Turns around a point in a low wing

crash7 said:
I will say if you do your ground ref maneuvers at 1500 AGL then you’ll get to watch the DPE start filling out the notice of disapproval on the way back to the airport…

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The payoff for these maneuvers is in the traffic pattern. So, do them at traffic pattern altitudes.


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Checkride happened a long time ago, so no need to satisfy a DPE. This is me trying to maintain proficiency, while adding a bit of a safey margin and not being exceedingly annoying to the people on the ground, which is why I practice between 1000 and 1500.
Eliminates any argument over what constitutes a "densely populated area".
 
My DPE didn't seem to care that much about the perfection of the maneuver. I think his focus was about dividing my attention between outside and inside the plane and maintaining awareness of what was happening to the plane.

During training my PPL CFI said, "Just point your wing at it and make a circle"... so I did.
He said I didn't do good, but I thought it was awesome.
Mostly because I picked a tree, and for some reason he thought I said "that barn way over there away from that tree". :rolleyes1:
 
RyanB said:
Guess we perform the maneuver differently. I pick a point, place it off the wingtip and adjust my bank angle accordingly to give a constant radius. Works exactly the same as if I place point on the main gear, halfway up the strut, etc.
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Sure, now go out with 20 knots of wind and give you method a try.

If you hold altitude and do that on a private practical test, the examiner probably won’t fail you. Do that on a CFI ride, the examiner should fail you if the bank angles are not appropriate for the aircraft position in the turn about a point or S turns.
 
dmspilot said:
In the "wild", it seems like 80% of pilots don't understand turns around a point. Years ago when I started my CFI training with a retired FAA ASI, the first maneuver he wanted me to learn how to teach was turns around a point because so many people get it wrong.
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I think I'm starting to understand what I was doing wrong (a combination of a couple factors), but I'll try it first and see how it goes.
Would you be willing to share your method?
 
AV8R_87 said:
I think I'm starting to understand what I was doing wrong (a combination of a couple factors), but I'll try it first and see how it goes.
Would you be willing to share your method?
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Nothing special about my technique, it's what's in the Airplane Flying Handbook and as Maule has described.
 
Watch carefully, @RyanB:

www.boldmethod.com

Turns Around A Point

Teaching turns around a point? This FREE interactive CFI tool helps you show the relationship between airspeed, wind, groundspeed and bank angle.
www.boldmethod.com www.boldmethod.com
 
Oh my…. Just cannot believe what I’m reading. See my earlier post. It truly is the answer. Google it… PLEASE.
 
The late great Bob Gardner stated it very simply:

bobmrg said:
Your goal is to maintain a constant distance from a point. Once you have found your point (a tree, a barn, an intersection) identify four or more things on the ground that appear to be equidistant from the central point. Fly over those things. Problem solved. This process is described on page 6-8 of the Airplane Flying Handbook.

Bob Gardner
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Just map out a circle on the ground using a few references and fly around the circle. Bank and crab will take care of themselves. Easy peasy.
 
MauleSkinner said:
so you’re saying the wingtip is never in front of or behind the wingtip?
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I have never been in a plane where my wingtip is in front of my wingtip. In all of my flying experience, the wingtip has always been co-located with the wingtip.
 
Reminds me of this old Army piece of wisdom: "If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage, it's probably a helicopter -- and therefore, unsafe."
 
The real problem is that instructors teach techniques that are so specific to the airplane they’re teaching that pilots can’t figure out how to do the maneuver in something else.
 
EdFred said:
I have never been in a plane where my wingtip is in front of my wingtip. In all of my flying experience, the wingtip has always been co-located with the wingtip.
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It depends on what he means by "wingtip", sonny. ;)



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MauleSkinner said:
The real problem is that instructors teach techniques that are so specific to the airplane they’re teaching that pilots can’t figure out how to do the maneuver in something else.
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I think you nailed it. A good majority of private pilot training is happening in high wings, and the instructors teach a method that works in those planes, without explaining the underlying physics that would allow a pilot to properly transition the maneuver to a low wing.

Some people here got close to the real problem, calling out my choice of altitude and asking about my speed, but nobody homed in on it completely. But it was enough to make me think harder about the flight geometry and how it all lines up, and I got to (successfully) try my theory today.
Short version, I was high and slow, which works well for a high wing (which is what I trained in), but it would place the reference point under the wing in a low wing airplane. The fix was to fly lower (800ft, within the ACS guidelines), and faster (95-100kts), which meant my required bank angle for a given turn radius was greater than the "visual angle" between the plane and the reference point. Thus the wing didn't block the reference point, and it was easier to observe the lead/lag and correct for winds.

Nobody ever explained that math to me. I had to look up the turn radius vs speed once before to figure out how slow I had to fly to be able to make a U-turn within the Hudson River boundries, but I never fully connected the dots between that and the visual angle, which takes the airplane altitude into account.
 
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