path when trying to land as closely to brick one as possible. Experienced pilots know this is a fool’ s game because judging the wheel touchdown point becomes harder as the glide patch becomes shallower. As it turns out, this is proven by the math: The round out from approach deck angle to landing flare is heavily dependent on pilot technique, to be sure. If you frequent runways short enough to require close examination of your landing distance charts, you ought to have a good idea how much runway your flare technique consumes. The Gulfstream 450 performance numbers, for example, are based on a very firm landing that you would be hard pressed to employ on a very long runway. But if you insist on those runway“ grease jobs” you ought to know how to get the Airplane Flight Manual numbers when you need them. Of course I have a technique to remove the variability of my technique. Landing distances based on 3.0 ° glide path at 50 feet and 6 FPS sink rate at touchdown. A 6 FPS sink rate at touchdown equates to 360 feet per minute. That equates to cutting your approach sink rate by less than half; it is a noticeable arrival. I’ ve found that cutting the descent rate to 100 feet per minute gives you a soft touchdown while consuming less than an additional 400 feet. If you consciously try to avoid flaring to level flight, instead aim for that 100 feet per minute sink rate, you will be able to get close to those AFM numbers and forever avoid a floating down the runway landing. More about this technique. For example, a G450 flying a 3 ° approach at 125 KCAS will typically be sinking 600 fpm prior to initiating the flare, which should begin around 20 feet. Without a flare, the distance to touchdown from the 50 foot point can be found easily found with a little trigonometry: f we want to start a flare at 20’, which is appropriate in this airplane, we will
10 | MDN | www. mdnvirtual. org | January Issue