Landing Advice

[The Oz Report]

<div id="1588077729"><i>Practice getting up while high</i><br><p>In response to this: <a target="_blank" href="https://ozreport.com/24.85#0">https://o ... 24.85#0</a>, JD writes:</p><p class="BN">This method works great and made a big difference for me, but there a couple key points that will help.</p><p class="BN">First, you can't feel the feed back if you are holding onto the down tube too tight. I see many people "climb" the down tubes to get their bodies more vertical. If your doing this you can't feel the trim speed. Many of the pilots that do this complain that their pod harnesses with single point back plate doesn't allow them to get vertical enough, so they climb up the tubes. Stop that. You don't need to do this. I have seen pilots make a full flare landing with their hands on the base bar.</p><p class="BN">First, at altitude, unzip and get your harness into landing configuration and let the glider find trim speed. Let your body find its own angle as you hang there in the leg loops and your feet out of the harness below you. Now slide your palms up and down the down tubes (without climbing the tubes) and find the place where your elbows have the max bend. This will be the "home" position of your hands that will give you maximum arm range to flare. It will likely be about the same height as your ears.</p><p class="BN">Now as you come in for final approach with plenty of speed. Stay on the base bar in ground effect until most of the base bar pressure is gone (you can also do one hand on the down tube and one on base bar too). Transition one hand to the home position and then the other. Don't do this too soon or you balloon up. Now with your open hands "cupping" the down tubes, you will be holding back pressure with your fingers as the glider approaches trim speed. As soon as this back pressure is gone and the pressure transitions to your thumbs and the glider pushing back, flare!</p><p class="BN">Seriously, you will actually feel the pressure you're holding back with your fingers diminish to zero, the down tubes will move from your fingers to your thumb and start to push back.</p><p class="BN">Another mistake I see happen (and I did this for years) is push out to flare with my arms extending perpendicular to my body to my body. Don't do that. Flare by moving your arms up over your head in line your body. Think of the signal for a football touch down.</p><p class="BN">And finally (and I did this too) don't look down at the ground beneath your feet. The ground rush will convince you are still going too fast. Instead look up at the horizon, or at least a couple hundred feet in front of you.</p><p class="BN">When I was trying to break both these habits I say out loud on final "Heads up, Hands up," and I still do because it's easy to revert back to bad habits so engrained from doing it wrong.</p><p class="BN">I hope this works for you as it did for me. I used to dread landing, now I enjoy it.</p></div>

[Blue_Seleneth]

Like many such discussions, this author also somehow skips mentioning the cause of the pitch pressure variation, so I just want to add this. The pressure comes from actively controlling a certain chosen elevation in the final ground skim, while bleeding off airspeed. Different pilots use different elevations (some surprisingly high to my taste, but it works for them). But the glider doesn't make pitch pressure on its own. The initial strong pitch pressure "on fingers" is in fact the pilot pulling in, flying level above trim speed and not allowing the glider to balloon up. The back-pressure "on thumbs" in the final moment before the flare is the pilot pushing out slightly, not allowing the glider to sink while flying below trim speed. This all requires the constant monitoring and control of elevation in peripheral vision.

Training that peripheral vision is part of the battle, as well as overcoming the body's instinctive reaction of "I'm still going way too fast!"

Thank you JD, and I'll try to keep all this in mind when I finally attempt yet another comeback...