You kno mate, your flying skills and technique are perfect in this video!
Many a thousand or so flying hours have given me better understanding of how to fly an aircraft.. no so the big birds, but with flexwing machines, all you did on that approach was real & correct.
Effectively over the years, including my virgin design, test flight and subsequent hand-over of the first real float trike (Airborne design) to Ben Cropp was a memorable experience.. CG, float angle, AOA, etc..
IMHO-We can evaluate, calculate & test the triangulation of the tricycle undercarriage structure.. from a designer point of view, and/or we can fly these machines as IF the designers have it RIGHT>
Although, in real respect, very few trike designer/manufacturer's have got it right.
If we approach a runway at 40 knots to 70+.. the pilot effort to control and land a trike can be calm & sweet
.. or at times, very demanding with significant effort to maintain control - just to land straight & safe.!
IMO-don't blame yourself, look deeper into trike design and the ability to land safely on the rear wheels.. without the front wheel wanting to land immediately after the rears touch.. more so, to gracely embrace the runway without any extra pilot effort with ALL thre wheels landing in harmony..!
You, as the pilot, only needs to do it.. landing like a bird,..
hey riz, that was NOT a bad landing! if i can figure out how to upload vids i CAN show you bad ldgs! by bad do we mean lucky? ldgs, unskilful get downs? untidy re-attachments? goose-step pre-cursers ? momentary mental lapses ? senior moments ? distractions i.e. naked women parading along the runway? if bad means less than good then MOST of my own are full of faults! my trike has NO shock absorbtion on rear (except tires) so the mains must be flapping around all over when i'm 'landing' on some nasty rough surfaces! i concentrate on that FRONT wheel! it,s little contact patch denotes very much whether we're going to experience a 'spiffy' ldg or various degrees of 'HOLY CRAP, THAT WAS SCARY. the rears are just along for the ride! (more or less!) hugs monty ps, a BAD landing leaves you upside-down in a ditch bleeding from your arse-h-le, a GOOD landing is when most of the parts you took off with are still there when you are done!
Drag links, good weight distribution and overall geometry, absence of nose wheel slop, wheel kept straight…all made for a happy ending. It was not a divergent oscillation. With some (a few) trikes...this would have resulted in a divergent (increasingly worse) oscillation and possibly a roll over.
I couldn’t help but notice the quite common over-correcting in roll while flying. This type of wing mounting arrangement lends itself to overcorrection and less favorable handing traits in turbulence. A below-the-keel-roll pivot (dihedral effect...discussed in great detail at Trikepilot forum) will make this particular wing more stable in roll and will feel much better in turbulence. Essentially by cutting your workload in half. Each overcorrection makes for additional workload.
To prove this, try making a control input and go back to center and firmly hold it. Don’t allow it to rock/swing past center as seen in the clip, thereby overcorrecting. This is slightly physically exhausting, but will show how you can cut your control inputs in half. Note that many wings fly like this and can be improved with minimal effort. There are a couple easy ways that don’t involve wing modifications.
I teach guys to “input-back-to-center and wait”...”input-back-to-center and wait”. There is lag time, which varies with different wings. When you are towing center-of-mass, you have to do this. It will force you to stop overcorrecting. It’s good practice for flying trikes set up like yours. Nothing wrong with the wing or the trike…just the mount IMO. But for an easy improvement…try not going past center and see if things aren’t a little better. This you can do now, but with a different mount it does it almost by itself.
I would not call that a bad landing. Not prefect, but not bad either.
My only criticism is on the go around. I too often see trike pilots set up on the numbers or the bars, and if they get jostled around, they go around when they have 5000 ft of runway ahead of them. You are better off learning to keep at it, recenter, level the wings and ease it in to land. Many times I have used 3/4 the length of the runway to get perfectly centered up, and wings level on gusty, cross wind days. In these cases, if I bailed over the numbers because it wasn't perfect I would have never landed. And then possibly in frustration, settled for less that perfection and plopped it down hard. Do not set down unless you are satisfied that everything is perfect, but there is nothing wrong using up most of the runway to get there.
Rizzy, that might not have been a very graceful landing but it was not bad. I agree with Jeff, when you have plenty of runway ahead of you, don't be too quick to abort and take the go around. In some cases you may be able to get a stable approach just a few dozen yards down the runway that you are happy with and set it down gently. This is especially true if you get hit by a cross wind gust on initial approach because gusts often happen intermitantly in cycles. Not a bad landing at all.
C BURG JEFF AND UL PILOT i put your names in caps because i personally think that you,re types of posts passing sound well uderstandable and usefull knowlege here is a credit for this site and i do listen and appreciate not only for rizzy but myself as well. c burg iam very interested in that bracket you put up on the dark side i was hoping that you would put it up here as well as i dont fully understand it yet?all to offen i see information on landing dos and donts. but never the little fine tuning iformation as jeff describes. so now that ive got that in mind ill try to put into practice the next time i dont get centered right on touch down.personaly i hate that little skippy jerk when not centerd quite right. iam sure that it cant allways be avoided but i would certainly like to know the fine tuning dos and donts as how to avoid it. thanks
To be clear, what I am talking about is “overshoot”. There are many ways to reduce overshooting/over-correcting. Wing design, pilot technique, bungees, attachment methods, etc. The simplest is to buy a wing that is less prone to overshooting in roll. The next easiest is to adapt your flying technique. The other stuff is a little more complicated.
Overcorrecting makes a lot of unnecessary, and otherwise avoidable control inputs in turbulence, and great contributes to the unsatisfying flying qualities many pilots experience.
I am still amazed nobody has adopted a level-shift trike. A parallelogram is all that’s needed. Would allow a level touchdown even during a roll input. The good news is that modern trikes are extremely stable and one wheel touch-downs are generally a non-event.
