Go around decision this weekend

onwards said:
You are spot on with noting the stall horn. I was very anxious to pick up altitude and certainly that resulted in a "locked" mindset of "get nose up dammit"!...Edit: another thing that I recall. Note that for the first second or two after coming back up, I am nicely accelerating in ground effect with the nose pointed correctly. With this plane it is more than sufficient normally. I think my attempts to pull up after that were influenced by "what I'm used to" - but in this case, with the heat and load, it wasn't doing what I was used to.
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The highest priority when you're close to the ground needs to be achieving and maintaining the optimal airspeed, IMO. And at mountain airports it's important to believe your airspeed indicator, because it correlates to aircraft performance much better than what you see out the window.
 
I'll pile on - if you don't like what you see, go around. Nothing to be embarassed about. You didn't like it, it wasn't going well, don't force it, go around and try again. Good call.
 
Palmpilot said:
The highest priority when you're close to the ground needs to be achieving and maintaining the optimal airspeed, IMO. And at mountain airports it's important to believe your airspeed indicator, because it correlates to aircraft performance much better than what you see out the window.
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That's a REALLY good point, and I want to stress it for anyone else trying to learn from this thread. Thank you sir. I wish I had this in mind at the time.
 
onwards said:
I had the wing down and rudder left and thought I had it nailed nicely on center when that one-two gust came right on touch down.
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On the first approach, it looks to me like you started the final approach lined up approximately with the left edge of the runway, and eventually pulled it closer to the centerline on short final. The farthest to the right you got was in the flare, when the centerline was lined up with the camera, which was approximately lined up with the right side of the cowling.

This seems to be a common tendency among pilots, and I believe it is due to people being used to the sight picture when they are driving a car. American drivers are used to sitting closer to the left edge of the lane than the right edge when the car is centered in the lane. Our minds correct for parallax to estimate when the car is centered in the lane. The trouble when we get in an airplane is that when we first turn final, we are far enough from the runway so that parallax between the left seat and center of the airplane is negligible. Our true alignment becomes more apparent as we get closer to the runway, which is why pilots often pull the plane closer to the centerline on short final.

The solution that works for me is to try to make it look like the centerline is passing through the center of my own body instead of the center of the airplane. This makes the centerline look vertical in the windscreen, and the left and right edges of the runway look tilted in equal and opposite amounts. This procedure will cause you to land only about one foot off-center, which is more than accurate enough to have the wheels straddling the centerline.

If a crosswind were strong enough that I wanted to land on the upwind half of the runway, then I would adjust so that the upwind edge of the runway and the centerline appeared tilted in equal and opposite amounts.
 
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onwards said:
That's a REALLY good point, and I want to stress it for anyone else trying to learn from this thread. Thank you sir. I wish I had this in mind at the time.
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You will next time!
 
Having flown into o22, yes, you did the right thing.

If you aren't CERTAIN you're going to land nicely, try again.

FWIW, I did a go-around on my checkride when a gust of wind very suddenly tossed me over the runway edge lights in the flare (no, I didn't hit any, nor did I touch down).
 
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Jaybird180 said:
I wonder....

Is a go-around the en-vogue GA safety mantra 'crutch'?

Paging Mr Henning....
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Crutch? No, it's simply what you do when it's going wrong enough that you feel you can't safely salvage the landing. I've never done an operational go around I can recall, but I have bailed out of landings and gone elsewhere. One I remember well was coming into Big Bear with the Santana winds blowing right through the saddle. I was giving a ride home to an airline pilot client we were doing some work on his Bo, on short final we took a gust that turned the nose up and plane sideways. I shoved the throttles in, picked up the gear & flaps and said "I don't think we're gonna get in here tonight, how about you call your wife and have her pick you up at Redlands? You can give it a shot if you want, but I'm done here." His response was "Nope, lets go to Redlands. Just keep thinking like that and you may survive this game."

If the conditions are such that I couldn't make it the first time, no sense in trying again, just increases my exposure to messing up.
 
As I recall o22 is a little intimidating. It's perched on a hill with tall trees all around. Fairly close to Yosimite. The Canyons can be cause for up and down drafts. You are a better pilot now for having that experience.
Good call
 
Ya did good...
On comments (you asked)
On first pass when you rolled out on final it was clear it would not work well as you were way left of the extended centerline right from the git go...
The landing is determined by the time you are settled on final.. If it is not good then, it won't be good later - unless you make prompt and positive corrections right now...
Yes, when you touched, you were just one more gust from having the plane go into a lusty mating session with a runway light...

