Help with developing A320 control feel

juxtapilot said:
I’ve seen pilots coming through lately holding the stick on the bottom, thinking it’s lighter on the controls—when in reality it’s causing them to over control. Put your thumb in the thumb indentation next to the red button and rest your hand naturally on the stick. Be gentle.

Is there anyway to talk about how to hold the stick that doesn’t sound dirty?
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I think you can be gentle with it however you hold it. But the very laborious approaches, usually the guy/gal has got a huge handful of stick and evidently throws it around quite easily.
 
///AMG said:
haha dude, I recently had *perhaps* my first greaser in a 9ER ever, at SAN. We cleared the parking garage, I reset my aim point, closed my eyes, and I have no idea what I did after that. We had an AA JS'er who was also an FA-18 guy, and I think he didn't believe the CA when he said it was me. I don't believe him either.

edit: I don't actually know if it was a 9ER, I never know what variant I am flying......
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We have this slick little program over at SJI that tells you pretty much all your flying stats. Too bad ole AS doesn't have that :(

Had a landing in SEA recently in a -900ER...showed touching down with 0.6G and 60fpm descent rate. I had to knock a little dirt off my shoulder after that one :cool:
 
SAN was the only time I took the plane from an F/O. They were just behind the plane and we got slam dunked. It can be a challenging visual when you're behind the plane. I apologized profusely and felt like I over micro-managed the situation in the end. I was normally pretty laid back. Yeah, whatever, maybe not my best day but it happens when you're in the left seat.
 
///AMG said:
haha dude, I recently had *perhaps* my first greaser in a 9ER ever, at SAN. We cleared the parking garage, I reset my aim point, closed my eyes, and I have no idea what I did after that. We had an AA JS'er who was also an FA-18 guy, and I think he didn't believe the CA when he said it was me. I don't believe him either.

edit: I don't actually know if it was a 9ER, I never know what variant I am flying......
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The key is understanding that the wheels are behind the CG. So when your just about to touch the mains you relax the back pressure the smallest amount so the wheels touch down smoothly. By imperceptibly lowering the nose you're raising the main wheels or in reality just slowing down their rate right at the exact moment they are going to touch.

Fairly certain my landings were above average as an FO but as one corporate captain I used to fly with said "it's just a parlor trick. I Not terribly important. Much more important to touch the mains on the 1000' markers. Also the touch down matters a lot less than the roll out IMO. Smooth braking TRs full reverse then almost immediately idle so you can close them when they are idle not at 35% and you get a bunch of forward momentum from doing so.

Recently on a DH the pilot slammed it on, then braked terribly in several pulses on a MAX and then stowed the reversers at what seemed like high idle but probably wasn't. This resulted in a 1/2 dozen lurches where I had to brace myself on the seat in front of me. They exited the runway quickly but then we had to wait for a gate. Kind of pointless to beat up on the aircraft and passengers like that.

My landings as a captain weren't so good because I had to change my sight picture through the HGS on OE 1 and 2. Now they are back to predictably smooth but IMO the roll out is where the magic happens.
 
BEEF SUPREME said:
The key is understanding that the wheels are behind the CG. So when your just about to touch the mains you relax the back pressure the smallest amount so the wheels touch down smoothly. By imperceptibly lowering the nose you're raising the main wheels or in reality just slowing down their rate right at the exact moment they are going to touch.

Fairly certain my landings were above average as an FO but as one corporate captain I used to fly with said "it's just a parlor trick. I Not terribly important. Much more important to touch the mains on the 1000' markers. Also the touch down matters a lot less than the roll out IMO. Smooth braking TRs full reverse then almost immediately idle so you can close them when they are idle not at 35% and you get a bunch of forward momentum from doing so.

Recently on a DH the pilot slammed it on, then braked terribly in several pulses on a MAX and then stowed the reversers at what seemed like high idle but probably wasn't. This resulted in a 1/2 dozen lurches where I had to brace myself on the seat in front of me. They exited the runway quickly but then we had to wait for a gate. Kind of pointless to beat up on the aircraft and passengers like that.

My landings as a captain weren't so good because I had to change my sight picture through the HGS on OE 1 and 2. Now they are back to predictably smooth but IMO the roll out is where the magic happens.
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Thanks beef. I honestly haven't heard the CG/mains explanation before, but that makes a lot of sense, and explains why some of those landings that "felt right" and then weren't, were the way they were.

