Embarrassing Moment

FL350

FL350

Well-Known Member
Took a student flying and while practicing his landings I decided to demonstrate a smooth landing :def: and ended up dropping the plane on pretty firmly. I followed it up with a nice smooth one. We both had a good laugh about it though.
 
FL350 said:
Took a student flying and while practicing his landings I decided to demonstrate a smooth landing :def: and ended up dropping the plane on pretty firmly. I followed it up with a nice smooth one. We both had a good laugh about it though.
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"Here, let me show you what it's supposed to look like."

Famous last words.
 
You making errors on demos is also a great time to instruct what you did wrong.

Happens to everyone, nothing to be terribly embarrassed about so long as it doesn't happen with regularity.....then you start to lose credibility.
 
Even more likely when demonstrating commercial maneuvers like Lazy Eights. I tried to demonstrate a Lazy Eight one day when my student had been just a little off, and completely screwed it up. My student then made the comment that her maneuver looked better than mine. And I couldn't argue with her either! It was pretty bad....
 
I think that it is a good lesson that no pilot can expect every landing to be perfect. If someone does, especially early in their flight training, it could lead to confidence issues. On centerline, aligned with the runway, with zero lateral drift, and the tires are still round after touchdown, than its a good landing.

Also, aiming for a greaser on every landing could lead to excessive floating issues. Most likely not a big deal in a cessna, but once you get into transport category airplanes, it can be.
 
My buddy and I were about to land one day in a 172, he was flying and said " check out this soft field landing". He passed right through the flare, doing nothing and slammed us into the ground. He looked at me and said " Well, so much for that!". We had a great laugh about that one.
 
As I think of it, nearly every CFI I've ever worked with has botched at least one maneuver whilst showing me how to perform it. Each of them said, "Okay, that was wrong. Let's figure out why..."

Always a good experience.
 
Yeah I've had that happen. First 6 months after my CFI ride every landing was greased and right on my touchdown point. After a couple hundred hours of watching students do it and no practice... not so much. I recently got whooped by a student on a short field landing contest.
 
As a Navy IP in jets, our primary way of landing was flying the ball to touchdown, every pass if there was a lens available. When studs were new, we would demonstrate and nothing worse than showing a bad pass....at least you could see, that's what NOT to do :)

I remember having to demo a loop in a T45 one time. We normally didn't have the fuel to demo and then have the student do it, no time. He just had to do it but this student was doing awful. You would start at 380KIAS minimum, pull into a 4g pull...into 17 units over the top...back to 4g's on the bottom. So I did one, it was much like an 8 point loop, great except that loops are oval and smooth. We no kidding top out at 22k, 110KIAS inverted, just awful. Way it goes sometimes.
 
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Groundpounder said:
I think that it is a good lesson that no pilot can expect every landing to be perfect. If someone does, especially early in their flight training, it could lead to confidence issues. On centerline, aligned with the runway, with zero lateral drift, and the tires are still round after touchdown, than its a good landing.
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True story,

I was heading out with a pre solo student at SAT for a pattern flight at a nearby airport. As we were waiting in the runup area for our takeoff clearance, he was telling me how fustrated he was getting because the flare just wasn't clicking like he expected.

I asked him if he had ever been on an airliner that had a rough landing.

He said that he had experienced that on a couple of occasions.

I reminded him that even professional pilots with thousands of landings sometimes have a bad landing. At that EXACT moment, an American MD-80 crossed the threshold and absolutely BOUNCED the landing. I'm not talking about a firm touchdown, I literally saw the fuselage flex it hit so hard.

"See my point"
 
My commercial student was having a rough time nailing his power off 180s in the schools 172. After the 3nd try with little improvement nor apparent application of the corrections we discussed. I noticed he looked rather frustrated and decided to let him chill for a few minutes and take a step back from the process. So I asked him if I could demo what I was talking about and also rehack my currency. Downwind and base were perfect, right on the planned numbers and the aim point was solidly where I wanted it. Rolled out on final about 3/4 mile out and proceeded to fly into an updraft that caused the aircraft to start climbing...power off, full flaps, 1.3Vso and we ended up at 800' over the threshold.

I gave it back to him and suggested that we try something else. It made his day to see me screw that up after all the frustration he was experiencing. We went out a day or two later in better conditions and he nailed 3 in a row.
 
Yeah I smacked the tail pretty damn hard trying to demonstrate a smooth landing. Ended up shattering a bunch of the fiberglass under the rudder. Whoops.
 
Power-off 180s are fun, totally different in the arrow to the 172rg, and 172. The DPE took me up to a narrow crop dusting strip on the checkride, and as the only 172rg unsat maneuver I was allowed to do it in a 172, which took an hour of relearning. Nailed 3 in a row, but the DPE went to demonstrate one and turned it into a soft field...
 
It was good fun in the CSEL, immediately turning to the point, then aiming for the dirt short of the runway to flare and plant it on the numbers.

Touch and goes on a 4500ft runway shouldn't be quite so large a ground roll though, even longer than the Seminole...
 
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