.

Engine failure on take off and inflight

Electrical failure

Take a backcountry course and get comfy with landing off field and know where and what to look for.

Trust your gut

Stalls and spins
 
Before we moved, I had a pattern worked out that kept me in an area out of the way of most other aircraft, over terrain that would be easy to do an emergency landing on, and even had a practice strip nearby. In the course of 3 hours, I could practice every single VFR and IFR skill there was, one time, or I could choose to do only a portion of the pattern that would concentrate on a specific area. For example, I would do a short-field takeoff, then navigate using pilotage to the practice strip, and do a simulated engine out landing, followed by a soft-field takeoff, and a simulated engine-out turn back to land from the cross-wind about 700ft AGL. Another short-field takeoff, then low-level ground reference manuevers, slow flight, high-level maneuvers, stall recovery, and then another simulated engine out, finding an off-airport landing spot and taking it down to about 100ft before climbing back out. After that, I could continue on and do a similar pattern that simulated IFR stuff, although I usually wouldn't unless I had a safety pilot in the right seat. Most of the time, I would do the VFR pattern one day, and the IFR pattern another day, as both on the same day was a bit much. I also had a few different patterns to shoot every type of approach within a 2 hour flight utilizing 3 nearby airports. It was great when I could do them on foggy mornings in IMC, but usually it was with a safety pilot as well. (If neither, I'd still do them VFR) I tried to do all 3 of these once per month, but it usually averaged out to about once every 6 weeks.

Now that we've moved, I have to make a whole new set of patterns.
 
With life I have learned that it is a tendency when practicing things to practice the things we ar good at. So I try to notice the things I avoid practicing (this goes with anything) or seem to be passing over, and often notice those ARE the things I need work on.

In a lot of cases, it takes a helluva lot less practice to get better at the things one is not great at than I think it will.
 
LongRoadBob said:
With life I have learned that it is a tendency when practicing things to practice the things we ar good at. So I try to notice the things I avoid practicing (this goes with anything) or seem to be passing over, and often notice those ARE the things I need work on.

In a lot of cases, it takes a helluva lot less practice to get better at the things one is not great at than I think it will.
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True Bob, just like chords right?

Still working on that ****ing F!
 
What I do -
  • Normal take off
  • Steep turns, both left and right.
  • slow flight
  • stalls straight ahead
  • Constant speed climb to 3500 MSL (locally about 3000 AGL).
  • engine out
  • back to the airport
  • 3 short field landings touching down on on the 1000' mark. Full stop and taxi back on each.
  • Short field take off, then soft field take off.
When I'm hitting the short field landings, I'll usually do a real short field and touch down on the numbers.

The above takes about 1.0 on the hobbs, depending on efficiency and how far out I go from the airport.

That's in addition to review on the ground of emergency checklists...which I admit I'm not as diligent about as I should be because I "know" it will never happen to me.
 
bflynn said:
  • engine out
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How do you practice this? Do you take someone with you to randomly declare an engine failure? I always find things always work out because I know when the engine failure is going to occur...
 
idahoflier said:
How do you practice this? Do you take someone with you to randomly declare an engine failure? I always find things always work out because I know when the engine failure is going to occur...
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Nobody with me. I practice everything that comes after "hey, the engine has quit, now what". That's as far into ABCD as I can get down to being on final somewhere between 500 and 1000'. Even though I'm alone, I verbally call out every 500' altitude to remind myself that I"m going down and that I need to know how low I am. I actually do the same thing descending to pattern altitude too.

Probably should add an engine out at the airport when it's not busy so I can do that last step.
 
mscard88 said:
True Bob, just like chords right?

Still working on that ****ing F!
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Heh, since I'm new to flying, and so have no skills yet to keep up,I was thinking guitar.

There I have a lot of experience and while F chords and that kind of thing isn't an issue after playing for so long, I was surprised here and there, listening to recorded rehearsals or gigs, to hear that now and then I would get sloppy on a technique I had down cold. Like string bending, I heard at some point I was less on the mark than I used to be but it took just concentrating, or realizing that I was under or overshooting the note took just realizing it to fix it up. Also noticed my vibrato technique had become too automatic and predictable, I had stopped using it as expression and running in "autopilot" too much, there again just being aware of the trap let me fix it.
 
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