On the second approach you initially were left, but you made a correction - later than I would have liked but hey, you at least did it... Good landing except for butterfingers dad - or was that an aerobatic maneuver you did - ;)

20 degrees of flaps was appropriate... And 20 is appropriate for 90% of your landings... I disagree with the CFI who teach that every landing has to be full flaps in a Cessna... 40 degrees is extreme and necessary only for extreme circumstances - too high on short final, really short field over trees, complete inability of the pilot to control airspeed with pitch and throttle, etc.
Try using 20 for your next half dozen landings and I predict you will like them a lot better...
 
I wonder how long his home field is. Is there any rule of thumb for how much the landing roll is increased by using partial flaps?
 
Where there is doubt, there is no doubt. You did the right thing. :)
 
From the red board:

We had a case a couple years ago where a crew did a go around from a visual approach, and the FAA was coming after him for deviating from a clearance, presumably his clearance to land. Sorry, I don't know any specific details of this incident.
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http://forums.aopa.org/showthread.php?p=1560158#post1560158

I sure hope there was more to the story than that. I would hate to see the FAA second-guessing pilots' go around decisions, especially considering the 737 that went off the end of a runway in Burbank California some years ago due to coming in high and/or fast.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1455
 
Insofar as the story about enforcement action for a pilot doing a missed approach or go around, I don't believe it for a moment.

The FAA does not engage in enforcement action for a go-around, including on a visual approach.

If other extenuating circumstances existed that mitigated the situation and created a safety issue or a loss of separation with another aircraft, then it's important to include the rest of the story.
 
Dr. O said:
Ya did good...
On comments (you asked)
On first pass when you rolled out on final it was clear it would not work well as you were way left of the extended centerline right from the git go...
The landing is determined by the time you are settled on final.. If it is not good then, it won't be good later - unless you make prompt and positive corrections right now...
Yes, when you touched, you were just one more gust from having the plane go into a lusty mating session with a runway light...

[...]

Try using 20 for your next half dozen landings and I predict you will like them a lot better...
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Thank you sir.

I was indeed left, although do note that the camera perspective is misleading - the wheels straddled the centerline on touchdown even on the first landing (not equal distance, obviously). It was a battle all the way down, which should have clued me in I suppose :redface:

As for limiting myself to 20deg flaps - oh boy. I think you're right pointing it out and I'll try, but I was taught that I had to use max flaps whenever possible in primary training, and early habits are hard to break.
 
Palmpilot said:
I wonder how long his home field is. Is there any rule of thumb for how much the landing roll is increased by using partial flaps?
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Home field (KCCR) has a 5000' runway. At the same time, I often get the much short 2600' runway coming in, and there it begins to matter with the 182. I used the shorter one almost exclusively in training, too, so habits formed.
 
Palmpilot said:
I wonder how long his home field is. Is there any rule of thumb for how much the landing roll is increased by using partial flaps?
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Depends a lot on even a small amount of excess airspeed on final. My first no-flap landing at PAO in 739ZL ate up much more runway than I was comfy with, due to a 70 KIAS approach speed. That's at the high end of the range in the POH. It should have been closer to 60 KIAS (low end) given the light loading at the time.

It's worse in a low-wing, but I still managed to get 8074T stopped in barely over 1000 feet with no flaps, on my Piper checkout. 60 KIAS makes a lot of difference.

Indicated approach speeds are not a function of density altitude, so that factor is the same as at PAO or CCR.
 
Even if they did, 14 CFR 91.3(a) and probably (b) (considering it's a go-around) would come into play, no?
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A go-around is not an emergency maneuver, nor does executing a go-around constitute an emergency.

Where the FAA becomes concerned is if the crew creates the emergency. A crew that has accepted a LAHSO clearance, for example, might create a situation by compromising separation during a go-around, if the intersecting aircraft also goes around. Such might be subject to review, though unless the act was overtly unsafe by either crew, the FAA would be very unlikely to pursue the matter to enforcement.

If a crew elects to go around because they have placed the aircraft in an unsafe condition (below minimums, off course, etc), then there are extenuating circumstances that require the situation to be discussed in context. One can't simply say that the crew was subject to enforcement action because they executed a normal maneuver. That doesn't happen.
 
DouglasBader said:
Insofar as the story about enforcement action for a pilot doing a missed approach or go around, I don't believe it for a moment.

The FAA does not engage in enforcement action for a go-around, including on a visual approach.

If other extenuating circumstances existed that mitigated the situation and created a safety issue or a loss of separation with another aircraft, then it's important to include the rest of the story.
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Yeah, I call BS on that one too.
 
Back to the op: if you feel like a little dork going around, how big a dork will you feel like when you're crawling from the wreckage had you pressed on?

Never a bad call.
 
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