This was one of the many things I liked about triking the Fledge...no swinging in roll...tip rudder controlled.
ahh yes didnt make as much sense to me till i saw the creeper joint.so its a little like manageing the wing in turbulance letting the wing absorb it rather than trying to fight it and overcorrection.only putting in enough imput to bring the wing back to center and allowing for the delay if i see this right.too much emput than having to correct back..A level shift trike now theres an idea.that little kick on landing a trike i think unerves some ga pilots transitioning into trikes.So i think ill be a little more attentive in my imput when touching down.
fledge ill never forget the first time i ever saw one fly at tatilla peak such a flat line and gracefull turning in the lift. when i first moved to this part of montana i asumed i was the only trike x hangie around. setting up my wing in the yard this guy scruffy and packing his side arm slurred in speach from a head injury and loaded with scars walks up (my niegbor) says i use to fly them things.low and behold it was pete one of the test pilots for fledge wing. hes still got one in his barn along side an old comet.feel sorry for him hes just to broken up to fly anymore but i do enjoy going down and watching all his movies from the old days.
so far i havent had a problem skipping on a wheel landing my red back i just try to get a good arc in my glidescope.maintain and bleed my airspeed . feel for setting it down when its right. i can say that i dont fully understand the duck walk i just know i dont want to do it. any ways thanks and iam sure others will find this information useful.
rizzy my friend iam certainly not an exspert but just wanted to maybe add my imput for the sake of discussion. first i agree its not a bad landing. just like me i think you get a little tense on landing exspesially if conditions are a little challenging. being relaxed confident but attentive i think is a good thing.going over the slow mode portion of youre video iam carefully watching your pitch imput.and when i watched it in fast mode i think i see it more clearly.you get bounced around a bit in youre approach and you do a great job getting lined up.as you get over the bar on the runway and into ground efect it all looks good and your pitch looks good.before you pushed out on the bar i think if you would of just bled it off there a little longer you would of aced it and then a little more flare. if you look at the reaction of the wing how it delays youre imput then you react by pulling in it caused you to kind of chunk it in. i would attribute that to you being a little tense on landing .when i went to scott johnson for my solo he had a very nice way of teaching this mentaly as two inches on roll out than two more and delay in groud effect and than two more for full flare. it has just worked great for me so far.so if iam passing bad info here please anyone correct me.its easy to sit back and judge a video its such a great learning tool little more difficult when youre doing it in the air.not trying to be the authority or judgmental riz just saying the way i see it. please feel free to judge me and put up youre thoughts as well.
i think in short it was the kind pumping in pitch that iam looking at to my suprise there really is some differences in landing on three wheels as oposed to two legs but then theres the wang in that too'if i remember this was a while back so how are you doing on youre landings in youre new trike riz. to say all my landings are perfect is like saying ive never farted yah right but its just so great to have the imput youre getting from some very exsperienced flyers just great makes me re examine my landings
Try relaxing on the bar some and be ready to let the bar out once your mains touch. It looks like you held the same position after your mains touched.
Watch out for cutting the throttle right before touch down. It's best to gently let off the throttle, if you decide not to come in at idle. Especially that close to the ground.
hey white eagle your remark admitting that you've farted reminds me of a 'royal farter' employed by britain's royalty to save the monarch the effort and with a nod from his king he would emit a really loud fart! honest! monty BRRRRRRRRPT!
ha ha ha ha ha thats very funny monty thanks for the laugh at the end of a hard day wayne how about one of youre videos on landings .i know you got some good ones. and how have you liked your strutted mustang wing. do you ever get kicked by turbulance off the line of trees down youre runway.ive never seen you do a bad landing.at least in youre videos.
The "Royal Farter" was NOT there to fart FOR the King or Queen but rather to take responsibility for the fart that the King or Queen let out in public.
Regarding throttle on landing... it is a bad idea to get in the habit of using throttle when on finals and the end of the landing phase and not good instruction coming from an instructor who teaches this. With that said, you should be ready to use throttle or even power it in when in strong turbulent conditions, that would be the only time to use throttle.
Those who get in the habit of using throttle to help them out of a bad approach and touch down will never be able to do a safe dead stick, the day that engine stops because they have become reliant upon the throttle to get them out of a poorly executed landing. Therefore if you are guilty of this readers, stop it now and get proper instruction on how to land correctly without using power
You should use no throttle from the point that you have decided you can make the runway threshold, to the point of rollout after touch down in anything other than turbulent conditions on landing. Anyone who wants to know how to get themselves out of this bad habit, please feel free to contact me and I will talk you through it, and I sincerely hope you were not taught to land that way.
As for Trike skip of the nose wheel on touch down, over the years from what I have seen this is always the pilot's fault and again because they were taught improperly by poor instructors or they forgot what they were correctly taught. The nose wheel will skip and continue to skip and sometimes get progressively worse, often to a tip-over, because the pilot has let the nose wheel stay light. Rizzy I could see that you did this too in your bad landing video, not as bad as many, but you did leave your nose wheel somewhat light on the runway.
When landing, the moment the nose wheel comes down, usually after the mains have touched, and that should be the only way, to follow the main wheels, the pilot must immediately pull the bar into the chest/belly and keep it there until your speed has bled off. If you leave it out any amount, you are asking for trouble and will likely get it too. By keeping the bar, even in the neutral position, you effectively keep the nose wheel light, until speed has been bled off, of course, and this is all too evident by so many pilots upon touch down.
Take a look at landing videos of pilots and you will see how often they make this mistake. Yes on a calm day there is usually no problem but why even do it? If you do it, you will get complacent and forget what you should correctly be doing upon touchdown. Then one day with gusty conditions or a strong crosswind landing you may find yourself in trouble if you don't pull that bar into your belly/chest the instant the nose wheel come down.
By keeping it tightly loaded on touch down, you will allow the nose wheel to skip back and forth because it is almost floating upon touch down and it often increases to the point of a tip-over. Another thing you should do is keep the nose wheel turned into the direction of travel, which means in a crosswind your wheel will not be held straight by your feet, but rather, it will be turned into the direction of travel and again upon touch down of the nose wheel, be sure not to over correct with your steering or you will put yourself into another problem of over-steering and correcting too late which again may lead to a trike tip-over.
In turbulent landing condition, use the whole runway to practice low to very low flights down the runway, using very fast but tiny bar movements to maintain a dead straight line of flight down the centre line without dropping or gaining altitude and of course by using power to keep you there, as you fly along the runway, first at 50 feet above until you feel comfortable, then at 30 feet above then at 10 feet above then at 5 feet above and eventually try keeping it just about a foot off the ground all the way down the centre line of the runway. This exercise will greatly improve your handling ability of your trike in turbulent air and stop you from over controlling by acting too late followed by too much input for correction, followed by more of the same.
