tr7v8 wrote:I cannot believe I am getting stressed over something you do for enjoyment, but that is the nature of the frustration I suppose.
I can
so relate to this. When I was learning to fly, I wanted it a lot. Possibly more than I'd wanted anything else. As a consequence, I put myself under a lot of pressure, and when I couldn't learn it all as instantly as I wanted to, I experienced a lot of stress, at one time almost to the point of giving up.
I'd often go home from the airfield completely knackered and with a blinding headache. I often couldn't sleep the night before flying.
So getting stressed, more than anything else, reflects your motivation, but if it affects you like this, it can make things harder - it certainly did for me.
Longer term, though, worry not - it will all work out fine.
poor speed control especially over the threshold. Still landing too flat.
Imagine a runway 20 miles long. Now imagine an approach at 100 knots. Obviously neither of these is reality, but bear with me. In this imaginary flight, you fly down the approach, close the throttle, and round out. You fly, initially at 100 knots, along the runway at a height of 1 foot.
Are you going to land it like that? Of course not, you'd be mad to.
So what happens? Gradually the aeroplane slows down, and as the wings generate less lift, you need to gradually raise the nose to keep it flying. This extra angle of attack increases the lift, so the lift is still equal to the weight, so you keep flying level at a height of 1 foot.
The drag increases too with the extra AoA, so the aeroplane slows down some more, so you raise the nose some more to keep flying.
So you keep slowing down, and you keep raising the nose. Eventually - maybe a mile down this 20 mile runway - you will raise the nose to the stalling angle, and the aircraft will land and start rolling along on its main wheels. It will be a perfect, fully held-off landing, despite a ridiculously fast threshold speed.
If you land it before this, ie flat, you are landing too fast - while it still has flying speed - and you risk all the bad consequences we've discussed before.
Where am I going with this?
You need to separate the notion of
approach speed from
touchdown speed. They are not related. You can approach as fast as you like,
provided that you allow the aircraft to slow down enough for the wing to stop flying.
In reality of course, if you approach too fast, you will often run out of runway before the aircraft slows down enough to land. The correct action in that case is to go around, and approach more slowly next time. Not,
absolutely not, to land it flat.
So... as I hinted last night, poor speed control on final is
not the cause of a flat landing.
The cause of a flat landing (ie at too high a speed) is impatience.
Impatience, as in not waiting for the speed to decay enough for the aircraft to land itself. If by being patient, you run out of runway, then go around instead of landing, and get the speed under better control next time.