I fly the longer pattern because that's what I was taught from my instructor . I'm sure with time I'll be able to shorten it and get a better feel for the handling characteristics of my cherokee.

It all depends on your goals!

If you just want to land on long grass strips then you can already do that.
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If you want to be able to fly back country then you will need to work on some stuff!

Practice slow flight!

Go out and fly around for a long time .5 to 1.0 hours at a time on the verge of stall!

I mean a knot or two above your plane actually stalling! (horn screaming), coming in and out of a stall! using throttle and every control input you have.

Also practice at different weights. Light and up to full gross. It will all feel different.

When you get that down then get to a safe altitude and cover your air speed indicator.

practice holding altitude and doing circles, figure 8's.
Practice turning while loosing altitude and while climbing. All without the air speed.
After a while you will get the feel of your aircraft.

Then practice Short soft field on every takeoff and landing. Paved field or not, always keep the yoke back (unless strong winds dictate otherwise) Always hold the nose off as long as possible.
Takeoffs get the nose up barely off the ground and wheelie until the plane flies itself off.

Unga Wunga,

As airplanes got bigger and faster, the kept moving the pattern altitude up. Airline DC-3s used the 600' pattern when I started flying. With the 1,000' pattern, 1,200 in some places, there is a tremendous amount of potential gravity thrust of altitude to get rid of before we can land.

Crop dusters use a quarter mile final at most, but we never go above 200.' From way up high, you have to concentrate on the directed course (sight picture in windscreen) to the numbers a lot longer. Where there are no obstructions, we can get down in low ground effect and hover taxi to the numbers. This completely eliminates the gravity thrust problem, but it would be uncomfortable to hover in from five miles out.

Best Regards,

Jim Dulin

UngaWunga, if you're talking about my flight into Marble video, you need to understand the terrain involved. Because of the size of the canyon, the normal TPA has to be about 1100' AGL, the pattern is relatively tight, i.e., downwind isn't as far as normal from the runway, and even that brings you pretty close to the trees. Then as you get to roughly the approach end of the strip while on downwind, you totally lose sight of the runway, due to other terrain between you and the runway. So it's a bit of a guess where to turn base--you can't see that 45 degree point. Also, because of the terrain, you can't start to descend while still on downwind like you would normally do. So in order to get down on final, it has to be a pretty long final leg--and that also gives more of an opportunity to make any necessary corrections. It's not really a "no-go-around" strip, but go-arounds are a bit problematic unless they're started plenty early.

You also need to be aware that the TAS/groundspeed is much higher, due to the much higher density altitude than you're probably accustomed to. My 70 mph/60 knot IAS final approach speed fully loaded is about 83 mph/72 knots TAS, because the density altitude at that time was about 10,000'. That's why the trees seem to go by so quickly. Of course that means a longer ground roll after touching down, although since the runway is sloped and the landing is up hill, it's not a huge issue--and it's a fairly long strip, some 3800' total.

That high DA is also a huge factor in whether a go around will be successful. My climb rate out of Marble in the early afternoon is only about 200 fpm, because there's less lift, and my nominal 180 hp engine is only putting out about 125 hp.

Cary

TangoFox wrote:It all depends on your goals!

If you just want to land on long grass strips then you can already do that.
.
If you want to be able to fly back country then you will need to work on some stuff!

Practice slow flight!

Go out and fly around for a long time .5 to 1.0 hours at a time on the verge of stall!

I mean a knot or two above your plane actually stalling! (horn screaming), coming in and out of a stall! using throttle and every control input you have.

Also practice at different weights. Light and up to full gross. It will all feel different.

When you get that down then get to a safe altitude and cover your air speed indicator.

practice holding altitude and doing circles, figure 8's.
Practice turning while loosing altitude and while climbing. All without the air speed.
After a while you will get the feel of your aircraft.

Then practice Short soft field on every takeoff and landing. Paved field or not, always keep the yoke back (unless strong winds dictate otherwise) Always hold the nose off as long as possible.
Takeoffs get the nose up barely off the ground and wheelie until the plane flies itself off.

Thanks Tango, I appreciate your advice!

Not picking on anyone's video... I have to stick to watching videos of other people fly since the winds have been crazy here when I'm scheduled to fly recently. Where I'm getting training there has been a few near accidents because someone either flew right in on final, or their base leg was out of sight (if they had one) of planes on the taxiway. Not everyone has a radio, and not everyone uses them when they do.

I get the speeds = needing more room to slow down thing. The transition from the Cub to the 172 took me a few times to get the speed out early. Cub? Didn't matter too much, you weren't going that fast anyways...

I'm sure people here have a much longer list of weird/bad behavior they've seen in the pattern with others than I do.


Edit to say that I learn a lot from watching videos and reading the posts on this site. Not trying to be negative at all. Thanks.

Unga Wunga,

At an uncontrolled airport where there is a school or a lot of training, you will find less non compliance with regulatory suggestions about patterns. It is safer if most comply with those suggestions.