All the years I taught I would make all my student practice this and much more, in ever more turbulent conditions, as their ability levels increased to match the conditions. This was to teach them how to properly control their wing so that landing in all conditions was just another job to do to get on the ground, with it being basically a non event. I too often saw white knuckled pilots (?) trying to land in rough air conditions, because they were most likely never taught to fly in rough air or taught incorrectly. I knew of many instructors who were themselves afraid to fly in rough air or turbulent conditions and would never dream of taking a student up on such days.
brovo and brovo again lucian well written and understood post very benificial to us all. i like to drop ny power to idle as soon as i complete my base to final and i have a relitively good glidescope to the runway. if i look like iam a bit short i will add a little corrective throttle but back off as soon as i have sufficiate glidescope.please put access to youre book in the market section of alltrikes and i will buy a copy thanks and ps you were correct about the fart thing as well.scott johnson was my second instructor and grilled this in me as well.but being an x hangie dead stick is what iam most comfortable with. so thanks for the imput on when you should add sufficiant power on landing. weak or marginal turbulance i see no need to add power i just like to come in with a little more energy is this still correct?
hi lucian, i defer to your explanation re the 'royal farters duties', as i also do to your flying knowledge. your explanation of pulling the bar into your gut till the speed bleeds off is exactly what i did when my 503 puked about 2 yrs ago, resulting in an 'un planned arrival'. the cause of the pistons seizing is , i believe the little white car you can see on the freeway to the left pointing some kind of a death ray that must have fried my pistons! the video is on alltrikes 74days ago. titled '503 rotax pukes, engine out over 2 years ago'. i posted it on 'the dark side' jan 2012( approx ) thinking that someone might benefit from an old fart dealing with a real as opposed to pre-planned 'emergency ldg.(although having flown hirth engines for 6 years i'm no stranger to the sound of silence while triking ) i was reamed a new' exhaust port' by the self-appointed guru-in-chief of trikedom, and self annointed 'dark side cop', who accused me of not flaring and that the ONLY way to land is with the control tube up against the down tube. my wing, a12m cosmos quits wanting to fly long before hitting the down tube.(power off) i wish i could have quoted your advice during the ensuing verbage exchange. i had no way of knowing what the wind was doing on the ground and i did not want that front wheel to 'get light' , it can't steer in the air. the ground was frozen, arizona desert in january, and bumpy. your posting contains much wisdom and although i already have the 'trike fliers' book you wrote years ago (it's home in wa state, i'm here in az let me know how i can get a copy of your triking book. i would really welcome your assessment of my video ' thank you lucian, monty
Lucian - regarding pulling the bar to your chest. I'm not sure I completely agree. I've had nose wheels begin to shimmy uncontrollably when loading them up with too much speed after landing. Some trikes are prone to this, and it can become quite dangerous. I think the speed needs to be bled off quite a bit after the mains touch for this to work.
Every trike is different…even the same trike…trimmed different…is different. I rather think in terms of Normal, X-wind, Short-field, Soft-field TOLs universally discussed and taught in traditional flight training. There are slight differences with trikes, but the concepts all apply. I teach this…for both improved communication of desired type of technique, and for prescribed skills competency. For example if I said to use a soft-field takeoff and landing, you should know what that means and how to do it. Or if I said to do a soft-field takeoff and a normal landing, it’s different. Understanding the concepts and conventions allows for mentally knowing what technique to use for a given trike. Many guys know only one kind of takeoff and one kind of landing. That's OK, but when you go to a different trikes you'll sometimes need to know a different technique.
NOTE: I'm talking about technique...not runway conditions. If you're not taught this you should become familiar.
You need to slow down before setting down. If you have to approach fast to get through cross winds, turbulence, wind gradient, that's fine, but level out and slow down first before you touch down. If cross winds and turbulence is bouncing you around, use a little power to keep you in the air until you get perfectly centered up. Tricycle gear is unstable at high speeds. I agree that once the nose is down, pull in on the bar to keep it down, but only if you have slowed down first. Pulling the bar down when landing a high speed (+60mph) is very risky. And in trikes with small high speed wings, it is easy to get into this dangerous situation.
You may agree or not, however, you are doing the WRONG thing if you are landing at high or higher speed, and are asking for trouble and will likely get it. No disrespect meant to you but this seems to still be the problem with training in the USA, people are not being taught either correctly in some cases or inconsistently by the instructors scattered around the country. When I used to teach and travel around the country to competitions or fly-ins I was often appalled at some of the standard of so-called "pilots" flying at these events.
I sometimes asked about things I saw them do and why they did it that way, and in general conversation asked who taught them to fly to get an idea of who was doing what as instructors. There were some very good instructors out there and there were many TERRIBLE instructors out there, and I felt sorry for the poor students. The same goes for watching people unbag or pack up their wings. Major mistakes being made and ones that were creating torque to parts of the wings that should not be having that applied. I also saw some instructors setting up their wings in a manner that over time, would not be good for the integrity of the wing.
For that reason I created a number of training videos on the proper way to un-bag and set up and mount a wing and then take it all apart and bag it up again, of several different wings on various trikes. That way, if they followed the instructions they were seeing, they would always do it properly. How many times have you heard a pilot say that they wish the makers would make a larger bag? It is not the bag it was the improper way they were packing them up that made them too fat to properly fit the bag.
I say that I feel people are still not being properly trained in some cases because of things I read by licensed sport pilots, stating the wrong thing to do or having a false understanding of what they are supposed to do. I understand that some people get it wrong but too many times I see someone state or hypothesize about what is happening or what a new pilot should do etc. and their statement shows they have a false understanding of what is going on and/or what they should be doing about it.
Ken you said... "I've had nose wheels begin to shimmy uncontrollably when loading them up with too much speed after landing. Some trikes are prone to this, and it can become quite dangerous..."
