Getting behind the airplane...

Ghery said:
Never let the airplane go where your mind wasn't already at least 5 to 10 minutes before.
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This by the way I think is exactly where people start to get behind.. an inability to adapt to a changing environment. Give someone a different approach at the last minute, or get an instruction you were not expecting, and you'll see people freeze up and things get away from them. Your mind *wasn't* there 5-10 minutes before already because something unexpected happened, and now is when you need to be able to stay on your feet and not become a panicking passenger
 
Bobanna said:
Early on I likened flying to juggling running chain saws while jumping on one foot a big rubber ball while reciting Shakespeare while your friends are throwing bricks at your head.

You mean you've never done that? You have a way to go, still.
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I did all that while wearing roller blades. Amateurs.
 
Bobanna said:
Total f-in studmuffin...girls gotta start somewhere.
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:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Roller blading is one of the few sports I couldn't pick up right away. And after a couple almost broken wrists, I said "nope!"
 
Whenever you feel rushed in an airplane because you are not caught up, you are behind.
Do stuff early. ATIS, briefings including reviewing procedures, set up your avionics, etc...

Descending from 9000 feet 80 miles out??
I don’t think that’s accurate on many levels.
 
I got an incredible eye opener about getting behind a plane on my way home from initial training in my PA-46.

I flew out of Vero Beach and had about a 80 kt tail wind coming toward the NE. I found myself at 17,000 feet and needed to get the pattern altitude within 60 miles.

I was a 130kt pilot in a 240kt airplane. I had never conceived this ground speed and altitude as having it's own complications.

4 miles a minute was alarming.

Descent added even more groundspeed...

Then when I DID get my mess together and put the gear down, two greens.

I freaked. A gazillion dollar plane and I'm gonna land it gear up at my home drone on the first flight.

I broke off, pulled out the POH, training notes and wracked my brain. Then it dawned on me. I flipped the lights from night to day and all three greens were there.

I landed with fire trucks and equipment and was incredibly embarrassed.

It is safe to say I grew as much in that flight as a pilot as I have before or after.

I was completely behind the plane. Completely.
 
One thing I like to do when I feel behind the airplane is to slow down. If the airplane is already going as slow as is safe and prudent, another option is to turn off course or circle until I get things sorted out. (This may require coordination with ATC, depending on the circumstances.)
 
I was behind the plane on Thursday. Coming home IFR, home airport IMC with ceiling about 900 feet below MDA. I figured I wouldn't make it into home airport so requested ILS at nearby field. Was setup for the ILS, everything good to go until nearing the IAF I picked up the glideslope but not the localizer. Hmmm, maybe it will pick up in a moment I thought as I blew through the depicted localizer on the GPS. Turned back toward localizer and blew through it the other side but still not picking up localizer. ATC noticed, I advised ATC I wasn't receiving localizer and was instructed to go missed. Requested a GPS approach into the same field as it has a WAAS approach. While being vectored for the GPS approach I fought with the relatively new Garmin G5/GMC507 autopilot. The autopilot didn't climb as I thought I had correctly entered in the 507. Still hadn't entered the next approach into the 430w or pulled the plate when I broke out over a large hole. Requested a contact approach into my destination airport about 9 miles away. Ended up making it home but IMC, the KI206 loc indicator failure, combined with a marginally functional and still newish to me autopilot, started a chain of events that resulted in my being behind the plane.
 
Palmpilot said:
One thing I like to do when I feel behind the airplane is to slow down. I
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It's so funny that people don't think of this. Especially in faster airplanes.

I was flying with a friend who had just upgraded from a PA28 to a Bonanza. Doing some practice approaches, there was an airplane ahead of us so we vectored ourselves away for spacing. After a while, my friend commented, "I wish he'd get going, we're getting further away!" I replied, "Well,why don't you slow down?" He looked at me with one of those shocked "Huh? I'd never have thought of that!" looks and slowed down.

Fast forward a few weeks later. I received a message from him. He had been on an IFR flight in the soup and was getting some unexpected approach instructions from ATC. Started to feel himself getting behind. "And then I could hear you next to me saying, 'well why don't you slow down?' and everything worked out."
 
