FLIGHT PATH VISUALISATION ….

Acknowledgements: AIR FACTS/Richard Collins (http://airfactsjournal.com) 

 (Ed. Note: Can’t afford the latest “Tech”?.... No worries! Good practice and discipline will sometimes suffice)

 “I have flown with a lot of pilots and have worked hard to help them develop the ability to visualise the flight path of the airplane. Unfortunately, we can’t all afford the head-up display or synthetic vision system that includes a display of the flight path vector, but I’ll always remember the first time I flew one of these. Being able to see where the airplane was going seemed like magic. Just put the little symbol on the touchdown zone of the runway and keep it there and you will fly to the touchdown zone of the runway. Most of the computer programs, such as X- Plane, have this if you want to give it a try. 

 I was vaguely aware of how this worked when an article came in at the old Air Facts on the subject of precise approaches and landings. The author was Captain Gordon Graham, USMC, who was at the time an instructor at Pensacola teaching pilots how to best hook up with the number three wire on an aircraft carrier. That does define precision landings. 

 Gordon’s explanation of how to do it was based mainly on visual cues FROM THE ULTIMATE HEAD-UP DISPLAY, THE GREAT OUTDOORS. He led the reader through the visual cues found on downwind, the constant turn to line up on final, and down final. (I didn’t leave out base leg. The Navy doesn’t fly a base as such.) 

 When I talked on the phone with Gordon about this as we were preparing to publish his article, “Landing as a Science” in the February 1966 Air Facts, he must have gotten a sense that I didn’t quite get it. He told me to let him know the next time we were in my wife’s hometown of Headland, Alabama, and he would come demonstrate ….  He showed me that the key to the Gordon story was in developing the ability to see the flight path vector without instrumentation.

  In simple terms, the point toward which the airplane is flying remains stationary. On final, if the touchdown zone is moving lower in the windshield, you are overshooting. If it is moving higher in the windshield, you are undershooting. If it is remaining in the same place in the windshield, things are fine so long as the airspeed is good and the path steep enough to clear obstacles. No pilot who has broken an airplane in an undershoot or overshoot accident paid heed to that. 

 When I would stress the importance of this, I would ask pilots to use 500 feet above the ground on final as a place to make a decision on the approach. If, when there, the view out front and the numbers on the panel aren’t right, it is time to go around and start all over. Most go-arounds that result in crashes start much later than that. 

 One place I found flight path visualisation of great value was on night approaches to runways without visual approach slope guidance. There I would get established with the touchdown zone remaining stationary and the airspeed on a correct value and then consult the vertical speed. If it showed less than a 600fpm rate of descent, I would judge the approach as being too shallow and take the steps to steepen it. Fortunately, most runways have come to have visual approach slope guidance”. 

FLY SAFE!