Well let me ask you a basic question here, who the heck taught you to land with too much speed??? I blame your instructor first. You should have NEVER been taught to land with a lot of speed, I am assuming you did not teach yourself this. You can approach with a lot of speed if conditions dictate this type of approach but you never touch down with a lot of speed. You must hold off until the speed of the wing is at such a point that you are about to stall and then the trike will settle down perfectly as you demonstrate a proper landing technique. Doing this you will not put yourself in a situation that could make the wheel "Shimmy". Why would you think a certified trike manufacturer would design a nose wheel assembly that is pone to shimmying, that does not make sense? Give me a name list of those trike makes you feel are prone to shimmying, I've flow most trikes and wings over the years.
With that said, if you load a nose wheel by pulling the bar right in you will help to offset that shimmying as well as slow the trike down more quickly because the wing will act as an airbrake, creating more drag, so you MUST pull that bar ALL the way to your chest. Now I will agree that some trikes have poorly designed front wheels and do have a little more tendency to feel somewhat loose. A properly designed nose wheel should have some sort of trailing arm feature so that the fork will be pulling the wheel along, that is the fork ends and there is an angle of metal that runs backwards so that the axle of the wheel sits behind the bottom of the fork.
If anyone wishes to e-mail me I can show you a number of ways this is accomplished. By having a trailing arm nose wheel you will never suffer a shimmying feel because the wheel follows the fork. Any trike that does not have such a feature designed into the nose wheel is a bad design, pure and simple. Many times it is the pilot that is causing the nose wheel to shimmy either from foot positions or pressures being exerted on the foot rests or wing/control bar position upon landing, not the trike. And of course excessive speed, which is the WRONG way to land. In case you can not visualize this, think of driving a wheel barrow. You and the wheel barrow are the nose wheel assembly in this instance, your nose wheel is out front of everything, a bad design for a trike. Now if you turn yourself around and now pull the wheel barrow and the wheel is the last thing to come along, you have a trailing arm system for a wheel and that is good for a trike or any tricycle aircraft configuration, for that matter.
Everyone one should have been taught to control the trike in turbulent or somewhat gusty.cross wind conditions during their training, not because as instructors we want you to go out and fly in this type of weather, but because we know that one day you will take off in good conditions and when you come to land at your same airport or at a destination airport you may well encounter such conditions an will need to know A) what that feels like already and B) what to do to properly and safely land in such conditions.
Many of my students have written to tell me about landing in such situations that they had not planned on and said they heard that Lucian voice come into their head and tell them what they should be doing to get it down safely. I would drill this into their heads by repetition and then once they were competent in such conditions I would tell them never to go and fly in these conditions. Having made them go through it when training though, it would come back to them in the future and they would be familiar with how it felt and what they had to do to land properly and safely. How many of you guys have had your instructors take you up in such conditions and go through approach and landing procedures for that?
I would make my students fly down the runway starting at 50 feet above, as previously stated, and then progressively get lower as they became proficient at each altitude until they could do it and hold the trike off about a foot above the runway in gusty/thermally conditions. This was always done at the end of their training because they of course needed to have proper skills to handle what was going to be coming their way. You would never take a student just starting or in the middle of their training into such conditions, they simply would not be able to handle it. I have always found that even on the gustiest of days when you would be coming in with power of course, to give you a faster response to wing inputs, you will always find a moment or two somewhere down the runway where things got calmer, just for a few seconds and that is place you would choose to come off the power, flare to bleed off the airspeed and put the trike down and remember, you only had a foot of altitude to lose so you were not in the air in that situation of power off and flaring for more than a few seconds at most.
And if you did not find that spot, then go around again and try once more. Only once in my life have I had to do a go around because it was simply too nasty to put it down and that was when I was teaching in Colorado at Granby where our runway was at 8,200ft AGL. I had flown over to Steam Boat Springs early in the morning and left later than I had intended and hit the daily nasty high winds we got daily after about 11am. We had daily winds at 35-40mph all day long with peak gusts at 5mph up to 55mph and one day we recorded a quick 70mph peak gust during the day in clear blue sky conditions. That wind coupled with all the mountains around us made for less than ideal landing conditions if you were not on the ground by 10:30 at the latest. When I had to do that go around I was very surprised at the rapidly deteriorating conditions and knew it had to be nailed on the next approach, which it was. I can tell you I was very happy to be back on the ground that day.
We normally stopped flying at about 9:30am because the winds were about to start up and most of the time, the density altitude at about that time meant we simply could not take off and clear the slight rise with a low barbed wire fence at the end of the runway, despite it being 1,800ft long. We usually started back up about 6:30 to 7pm when things calmed down again, which most days it did. Mountain flying requires great skill, respect, and knowledge about all sorts of things that flat landers will never encounter. Never take a flying trip out west to high country without first taking a mountain flying course from a competent instructor, preferably at the runway altitude you will be encountering. Trust me, if you don't have proper training and learn how to fly and what to do and what you will likely encounter in mountain terrain and worse, at high altitude, you had better have jam in your pockets because you will be toast!
Well I have gone on far too long and apologize to those still reading. However, for taking all that time you guys get the special offer on my book. The book is $30 about 256 pages of great knowledge and lesson plans but until the end of April I am offering it for $25 plus shipping and you can contact me at lucianbphotography (at) hotmail (dot) com. Fly safely and do what you can to improve your skills and when ever you can, take a refresher lesson or advanced flying situations lesson from a very competent instructor. They are not all good instructors out there you know, even now with all that has been put in place by the FAA. Remember, every Lawyer and Doctor course always has people who graduate at the top of their class and those who graduate at the bottom of the class but they all walk away with the same certification papers, and flight instructors are no different. Find one with a wealth of experience and get some feed back from those in the know, who have been in the industry for a long time, to be sure you are picking a good one.
Comments
Hey Rizzy..
You kno mate, your flying skills and technique are perfect in this video!
Many a thousand or so flying hours have given me better understanding of how to fly an aircraft.. no so the big birds, but with flexwing machines, all you did on that approach was real & correct.
Effectively over the years, including my virgin design, test flight and subsequent hand-over of the first real float trike (Airborne design) to Ben Cropp was a memorable experience.. CG, float angle, AOA, etc..
