Flew in to a friend's river camp for a Bachelor Party.
First time a plane has ever landed there.

Couple different views with the same Ryan Bingham song, Baracho Station.

The airspeed indicator part of the video nicely shows the deceleration on short final. Landing slow on rough desert sure prevents big bounces.

Loved the tune. That’s some dry looking country when viewed from the green and rainy PNW.

Contact: The GPS feature on POV cameras is my favorite feature. I spend lots of time evaluating my Takeoffs and Landings after each flight. I appreciate the critique.

daedaluscan: Yessir, it is a barren wasteland, the good thing is that this camp is a mile from the Rio Grande; some of the best Jetboat water in the area.

Another great weekend of Texas flying.
This is the best time of the year for us to fly down here near the border, cool smooth air.

This is at my Rio Grande River Camp.
First time for anyone to land here, it took a lot of practice on long smooth grass for me to feel comfortable enough to make this landing. I did make a Bounce and Go prior to landing to convince myself I could pull it off. You can see my tracks in the landing.

That's a nice setup. How long is that strip, anyway? I should know, but don't: Was that the Maule you were flying?

Cool, and efficient, thing about the desert is that we never have to leave ground effect. With high time struggling little Continentals I have run in ground effect for miles. 245 vs. 220 red line makes high time struggling Lycomings a bit happier.

Yessir, That's the Maule.

Skillful,pretty work !

Here is the view from the cockpit.

The airspeed on the screen confirms deceleration on short final coming into ground effect. Over many years I have talked students through the apparent brisk walk rate of closure on short final but never thought to look at the airspeed indicator. Good training video.

It's fun and helpful to go back and look at the GPS Speed from the POV cameras after a flight. As I've said before, it helps me to see if I did what I wanted to do during the flight.

Funny how 40 mph in a car seems to be slow crawl, but feels like a 100 mph when the catclaw is coming at you.

wtxdragger wrote:It's fun and helpful to go back and look at the GPS Speed from the POV cameras after a flight. As I've said before, it helps me to see if I did what I wanted to do during the flight.

I've thought about getting a camera for this purpose but haven't. Can you talk a little about what equipment you use and how you set it up to get the best post-flight data?

40 is more scary in the light structure of an airplane compared with heavier automobiles. I benefited from the race car like tubular structure of crop dusters, but that also led me down the primrose path in a fast ultralight that almost killed me.

Optical illusion like the apparent rate of closure that is slow far out but speeds up when we get close is not alternate reality or untruth. It is useful for causing us to slow down and not hit things going fast enough to kill us in automobile or airplane.

I am currently using a couple GoPro and a Garmin VIRB 360.

The GoPros are a simple camera to use for recording, but are currently a pain to get GPS data. I have to use an app to extract GPS data and have to use on older version of GoPro Quik 2.5 for it to sync. Not sure why GoPro built a camera with functionality that is not supported by their latest software, but I fell for the latest greatest trap.

The Garmin camera is about the same, fairly simple to record with, but the 360 option is not viewable unless in the VIRB app or uploaded to a YouTube similar app. The 360 video is helpful though, in that the view can be rotated around the camera axis. A little goofy in that you can't see the data overlay when rotated away from forward view.

At least one camera outside, normally on the strut and one in the cockpit. I like to be able to see the prop in my videos, gives me a recognizable perspective when I watch them later. The one in the cockpit is positioned to be able to see my control and flap movements.

I very seldom look at the airspeed during flight, and being able to see what I did afterward is a great help. Both cameras have data templates of varying degrees that allow you to view in the video. The Garmin has a VSI overlay, and along with the Groundspeed, is really helpful in determining aircraft performance. I like being able to see my speed and descent rate after a flight.

By worrying about my airspeed, it was hard for me to focus on my gauges, and hit my landing point. By trying to maintain a Vspeed, I couldn't get slowed down enough when I transitioned to ground effect and the plane would float. By analyzing the video and the data from the cameras, it made it easy for me to see my plane's capabilities. I could apply what Jim was teaching, and what I saw in Patrick Romano's videos to my flying. The data also showed me that I could get the plane in a level attitude and descend toward my touchdown spot with less forward speed and still be safely above stall. Even after all of the slow flight I practiced at "a safe altitude", I found I could slow down even more in ground effect.

You can take all of this with a grain of salt, as I am not an instructor of flying or videography, I'm just passing along what has helped me in the past.

Wtxdragger,

It will take pilots younger and smarter than myself to get any of my safe maneuvering flight techniques into the regular training program. It takes time. Even though feel is the objective, the high tech cameras and computer units will validate the art of flying for the younger generations. Your airspeed and VSI (I hadn't picked up on that) plastered onto the screen will do more to make believers of the young pilots than anything this old guy can scribble. Motodve's videos are great as well. I just have no knowledge of AOA indicators. Both of you are nailing the apparent brisk walk rate of closure short final coming into ground effect without the need for the less effective round out and hold off. Patrick's stuff is great as well, except in severe gust spread where having to work the throttle that hard from way back and way up would get a little tedious. Every serious pilot has something to contribute. We're all in this together.

Jim

Not to say many old pilots have not been doing these very same techniques since Kitty Hawk. From around the middle of the last century, it hasn't been popular to admit it and yes, it will kill you in IMC. The whole point, and honorable, was to extinguish the seemingly dangerous art of flying. Integration of art with instruments just hasn't worked out so well.

This is the full video of the River Camp Landing.

I made multiple passes at slightly different angles and approaches until I felt confident I could land in the area available.

It’s wild what different angles on passes can do. Out on the tundra, one angle is perfect, then if you get slightly off one way or another, you can be totally lost as to where you had planned to touch down. Keeping all the knowledge from each pass requires keeping certain landmarks or references. People who have only flown to places where there’s a distinct linear landing zone like a strip or runway have never experienced this. It’s part of backcountry flying that doesn’t sink in until you’ve had to use it, in my opinion.

Looks like fun out there.

wtxdragger,

Before the Army I, like most pilots I knew, did reconnaissance low and slow like you're doing in the video. In Cobra Gunnery Transition at Hunter Stuart at Savannah I learned the value of Wolfgang's law of the roller coaster. When the target is fixed we can take advantage of airspeed by zooming up to turn onto the target from a bit more altitude (but now slow) in a dive angle that gives us more time on target. Also decreases the cone of fire/observation. So the energy management turn can be used in this way. Coyote hunting or pipeline patrol requires a more general than specific recon, but again using the energy management turn we can zone in on something of interest. Also these turns make the turns to stay on a river or pipeline easier and safer.

In the dive angle from a couple or three hundred feet to fifty feet or so over the target, we also reduce the apparent rate of closure. We thereby get a more indepth picture of the target.

In the energy management technique, the near stall airspeed is in the top of the zoom (steep turns but not necessary in shallow turns) with the nose immediately going down naturally. In the pullup over the target we are fast again, but until we pitch up the rate of closure is still slow. The danger here is target fixation. It just gets better and better. This mitigates the need to turn level, especially level and steep, at near stall airspeed.

Good flying and I really appreciate your videos.

contact