Worse one I was ever in was an embedded level 2 that Albuquerque Center didn't see because it was "small".

I was flying a 182 IFR and in IMC and was in the mix for about 2 minutes, which felt like 2 days.

Simply put, it beat the shit outta me and the plane. I landed at PEQ about 10 minutes later and felt like kissing the ramp.

Well had another lesson today did more TNGs. I fixed the whole being too high problem, and am flying a better pattern but I am still not letting the airplane settle enough. I'm either trying to touch the nose first or pulling up too much when the nose wants to fall.

I think it's part maybe not being patient enough fearing running out of runway, because the landing at the 6000 foot runway was better.

The CFI said everything looked good until I was in the flare.

wait for it to cool off a little, help put the plane on the ground.

Thicker air helps?

someone will chime in with the real answer.  I thought it has to do with high density altitudes (even though we are essentially at sea level here, but still hot and humid), so you end up flying faster.  more speed equals more ground effect?  or maybe it was all in my head

when it cools down, you can slow down, so less float.

Landings are something that can't really be taught, you have to figure it out by doing it over and over.  Sooner or later you will figure out the proper sight picture and control pressures to be able to round out at the proper height, flare without gaining altitude and setting down the mains so softly that all you hear are the wheels spinning, then ever so slowly letting the nose rest.   It's all about sight picture and speed management.

El Supremo posted the best description of the technique.  He may have been half joking but it's dead on.

Where are your eyes looking while flaring?

You should be looking at the departure end of the runway, using you peripheral vision to judge sink rate and using the very long centerline to keep on centerline.

Do not look at the ground in front of the nose, you can once you are very familiar with the aircraft, but anytime starting out or in a new aircraft, look at the departure end as you start to round out, you can judge sink rate, drift, and height above ground much better and make quicker corrections.

Humidity has nothing to do with density altitude, only temperature. The hotter it is, the longer runway you need to take off and land because the air is thinner for the wings and the prop and your ground speed is higher and less dense air means less engine efficiency also for takeoff.

Humidity does affect engine performance. So when it is humid, there is less combustion efficiency  and you need more runway to take off because the engine horsepower is less and you are not accelerating as fast, but it has nothing to do with density altitude.

If you look at the pressure altitude and density altitude chart, you will notice it does not have a correction for humidity, only temperature.


Ground effect  is based on airspeed. I am not certain, but I don't think a higher density altitude has any bearing on ground effect because you are at the same airspeed. The only mechanical thing that changes is a reduction of induced drag due to the proximity of the ground under the wing. Less drag is less drag. If anything, at high density altitudes you have less drag and less lift then when you enter ground effect you have even less drag, but still less lift so if anything you still have less lift and less drag than compared to a standard day. I don't know enough to know if the ratio of lift to drag is the same compared to a standard day, but I would think it would be. I think the biggest difference is that the visual is different because you are landing at a higher ground speed, so your corrections and flare have different mechanics because you are going faster across the ground, so it happens quicker. The tendency is to not flare enough because it is happening faster than you are used to or you flare too much because you over compensate trying to make corrections too fast. The best way to combat both of those is to look at the departure end of the runway as you start to round out because you can see sink rate and lack of sink rate better and recognize it quicker to make better corrections. Sink rate is sink rate. It has nothing to do with how fast you are moving over the runway, so that is what you want to concentrate on.  Of course corrections take longer to happen because the control surfaces are operating at a higher density altitude so they produce less aerodynamic forces, meaning you have to make corrections sooner because it takes longer to happen.

Hopefully this helps.

That's part of my problem when landing on 8 at L83. It's a short runway compared to the 6000 one at my home field and as I am looking at the end of the runway I see how close it is, and those trees behind it and I keep thinking, "GO around, go around, go around"

I pretty much have the height problem fixed, the reason I say that is because on one of the TNG's as soon as I turned final, I know I was waaaay to high.

I can do TNG's all day long though, it's very enjoyable, and I think it helps you practice a lot of different parts of flying all at one time.

one thing that will help is learning soft field take offs.  helps with learning how to work the elevator and its reaction at slower speeds.  when i do my flares i don't just pull back to a specific point, it will be a continual adjustment, sometimes quite a bit (relatively speaking) just before the mains touch.  



 

That makes sense, i think it's just going to take some time for me hands and eyes to work together better.

thats why its all about practice practice practice.  the issues you have are the same I had, then it all of a sudden clicks.