IMHO-We can evaluate, calculate & test the triangulation of the tricycle undercarriage structure.. from a designer point of view, and/or we can fly these machines as IF the designers have it RIGHT>
Although, in real respect, very few trike designer/manufacturer's have got it right.
If we approach a runway at 40 knots to 70+.. the pilot effort to control and land a trike can be calm & sweet
.. or at times, very demanding with significant effort to maintain control - just to land straight & safe.!
IMO-don't blame yourself, look deeper into trike design and the ability to land safely on the rear wheels.. without the front wheel wanting to land immediately after the rears touch.. more so, to gracely embrace the runway without any extra pilot effort with ALL thre wheels landing in harmony..!
You, as the pilot, only needs to do it.. landing like a bird,..
My two bobs worth.. have fun!
You did well and controlled the landing. It must be scary.
hey riz, that was NOT a bad landing! if i can figure out how to upload vids i CAN show you bad ldgs! by bad do we mean lucky? ldgs, unskilful get downs? untidy re-attachments? goose-step pre-cursers ? momentary mental lapses ? senior moments ? distractions i.e. naked women parading along the runway? if bad means less than good then MOST of my own are full of faults! my trike has NO shock absorbtion on rear (except tires) so the mains must be flapping around all over when i'm 'landing' on some nasty rough surfaces! i concentrate on that FRONT wheel! it,s little contact patch denotes very much whether we're going to experience a 'spiffy' ldg or various degrees of 'HOLY CRAP, THAT WAS SCARY. the rears are just along for the ride! (more or less!) hugs monty ps, a BAD landing leaves you upside-down in a ditch bleeding from your arse-h-le, a GOOD landing is when most of the parts you took off with are still there when you are done!
Rizzy, Its not a bad landing if there is no blood on the runway.
Good landing is, if the pilot can walk out of his trike
Best landing is, if the trike you can to use again :)
There were the best landing Rizzy! I saw your right rear wheel above the runway.
Drag links, good weight distribution and overall geometry, absence of nose wheel slop, wheel kept straight…all made for a happy ending. It was not a divergent oscillation. With some (a few) trikes...this would have resulted in a divergent (increasingly worse) oscillation and possibly a roll over.
I couldn’t help but notice the quite common over-correcting in roll while flying. This type of wing mounting arrangement lends itself to overcorrection and less favorable handing traits in turbulence. A below-the-keel-roll pivot (dihedral effect...discussed in great detail at Trikepilot forum) will make this particular wing more stable in roll and will feel much better in turbulence. Essentially by cutting your workload in half. Each overcorrection makes for additional workload.
To prove this, try making a control input and go back to center and firmly hold it. Don’t allow it to rock/swing past center as seen in the clip, thereby overcorrecting. This is slightly physically exhausting, but will show how you can cut your control inputs in half. Note that many wings fly like this and can be improved with minimal effort. There are a couple easy ways that don’t involve wing modifications.
I teach guys to “input-back-to-center and wait”...”input-back-to-center and wait”. There is lag time, which varies with different wings. When you are towing center-of-mass, you have to do this. It will force you to stop overcorrecting. It’s good practice for flying trikes set up like yours. Nothing wrong with the wing or the trike…just the mount IMO. But for an easy improvement…try not going past center and see if things aren’t a little better. This you can do now, but with a different mount it does it almost by itself.
Riz,
I would not call that a bad landing. Not prefect, but not bad either.
My only criticism is on the go around. I too often see trike pilots set up on the numbers or the bars, and if they get jostled around, they go around when they have 5000 ft of runway ahead of them. You are better off learning to keep at it, recenter, level the wings and ease it in to land. Many times I have used 3/4 the length of the runway to get perfectly centered up, and wings level on gusty, cross wind days. In these cases, if I bailed over the numbers because it wasn't perfect I would have never landed. And then possibly in frustration, settled for less that perfection and plopped it down hard. Do not set down unless you are satisfied that everything is perfect, but there is nothing wrong using up most of the runway to get there.
Thanks everyone for your input :D
Rizzy, that might not have been a very graceful landing but it was not bad. I agree with Jeff, when you have plenty of runway ahead of you, don't be too quick to abort and take the go around. In some cases you may be able to get a stable approach just a few dozen yards down the runway that you are happy with and set it down gently. This is especially true if you get hit by a cross wind gust on initial approach because gusts often happen intermitantly in cycles. Not a bad landing at all.
C BURG JEFF AND UL PILOT i put your names in caps because i personally think that you,re types of posts passing sound well uderstandable and usefull knowlege here is a credit for this site and i do listen and appreciate not only for rizzy but myself as well. c burg iam very interested in that bracket you put up on the dark side i was hoping that you would put it up here as well as i dont fully understand it yet?all to offen i see information on landing dos and donts. but never the little fine tuning iformation as jeff describes. so now that ive got that in mind ill try to put into practice the next time i dont get centered right on touch down.personaly i hate that little skippy jerk when not centerd quite right. iam sure that it cant allways be avoided but i would certainly like to know the fine tuning dos and donts as how to avoid it. thanks
white eagle:
rather than re-post...here you go...
http://www.trikepilot.com/members/profile/3910
http://www.trikepilot.com/members/profile/855/pictures/18970/2
http://www.trikepilot.com/members/profile/855/pictures/18967/2
http://www.trikepilot.com/members/profile/855/pictures/18964/2
http://www.trikepilot.com/members/profile/855/pictures/18969/2
To be clear, what I am talking about is “overshoot”. There are many ways to reduce overshooting/over-correcting. Wing design, pilot technique, bungees, attachment methods, etc. The simplest is to buy a wing that is less prone to overshooting in roll. The next easiest is to adapt your flying technique. The other stuff is a little more complicated.
Overcorrecting makes a lot of unnecessary, and otherwise avoidable control inputs in turbulence, and great contributes to the unsatisfying flying qualities many pilots experience.
I am still amazed nobody has adopted a level-shift trike. A parallelogram is all that’s needed. Would allow a level touchdown even during a roll input. The good news is that modern trikes are extremely stable and one wheel touch-downs are generally a non-event.
