Hobbies And Interests
Instructions
Choose your marker on the ground, something that will help you line up your airplane so that you are flying parallel to the runway. Trees and telephone poles are good candidates.
Line up your airplane so that you are parallel to the runway, with the runway off to your left. This is known as the "downwind" leg of your approach.
Keep good visual contact with the runway and gauge how far you need to be out from it before you start your first left turn into what is known as the "base" leg. You want to have enough distance to make the turn onto what is called the "final" approach.
Lower your airspeed and put the flaps down 10 or 20 degrees. With flaps lowered, you have more "lift" to the wings at a lower speed. You don't want your airplane to stall--lose lift and begin to fall--1000 feet above the ground, and the flaps will help make sure this doesn't happen.
Turn onto the "base" leg, making an easy left turn. Throttle in a bit if you need to in order to maintain your altitude. You should be dropping in altitude steadily, but slowly and in control. Keep watching the end of the runway where you want to put the plane down.
Add another 10 degrees of flaps and turn onto the final leg of your approach. As you do this keep the nose of your airplane so that it looks like it's just under the edge of the runway. Hold it there to maintain a good approach posture. Pull the throttle out as needed to keep the nose where you want it.
Pull up on the nose when you get just over the edge of the runway. Cut off the throttle completely. Pull up on the nose as needed to bleed off excess altitude and let the plane drop out of the sky onto the runway. Do this smoothly, and you will roll on to the runway easily. Do this too abruptly, and you will fall straight down. Taxi back to the hangar or parking area.