FORANE said:
I was behind the plane on Thursday. Coming home IFR, home airport IMC with ceiling about 900 feet below MDA. I figured I wouldn't make it into home airport so requested ILS at nearby field. Was setup for the ILS, everything good to go until nearing the IAF I picked up the glideslope but not the localizer. Hmmm, maybe it will pick up in a moment I thought as I blew through the depicted localizer on the GPS. Turned back toward localizer and blew through it the other side but still not picking up localizer. ATC noticed, I advised ATC I wasn't receiving localizer and was instructed to go missed. Requested a GPS approach into the same field as it has a WAAS approach. While being vectored for the GPS approach I fought with the relatively new Garmin G5/GMC507 autopilot. The autopilot didn't climb as I thought I had correctly entered in the 507. Still hadn't entered the next approach into the 430w or pulled the plate when I broke out over a large hole. Requested a contact approach into my destination airport about 9 miles away. Ended up making it home but IMC, the KI206 loc indicator failure, combined with a marginally functional and still newish to me autopilot, started a chain of events that resulted in my being behind the plane.
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That reminds me of one of my examples. I was flying from the SFO area to an airport on the Oregon coast (OTH). The forecast was for VFR, but it became clear en route that I needed to pick up an IFR clearance. So now I was single-pilot IFR in IMC in a plane with no autopilot. The ILS was in use. No vectors were offered, but I managed to figure out how to get on one of the own-nav procedure entries just in time. What I did NOT manage to do in the time available was to brief the missed approach procedure. :hairraise:

To make matters worse, the ATIS, which was reporting weather a couple hundred feet above minimums, was wrong. I didn't break out until barely above minimums. :hairraise::hairraise:

I HATE surviving by accident! :hairraise::hairraise::hairraise:

Afterwards when I was kicking myself around the block about it, it occurred to me that after more than twenty years of coastal flying, I know better than to depend on a VFR forecast at a coastal airport. (Duh!) So I resolved that from then on, whenever I fly to a coastal aitport, even with a VFR forecast, I will brief the available approaches BEFORE TAKEOFF! Same for any destination where there is reason to doubt a VFR forecast.
 
midlifeflyer said:
An example of the opposite. I was flying with a friend in his airplane. We were heading toward Bravo at an altitude above the floor. We were a good 10 miles out and I began a gradual descent. He was concerned with how gradual it was until we dropped below the floor about 3 miles out. He was amazed.

All I did was think, "what do I need to do now I order to be where I need to be when we got there.

It one of the biggest challenges in teaching.
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That's pretty much what I did on my 80 mile out descent. Was going into an airport just under a Bravo. 215kts GS on the level, 400fpm descent got me up above 230 and the winds were still cooking along till about 3000. At a smidge under 4 miles a minute, started a nice slow in the vertical, but at the same time fast (for that plane) in the horizontal descent 20 minutes out. Would have had to do the anvil approach if I waited till I was 15miles out to start coming down. Had another one just couple months back where the descent alone from 9000 was loggable as a XC for a rating.
 
bgreenhaw said:
I've heard it a lot and I get the general sentiment of the statement but don't know that I could really explain what it means. Is it that things are happening faster than you can react to/notice? Or maybe being overwhelmed by lots of stuff happening at once? How would one recognize that it was happening or can you even detect it before it happens?
What does it mean to you aviator types?
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1. You are not anticipating the tasks that need to be performed and are too late in doing them.
2. The biggest factor is you are not recognizing the changes in flight that need to be made during the landing and as a result result your corrections are unnecessarily large. The sooner you realize a correction needs to occur, the smaller the control input can be.
 
Clip4 said:
1. You are not anticipating the tasks that need to be performed and are too late in doing them.
2. The biggest factor is you are not recognizing the changes in flight that need to be made during the landing and as a result result your corrections are unnecessarily large. The sooner you realize a correction needs to occur, the smaller the control input can be.
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Yep. Sometimes I think the single biggest thing which comes from experience, and is so important to train ourselves on early, is the ability to recognize minor deviations early and correct them immediately. Overcontrolling on landing is just one example.

Being behind makes it worse because you are too busy catching up on other things to notice something small.
 
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