This was one of the many things I liked about triking the Fledge...no swinging in roll...tip rudder controlled.
ahh yes didnt make as much sense to me till i saw the creeper joint.so its a little like manageing the wing in turbulance letting the wing absorb it rather than trying to fight it and overcorrection.only putting in enough imput to bring the wing back to center and allowing for the delay if i see this right.too much emput than having to correct back..A level shift trike now theres an idea.that little kick on landing a trike i think unerves some ga pilots transitioning into trikes.So i think ill be a little more attentive in my imput when touching down.
fledge ill never forget the first time i ever saw one fly at tatilla peak such a flat line and gracefull turning in the lift. when i first moved to this part of montana i asumed i was the only trike x hangie around. setting up my wing in the yard this guy scruffy and packing his side arm slurred in speach from a head injury and loaded with scars walks up (my niegbor) says i use to fly them things.low and behold it was pete one of the test pilots for fledge wing. hes still got one in his barn along side an old comet.feel sorry for him hes just to broken up to fly anymore but i do enjoy going down and watching all his movies from the old days.
so far i havent had a problem skipping on a wheel landing my red back i just try to get a good arc in my glidescope.maintain and bleed my airspeed . feel for setting it down when its right. i can say that i dont fully understand the duck walk i just know i dont want to do it. any ways thanks and iam sure others will find this information useful.
rizzy my friend iam certainly not an exspert but just wanted to maybe add my imput for the sake of discussion. first i agree its not a bad landing. just like me i think you get a little tense on landing exspesially if conditions are a little challenging. being relaxed confident but attentive i think is a good thing.going over the slow mode portion of youre video iam carefully watching your pitch imput.and when i watched it in fast mode i think i see it more clearly.you get bounced around a bit in youre approach and you do a great job getting lined up.as you get over the bar on the runway and into ground efect it all looks good and your pitch looks good.before you pushed out on the bar i think if you would of just bled it off there a little longer you would of aced it and then a little more flare. if you look at the reaction of the wing how it delays youre imput then you react by pulling in it caused you to kind of chunk it in. i would attribute that to you being a little tense on landing .when i went to scott johnson for my solo he had a very nice way of teaching this mentaly as two inches on roll out than two more and delay in groud effect and than two more for full flare. it has just worked great for me so far.so if iam passing bad info here please anyone correct me.its easy to sit back and judge a video its such a great learning tool little more difficult when youre doing it in the air.not trying to be the authority or judgmental riz just saying the way i see it. please feel free to judge me and put up youre thoughts as well.
i think in short it was the kind pumping in pitch that iam looking at to my suprise there really is some differences in landing on three wheels as oposed to two legs but then theres the wang in that too'if i remember this was a while back so how are you doing on youre landings in youre new trike riz. to say all my landings are perfect is like saying ive never farted yah right but its just so great to have the imput youre getting from some very exsperienced flyers just great makes me re examine my landings
Try relaxing on the bar some and be ready to let the bar out once your mains touch. It looks like you held the same position after your mains touched.
Watch out for cutting the throttle right before touch down. It's best to gently let off the throttle, if you decide not to come in at idle. Especially that close to the ground.
hey white eagle your remark admitting that you've farted reminds me of a 'royal farter' employed by britain's royalty to save the monarch the effort and with a nod from his king he would emit a really loud fart! honest! monty BRRRRRRRRPT!
ha ha ha ha ha thats very funny monty thanks for the laugh at the end of a hard day wayne how about one of youre videos on landings .i know you got some good ones. and how have you liked your strutted mustang wing. do you ever get kicked by turbulance off the line of trees down youre runway.ive never seen you do a bad landing.at least in youre videos.
The "Royal Farter" was NOT there to fart FOR the King or Queen but rather to take responsibility for the fart that the King or Queen let out in public.
Regarding throttle on landing... it is a bad idea to get in the habit of using throttle when on finals and the end of the landing phase and not good instruction coming from an instructor who teaches this. With that said, you should be ready to use throttle or even power it in when in strong turbulent conditions, that would be the only time to use throttle.
Those who get in the habit of using throttle to help them out of a bad approach and touch down will never be able to do a safe dead stick, the day that engine stops because they have become reliant upon the throttle to get them out of a poorly executed landing. Therefore if you are guilty of this readers, stop it now and get proper instruction on how to land correctly without using power
You should use no throttle from the point that you have decided you can make the runway threshold, to the point of rollout after touch down in anything other than turbulent conditions on landing. Anyone who wants to know how to get themselves out of this bad habit, please feel free to contact me and I will talk you through it, and I sincerely hope you were not taught to land that way.
As for Trike skip of the nose wheel on touch down, over the years from what I have seen this is always the pilot's fault and again because they were taught improperly by poor instructors or they forgot what they were correctly taught. The nose wheel will skip and continue to skip and sometimes get progressively worse, often to a tip-over, because the pilot has let the nose wheel stay light. Rizzy I could see that you did this too in your bad landing video, not as bad as many, but you did leave your nose wheel somewhat light on the runway.
When landing, the moment the nose wheel comes down, usually after the mains have touched, and that should be the only way, to follow the main wheels, the pilot must immediately pull the bar into the chest/belly and keep it there until your speed has bled off. If you leave it out any amount, you are asking for trouble and will likely get it too. By keeping the bar, even in the neutral position, you effectively keep the nose wheel light, until speed has been bled off, of course, and this is all too evident by so many pilots upon touch down.
Take a look at landing videos of pilots and you will see how often they make this mistake. Yes on a calm day there is usually no problem but why even do it? If you do it, you will get complacent and forget what you should correctly be doing upon touchdown. Then one day with gusty conditions or a strong crosswind landing you may find yourself in trouble if you don't pull that bar into your belly/chest the instant the nose wheel come down.
By keeping it tightly loaded on touch down, you will allow the nose wheel to skip back and forth because it is almost floating upon touch down and it often increases to the point of a tip-over. Another thing you should do is keep the nose wheel turned into the direction of travel, which means in a crosswind your wheel will not be held straight by your feet, but rather, it will be turned into the direction of travel and again upon touch down of the nose wheel, be sure not to over correct with your steering or you will put yourself into another problem of over-steering and correcting too late which again may lead to a trike tip-over.
