More Barry Schiff Wisdom...

Another great piece of advice from Barry Schiff's seminar I attended. As most people know, when you fly into a high altitude airport everyone is thinking about the takeoff that you will be making when you leave. Will the plane have enough power, is the runway long enough, etc., etc.

But one thing they don't think about is....what if my landing attempt is messed up in some way and I need to make a missed approach (or a go-around for VFR pilots)? You will be in much worse shape for your missed approach because you have not leaned the engine for max power and you have your flaps down. It is all to easy to try a missed approach by shoving the throttle forward, dumping the flaps and then sinking into the runway.

So Barry offers 2 pieces of advice. Number 1 is to practice a missed approach on the downwind leg. Yep. Throttle back to landing power, set your flaps, and then pretend like you're going to do a go-around. Note if the airplane sinks, or mushes, or climbs just fine.

Tip Number 2 was: Maybe you shouldn't use all three notches of flaps. Now this entrigued me because my flying buddy likes to land with 2 notches of flaps and a little faster than me. I've always fretted and worried about this because I didn't know how much this would affect the stall speed. The book only tells you a stall speed for no flaps and full flaps. But Barry explained that the flaps achieve almost all of their affect after you go to the first notch. The next notch only improves the stall speed about 10 percent. The added flaps do contribute to drag and slow the airplane though. The third notch of flaps basically don't help your stall speed, they just add more drag.

So, Barry says why not use one notch of flaps until you are almost to the runway (I forget the term he used...something like "on the property") and then pull the 2nd notch of flaps. So, if your landing is screwy before you get too close to the airport you can do your go-around starting with only one notch of flaps down. And if it goes bad near the runway you're still better off with only two notches instead of all three.

Mountain Flying Seminar with Barry Schiff

I went to a seminar sponsored by the San Fernando Valley 99s at Van Nuys airport last night. It was part of their Pilot Proficiency Seminars series. The speaker was Barry Schiff, he of more than 27,000 hours logged in more than 300 types of aircraft.

Barry spoke about Mountain Flying. Since I live in Southern California there are many, many mountains to be concerned about. I wanted to see what the guy had to offer. I was hoping to pick up a thing or two that would help, or save, me.

I was not disappointed. Barry is a likeable guy and his vast experience has armed him with lots of stories and funny comments. Here’s one, loosely quoted, “My instructor got out of the airplane as he sent me off for my first solo with this comment, ‘Get me out of this airplane before you kill me!’“. Okay, I got that one from his book “Test Pilot: 1001 things you thought you knew about aviation” that I bought at the seminar. But he had plenty of interesting tidbits live at the seminar too. He described why we say an airport is “socked in” and how the Pitot tube was invented, and more. If you want to know the answers to these two, send a message.

Anyway, here’s a couple of things I came away with. When flying into an airport with a high elevation (use Big Bear California as an example at 6752 feet) you should fly the airplane at the indicated airspeeds you normally do. For example, in my Cherokee 140 (it’s a hot rod though) I usually slow to 100 on the base leg, then slow to 80 on final and touch down at maybe 70ish. That wouldn’t change at a high elevation airport. However, the density of the air up there is much different and what your airspeed indicator reads is much different that your true airspeed. You are actually going much faster through the space of air (or, compare groundspeeds) than normal. So, when you make your turn from the downwind leg to the base leg and then continue on to final, you will oftentimes find yourself overshooting the runway’s centerline significantly. You might think you just screwed up your turn but the reality is that the airplane is going faster through the air and it takes more room to turn a faster airplane (I’m using simplified terms here, and hope to God I’m not screwing any of it up). Solution: When flying into a high-altitude airport you need to give yourself more room on the downwind leg. Just 6 weeks prior to this seminar I did exactly as described at Big Bear airport (KL35). Was surprised I was off centerline. Now I know why and won’t do it again.

He, of course, went into great detail about density altitude and performance degradation. And an interesting talk about flaps on landing. I’ll get into that next time...