In the country at large, you will find great variation in levels of standardization and compliance. In the mountains, like in Cary's video, compliance with mother nature's realities can be far more important than standardization. He rode the ridge closely getting there. With small engines, the greater energy of ridge lift may be critical. While riding the downwind from the valley ridge, we want to have plenty of room to reverse course without having to fly into the down air off the upwind of the valley ridge.

There are airports that have skydive operations, usually on the weekend, and airports that have spray operations every day during the crop season. When spraying, time is critical to feeding the nation and a big part of the world. We don't climb up through traffic to come back down trough traffic. We stay low and usually land to a taxiway or the grass between a taxiway and the runway. We have a bad angle on ground traffic and a very good angle on normal traffic. Because we are low (200' usually) we can see all normal traffic near and far. I teach my ag students to give way to anyone in normal traffic near and far. Circle and wait if necessary. Our big concern is loaders and other ground traffic. That is why we make very close (1/8 mile) patterns. We also give way to ground traffic. With other sprayers, we just keep them in sight and work close tight patterns.

You won't realize it until after training, but you are not seeing a lot of traffic and other things out there. You simply cannot have exacting, numerical speed, heading, altitude, and attitude requirements and see the more important, for safety, stuff outside the cockpit. You have to be numbers oriented, the instructor has to be numbers oriented, and the examiner has to be numbers oriented according the the PTS. Who is looking out the window?

As soon as you finish your dangerous training, get with an instructor who will be willing to cover the airspeed and everything else on the dash. Learn to move the controls enough to get a good idea of what they do. Learn to takeoff and land based on how it sounds and feels while using sight pictures based on targets on the earth rather than headings. You will fly better, see more, and be safer.

A question for all you tail draggers out there. I like to practice short soft field landings in my C-140 but notice when I get her really slowed down she tends to land tail first. It makes for a very short roll out,about 450 feet but it can't be to good for the plane.. Any thoughts ?

I think if the tail touches down lightly and then you settle it onto the mains its not to hard on the plane. My Citabria was the same way. Putting 31" ABWs on helped, but it would still land tail first if I really drug it in. I found that if I drug it in, and just before my tail wheel touched I push it forward onto the mains and land tail low. I was still going slow that I had a very short roll out. Not sure if that will help in a C-140 or not.

Looked good to me, and I think I fit the experience category, I think...
As I told a lot of pilots you are not good when you think you are but when peers say it behind your back.

Landings you can comment on for days, when your butt is in the seat you don't remember much else than what's out there below the nose.
I found that even while instructing you have a hard time correcting attitude and landings when the student is only six inches from you. The lower the experience level the higher the concentration and notes become almost irrelevant but taking control and demonstrating seems to work well.

That being said, I brought my M4 back to the ranch strip last Saturday from Ponoka airport following a new headliner install and I bounced it about five feet in the air, followed by another bounce and then another bounce. One of these where you stop on the strip and shake your head...
On the other side of the landing spectrum, had one F/O remark one day "Wow you haven't had a good landing all week!" followed by "Well euhhh sorry sir" Never forgot that one...

Long story short..practice practice and then practice and sometimes even that doesn't work...
Some might disagree...and I realize that we all must work on fine tuning.
I also find that video slightly limiting on parameters to comment on.
Good video good landing the airplane flew again I'm sure.

Standing by for incoming...

Thanks for the advice Beamer Pilot!

I keep my Cherokee 150C at a grass strip. I think you are doing fine. Keep practicing. I fly about the same size and height pattern in the Cherokee that I do in the J3. A lot tighter, lower, and slower than you do. I do the descent at idle power, adding the first notch of flaps on downwind, the second on base, and the third on final. I stay a little high and add a slip to the full flaps as needed to adjust my height on approach. I would have gone around the trees rather than over them and slid sideways using the slip after passing them to get back on centerline, and I would have touched down much closer to the threshold, almost dragging the tail, and dumping the flaps immediately after touchdown. Be very careful with the brakes. When the ground is saturated in the winter, I repeat, be very careful with the brakes. They can cause a wheel to cut down through the grass and put you into an unintended tight skidding turn with all three wheels rutting into the mud axle deep. When that happens, judicious use of throttle and rudder will get you straight again. No wind, lightly loaded, I usually stop 650 to 800 feet from the threshold.The above is just the way I do it -- I don't recommend my technique (such as it is) to others. I've been told repeatedly that I fly a Cherokee exactly like I do a J3. If I were a better pilot, I'd probably do it considerably differently.

I'm not entirely sure on what to do with smaller airplanes... but it seems to me to carry less energy over the "threshold" and do an earlier power pull? That will help with a shorter landing distance and a better spot landing?

At the 1:00 mark, you reduced power and the nose dropped. If you had held the nose at the same attitude, the sink rate would have increased like you wanted, without a buildup of airspeed. Get comfortable with flying slow, behind the curve, and don't let your pitch yo-yo on the final. Steady pitch, use power to control descent.