In turbulent landing condition, use the whole runway to practice low to very low flights down the runway, using very fast but tiny bar movements to maintain a dead straight line of flight down the centre line without dropping or gaining altitude and of course by using power to keep you there, as you fly along the runway, first at 50 feet above until you feel comfortable, then at 30 feet above then at 10 feet above then at 5 feet above and eventually try keeping it just about a foot off the ground all the way down the centre line of the runway. This exercise will greatly improve your handling ability of your trike in turbulent air and stop you from over controlling by acting too late followed by too much input for correction, followed by more of the same.
All the years I taught I would make all my student practice this and much more, in ever more turbulent conditions, as their ability levels increased to match the conditions. This was to teach them how to properly control their wing so that landing in all conditions was just another job to do to get on the ground, with it being basically a non event. I too often saw white knuckled pilots (?) trying to land in rough air conditions, because they were most likely never taught to fly in rough air or taught incorrectly. I knew of many instructors who were themselves afraid to fly in rough air or turbulent conditions and would never dream of taking a student up on such days.
Lucian Bartosik
(Buy my Trike BOOK, you'll learn a lot)
brovo and brovo again lucian well written and understood post very benificial to us all. i like to drop ny power to idle as soon as i complete my base to final and i have a relitively good glidescope to the runway. if i look like iam a bit short i will add a little corrective throttle but back off as soon as i have sufficiate glidescope.please put access to youre book in the market section of alltrikes and i will buy a copy thanks and ps you were correct about the fart thing as well.scott johnson was my second instructor and grilled this in me as well.but being an x hangie dead stick is what iam most comfortable with. so thanks for the imput on when you should add sufficiant power on landing. weak or marginal turbulance i see no need to add power i just like to come in with a little more energy is this still correct?
hi lucian, i defer to your explanation re the 'royal farters duties', as i also do to your flying knowledge. your explanation of pulling the bar into your gut till the speed bleeds off is exactly what i did when my 503 puked about 2 yrs ago, resulting in an 'un planned arrival'. the cause of the pistons seizing is , i believe the little white car you can see on the freeway to the left pointing some kind of a death ray that must have fried my pistons! the video is on alltrikes 74days ago. titled '503 rotax pukes, engine out over 2 years ago'. i posted it on 'the dark side' jan 2012( approx ) thinking that someone might benefit from an old fart dealing with a real as opposed to pre-planned 'emergency ldg.(although having flown hirth engines for 6 years i'm no stranger to the sound of silence while triking ) i was reamed a new' exhaust port' by the self-appointed guru-in-chief of trikedom, and self annointed 'dark side cop', who accused me of not flaring and that the ONLY way to land is with the control tube up against the down tube. my wing, a12m cosmos quits wanting to fly long before hitting the down tube.(power off) i wish i could have quoted your advice during the ensuing verbage exchange. i had no way of knowing what the wind was doing on the ground and i did not want that front wheel to 'get light' , it can't steer in the air. the ground was frozen, arizona desert in january, and bumpy. your posting contains much wisdom and although i already have the 'trike fliers' book you wrote years ago (it's home in wa state, i'm here in az let me know how i can get a copy of your triking book. i would really welcome your assessment of my video ' thank you lucian, monty
Lucian - regarding pulling the bar to your chest. I'm not sure I completely agree. I've had nose wheels begin to shimmy uncontrollably when loading them up with too much speed after landing. Some trikes are prone to this, and it can become quite dangerous. I think the speed needs to be bled off quite a bit after the mains touch for this to work.
Every trike is different…even the same trike…trimmed different…is different. I rather think in terms of Normal, X-wind, Short-field, Soft-field TOLs universally discussed and taught in traditional flight training. There are slight differences with trikes, but the concepts all apply. I teach this…for both improved communication of desired type of technique, and for prescribed skills competency. For example if I said to use a soft-field takeoff and landing, you should know what that means and how to do it. Or if I said to do a soft-field takeoff and a normal landing, it’s different. Understanding the concepts and conventions allows for mentally knowing what technique to use for a given trike. Many guys know only one kind of takeoff and one kind of landing. That's OK, but when you go to a different trikes you'll sometimes need to know a different technique.
NOTE: I'm talking about technique...not runway conditions. If you're not taught this you should become familiar.
You need to slow down before setting down. If you have to approach fast to get through cross winds, turbulence, wind gradient, that's fine, but level out and slow down first before you touch down. If cross winds and turbulence is bouncing you around, use a little power to keep you in the air until you get perfectly centered up. Tricycle gear is unstable at high speeds. I agree that once the nose is down, pull in on the bar to keep it down, but only if you have slowed down first. Pulling the bar down when landing a high speed (+60mph) is very risky. And in trikes with small high speed wings, it is easy to get into this dangerous situation.
Ken..
You may agree or not, however, you are doing the WRONG thing if you are landing at high or higher speed, and are asking for trouble and will likely get it. No disrespect meant to you but this seems to still be the problem with training in the USA, people are not being taught either correctly in some cases or inconsistently by the instructors scattered around the country. When I used to teach and travel around the country to competitions or fly-ins I was often appalled at some of the standard of so-called "pilots" flying at these events.
I sometimes asked about things I saw them do and why they did it that way, and in general conversation asked who taught them to fly to get an idea of who was doing what as instructors. There were some very good instructors out there and there were many TERRIBLE instructors out there, and I felt sorry for the poor students. The same goes for watching people unbag or pack up their wings. Major mistakes being made and ones that were creating torque to parts of the wings that should not be having that applied. I also saw some instructors setting up their wings in a manner that over time, would not be good for the integrity of the wing.
For that reason I created a number of training videos on the proper way to un-bag and set up and mount a wing and then take it all apart and bag it up again, of several different wings on various trikes. That way, if they followed the instructions they were seeing, they would always do it properly. How many times have you heard a pilot say that they wish the makers would make a larger bag? It is not the bag it was the improper way they were packing them up that made them too fat to properly fit the bag.