I think the biggest improvement I have made since the early days, as far as rollout goes, is focusing on smoothly getting the nose down. Plenty of my landings at the beginning were reasonably smooth on the mains, but the nose was an afterthought. I'm also starting to move to the AB2 camp if there is a reason to use them at all (and of course provided more isn't required). I did an AB3 the other day, and it was way too much, after an otherwise nice landing. Kinda caught me off guard and had to disengage them manually and then ease off.

Great stuff!
 
///AMG said:
Thanks beef. I honestly haven't heard the CG/mains explanation before, but that makes a lot of sense, and explains why some of those landings that "felt right" and then weren't, were the way they were.

I think the biggest improvement I have made since the early days, as far as rollout goes, is focusing on smoothly getting the nose down. Plenty of my landings at the beginning were reasonably smooth on the mains, but the nose was an afterthought. I'm also starting to move to the AB2 camp if there is a reason to use them at all (and of course provided more isn't required). I did an AB3 the other day, and it was way too much, after an otherwise nice landing. Kinda caught me off guard and had to disengage them manually and then ease off.

Great stuff!
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Yep the last ditch effort to flare in a landing to slow the rate of descent will usually result in slamming the wheels into the pavement. It's counter intuitive to subtilty do the opposite. I'm just lucky that the Citation X, Falcon 900, EMB-175 (sort of) all had the same dynamic.

Autobrakes are a great resource and I wish they were used more often. Back to the DH where I had to brace against a seat back. The carbon brakes were utilized so poorly that they were heated excessively. Also the TRs were utilized poorly and stowed with power which caused another round of energy to be deposited into the brakes in the form of heat. Then came the chatter. Hopefully you haven't seen it but the brakes will chatter when heated excessively. Once heated, every stop feels like the most god awful anti skid. This went on all the way to the N gates.

Hot brakes were the result of multiple heavy braking efforts. Instead of one brake application which is easy with autobrakes. Another thing to keep in mind is the autobrake selections are a deceleration rate, not a force application. So 2 is kind of useless when used with reversers. Since the rate of deceleration from the reversers is roughly the rate of 2, the brakes are not being applied. At least at first. Another good thing about autobrakes is in a cross wind it prevents one set of brakes from heating up more than the other. Manual, differential braking to remain on centerline will heat up one set of mains more than the other and possibly lead to the dreaded brake chatter since one side absorbs all the energy from landing.

So back to the ease back on the back pressure imperceptibly technique:

I use autobrakes 3. When the mains touch I go from the ease off the backpressure to imperceptibly increasing back pressure to stop the nose gear from pile driving on the centerline. Autobrakes 3 will definitely drive your nose wheel into the runway and you can stop that with elevator. That being said the risk of doing so is a tail strike. It takes practice and a lot of finesse but it can be done well.

Both actions are what I would describe as "think about moving your hand, don't move you hand". Which is what a friend told me when I was attempting to hover an R-44 helicopter. Really poorly I might add.
 
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Autothrust Blue said:
ugh, you need to be able to get on the takeover PB in a hurry. amateurs.
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I feel like that’s more of a PM thing though.

One on a commute to work in the second jumpseat of a 320 on an Air Line, the FO was flying and I watched El Capitan using his left hand to twirl the disconnect button on the tiller rather than guarding the button. That was….. unexpected. Maybe I’m just a worrier.
 
roundout said:
I feel like that’s more of a PM thing though.

One on a commute to work in the second jumpseat of a 320 on an Air Line, the FO was flying and I watched El Capitan using his left hand to twirl the disconnect button on the tiller rather than guarding the button. That was….. unexpected. Maybe I’m just a worrier.
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Yikes, that will bite him some day… and he’ll never leave his thumb off the button again. 😜
 
roundout said:
I feel like that’s more of a PM thing though.

One on a commute to work in the second jumpseat of a 320 on an Air Line, the FO was flying and I watched El Capitan using his left hand to twirl the disconnect button on the tiller rather than guarding the button. That was….. unexpected. Maybe I’m just a worrier.
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If I were King they would have been forced to back-drive the opposite stick electromechanically. Sadly, I am not King. And now we’re sort of “stuck” with this, too.
 
Autothrust Blue said:
If I were King they would have been forced to back-drive the opposite stick electromechanically. Sadly, I am not King. And now we’re sort of “stuck” with this, too.
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I wonder how Gulfstream's electronically linked control sticks are. And if they do seem to work well, hopefully Airbus won't "737" it up and will eventually add them in to new products.
 
BobDDuck said:
I wonder how Gulfstream's electronically linked control sticks are. And if they do seem to work well, hopefully Airbus won't "737" it up and will eventually add them in to new products.
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I guess they’re fine as long as you don’t rotate it into a takeoff stall or try to land in anything more than 5 knots of wind
 
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