subject: Cessna 172 - The 60 Seconds Before a Good Landing [print this page] Cessna 172 - The 60 Seconds Before a Good Landing
You've flown a good pattern with your Cessna 172, putting you mile from the end of the runway at 400 feet above the ground. Your power is set for a 400 fpm rate of descent. In one minute you'll be touching down. Now what?
Only three things matter from here on: line up, airspeed and glidepath. Line up is the easy one. Get on an extended centerline of the runway and stay there. Control your drift with ailerons and your heading with rudder. If you have a crosswind the easiest way I've found to get the right combination is to rollout with a crab that has you tracking the centerline correctly, then put in enough rudder so that you point right down the runway. As you put in the rudder you will move your ailerons in the opposite direction so that you track straight. You will also have to put in a touch of power or your rate of decent will increase.
Airspeed is fairly easy too. Hold it with trim. Your trim should be so good that you could practically fly the approach hands off. Anything else and you'll end up fighting the aircraft, with every little distraction leading to an airspeed excursion. In the 172 you should be at about 65 knots on final with full flaps, slowing to 61 knots over the fence. You don't need any more than that (except in gusty conditions or with no flaps.) Too much airspeed is probably the number one destroyer of landings.
That leaves glidepath. Control it with power. Power corrections come in groups of three. If you're high, reduce power to increase your rate of descent. Once you get close to where you want to be add power back to slow your increased rate of descent, then take half of it back out to keep you where you want to be. Unless you're way off of where you should be, all three corrections come within a few seconds. If you count the corrections you'll be sure and not to miss the last one.
Over the end of the runway you can bring the power to idle and start your round out. I do it in steps, decreasing the rate of decent until right above the runway. Then just hold the plane off until it runs out of flying speed. You should touch down in a clearly nose up attitude. At the last minute you'll be using the rudder to straighten your track and ailerons to control any drift on the runway. Don't be afraid to quickly and decidedly deflect the controls. That's what they're there for and at your slow speed it takes more deflection for them to be effective.
Once you have weight on the wheels don't give up, you still are almost flying. You have two options, holding the nose up for some aero breaking, or letting the nose settle and lifting the flaps to get more weight on the wheels. Whatever you do, stay off the brakes until you've slowed down enough for them to work. If you jump on them too quickly, you're guaranteed to flat spot the tires.
Once clear of the runway, don't forget to turn the Land-O-Matic switch to off.