I say that I feel people are still not being properly trained in some cases because of things I read by licensed sport pilots, stating the wrong thing to do or having a false understanding of what they are supposed to do. I understand that some people get it wrong but too many times I see someone state or hypothesize about what is happening or what a new pilot should do etc. and their statement shows they have a false understanding of what is going on and/or what they should be doing about it.
Ken you said... "I've had nose wheels begin to shimmy uncontrollably when loading them up with too much speed after landing. Some trikes are prone to this, and it can become quite dangerous..."
Well let me ask you a basic question here, who the heck taught you to land with too much speed??? I blame your instructor first. You should have NEVER been taught to land with a lot of speed, I am assuming you did not teach yourself this. You can approach with a lot of speed if conditions dictate this type of approach but you never touch down with a lot of speed. You must hold off until the speed of the wing is at such a point that you are about to stall and then the trike will settle down perfectly as you demonstrate a proper landing technique. Doing this you will not put yourself in a situation that could make the wheel "Shimmy". Why would you think a certified trike manufacturer would design a nose wheel assembly that is pone to shimmying, that does not make sense? Give me a name list of those trike makes you feel are prone to shimmying, I've flow most trikes and wings over the years.
With that said, if you load a nose wheel by pulling the bar right in you will help to offset that shimmying as well as slow the trike down more quickly because the wing will act as an airbrake, creating more drag, so you MUST pull that bar ALL the way to your chest. Now I will agree that some trikes have poorly designed front wheels and do have a little more tendency to feel somewhat loose. A properly designed nose wheel should have some sort of trailing arm feature so that the fork will be pulling the wheel along, that is the fork ends and there is an angle of metal that runs backwards so that the axle of the wheel sits behind the bottom of the fork.
If anyone wishes to e-mail me I can show you a number of ways this is accomplished. By having a trailing arm nose wheel you will never suffer a shimmying feel because the wheel follows the fork. Any trike that does not have such a feature designed into the nose wheel is a bad design, pure and simple. Many times it is the pilot that is causing the nose wheel to shimmy either from foot positions or pressures being exerted on the foot rests or wing/control bar position upon landing, not the trike. And of course excessive speed, which is the WRONG way to land. In case you can not visualize this, think of driving a wheel barrow. You and the wheel barrow are the nose wheel assembly in this instance, your nose wheel is out front of everything, a bad design for a trike. Now if you turn yourself around and now pull the wheel barrow and the wheel is the last thing to come along, you have a trailing arm system for a wheel and that is good for a trike or any tricycle aircraft configuration, for that matter.
Everyone one should have been taught to control the trike in turbulent or somewhat gusty.cross wind conditions during their training, not because as instructors we want you to go out and fly in this type of weather, but because we know that one day you will take off in good conditions and when you come to land at your same airport or at a destination airport you may well encounter such conditions an will need to know A) what that feels like already and B) what to do to properly and safely land in such conditions.
Many of my students have written to tell me about landing in such situations that they had not planned on and said they heard that Lucian voice come into their head and tell them what they should be doing to get it down safely. I would drill this into their heads by repetition and then once they were competent in such conditions I would tell them never to go and fly in these conditions. Having made them go through it when training though, it would come back to them in the future and they would be familiar with how it felt and what they had to do to land properly and safely. How many of you guys have had your instructors take you up in such conditions and go through approach and landing procedures for that?
I would make my students fly down the runway starting at 50 feet above, as previously stated, and then progressively get lower as they became proficient at each altitude until they could do it and hold the trike off about a foot above the runway in gusty/thermally conditions. This was always done at the end of their training because they of course needed to have proper skills to handle what was going to be coming their way. You would never take a student just starting or in the middle of their training into such conditions, they simply would not be able to handle it. I have always found that even on the gustiest of days when you would be coming in with power of course, to give you a faster response to wing inputs, you will always find a moment or two somewhere down the runway where things got calmer, just for a few seconds and that is place you would choose to come off the power, flare to bleed off the airspeed and put the trike down and remember, you only had a foot of altitude to lose so you were not in the air in that situation of power off and flaring for more than a few seconds at most.
And if you did not find that spot, then go around again and try once more. Only once in my life have I had to do a go around because it was simply too nasty to put it down and that was when I was teaching in Colorado at Granby where our runway was at 8,200ft AGL. I had flown over to Steam Boat Springs early in the morning and left later than I had intended and hit the daily nasty high winds we got daily after about 11am. We had daily winds at 35-40mph all day long with peak gusts at 5mph up to 55mph and one day we recorded a quick 70mph peak gust during the day in clear blue sky conditions. That wind coupled with all the mountains around us made for less than ideal landing conditions if you were not on the ground by 10:30 at the latest. When I had to do that go around I was very surprised at the rapidly deteriorating conditions and knew it had to be nailed on the next approach, which it was. I can tell you I was very happy to be back on the ground that day.
We normally stopped flying at about 9:30am because the winds were about to start up and most of the time, the density altitude at about that time meant we simply could not take off and clear the slight rise with a low barbed wire fence at the end of the runway, despite it being 1,800ft long. We usually started back up about 6:30 to 7pm when things calmed down again, which most days it did. Mountain flying requires great skill, respect, and knowledge about all sorts of things that flat landers will never encounter. Never take a flying trip out west to high country without first taking a mountain flying course from a competent instructor, preferably at the runway altitude you will be encountering. Trust me, if you don't have proper training and learn how to fly and what to do and what you will likely encounter in mountain terrain and worse, at high altitude, you had better have jam in your pockets because you will be toast!
Well I have gone on far too long and apologize to those still reading. However, for taking all that time you guys get the special offer on my book. The book is $30 about 256 pages of great knowledge and lesson plans but until the end of April I am offering it for $25 plus shipping and you can contact me at lucianbphotography (at) hotmail (dot) com. Fly safely and do what you can to improve your skills and when ever you can, take a refresher lesson or advanced flying situations lesson from a very competent instructor. They are not all good instructors out there you know, even now with all that has been put in place by the FAA. Remember, every Lawyer and Doctor course always has people who graduate at the top of their class and those who graduate at the bottom of the class but they all walk away with the same certification papers, and flight instructors are no different. Find one with a wealth of experience and get some feed back from those in the know, who have been in the industry for a long time, to be sure you are picking a good one.