The illusion no one mentions

dmspilot said:
I teach all of my students the importance of looking straight ahead, not at the middle of the nose. I would think every halfway decent instructor does the same...
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My CFI never told me to look straight over the nose.
I'm lining up the plane with a linear feature, what else would I do? To me "looking straight ahead" goes without saying.
 
Reading through this, I get the impression that some people are focusing a really short distance in front of the plane, instead of way down the runway. If you have a 1600' long runway, why not focus 1580' down it, instead of 500'.
 
Lindberg said:
I don't see the issue.
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Actually that photo clearly demonstrates the "issue". Since the camera is offset to the right, even though only an inch or two, it appears as if the aircraft is landing on the left side of the runway (or in this case gravel bar) because from that perspective so much more of the close up instrument panel and nose are to the left of the perspective. It is, as stated, an illusion.
 
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Domenick said:
My CFI never told me to look straight over the nose.
I'm lining up the plane with a linear feature, what else would I do? To me "looking straight ahead" goes without saying.
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“Looking straight ahead” works on final. But on many planes, as the nose comes up in the flare the panel will block the view down the runway. If a pilot habitually looks straight ahead, they’ll be blind at the end, resulting in flying into the runway or ballooning and not realizing it. Even if they’re not, it’s very difficult to determine height looking at a point that may be thousands of feet away, or more.

I think pilots are better advised to look towards B rather than A below:

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There’s at least some data showing that even instructors who advise focusing on the far end of the runway are often not following their own advice.

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This from Bill Kershner:

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I'll mention again that I always have taught to look at and scan everything from the wingtip forward, once the runway disappears during the last few seconds of the landing flare...

reference: Lindberg.
 
FastEddieB said:
“Looking straight ahead” works on final. But on many planes, as the nose comes up in the flare the panel will block the view down the runway. If a pilot habitually looks straight ahead, they’ll be blind at the end, resulting in flying into the runway or ballooning and not realizing it. Even if they’re not, it’s very difficult to determine height looking at a point that may be thousands of feet away, or more.

I think pilots are better advised to look towards B rather than A below:

There’s at least some data showing that even instructors who advise focusing on the far end of the runway are often not following their own advice.
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One study done once 50 years ago and not repeated. During the flare, information about the aircraft's height, sink rate, and runway alignment is necessary. One of those is better ascertained looking closer, while the other two are better ascertained looking far ahead. Getting a student to look far enough ahead is unintuitive but typically a necessary step in the learning process. Too many times techniques used for the sake of learning are conflated with rules — just look how many times experienced pilots will argue about whether pitch or power control airspeed or altitude.
 
My experience is that when a student was making inconsistent landings, most times it was by straining to look too far down the runway. My “fix” was to get them to look off to the side and closer to the plane, and it was quite effective.

But you do what works for you.
 
dmspilot said:
Getting a student to look far enough ahead is unintuitive…
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Disagree. Most student pilots have experience driving cars, where one’s focus is typically way down the road to stay centered in one’s lane. I’d say looking far down the runway comes to them naturally from driving, and is a habit to be broken.
 
FastEddieB said:
My experience is that when a student was making inconsistent landings, most times it was by straining to look too far down the runway. My “fix” was to get them to look off to the side and closer to the plane, and it was quite effective.
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FastEddieB said:
Disagree. Most student pilots have experience driving cars, where one’s focus is typically way down the road to stay centered in one’s lane. I’d say looking far down the runway comes to them naturally from driving, and is a habit to be broken.
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I've never seen that. They usually are looking at the aiming point like a bullseye and are hesitant to look past it until it's too late. I don't know why your experience is the opposite of 99% of CFIs.
 
dmspilot said:
I don't know why your experience is the opposite of 99% of CFIs.
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No need to make a ****ing contest out of this. I gleaned my technique from the Airplane Flying Handbook, Kershner’s Flight Instructor’s Manual, and it was validated with my experiences at Burnside-Ott at Opa Locka in th 70’s and 80’s. It never felt like I was teaching opposite to 99% of instructors. Truth be told, I became a troubleshooter of sorts finishing up students who were struggling with other instructors. Maybe some of those other instructors were among the mythical 99% to which you refer.

But this is old ground and the back-and-forth can rapidly become tedious. So I’m out.
 
Silvaire said:
Actually that photo clearly demonstrates the "issue". Since the camera is offset to the right, even though only an inch or two, it appears as if the aircraft is landing on the left side of the runway (or in this case gravel bar) because from that perspective so much more of the close up instrument panel and nose are to the left of the perspective. It is, as stated, an illusion.
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The camera is not at the pilot's POV, which is down the center of the airplane. And the phenomenon observed by the OP seems to be a parallax effect.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax
 
FastEddieB said:
Disagree. Most student pilots have experience driving cars, where one’s focus is typically way down the road to stay centered in one’s lane. I’d say looking far down the runway comes to them naturally from driving, and is a habit to be broken.
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From what I see on the freeway, I'm pretty sure "look beyond the cars ahead" has not been taught for decades.
 
About once a year I ride in the right seat with someone going to deliver an airplane or pick one up. From the right seat I wonder, why in the world can't that guy land on the centerline? Are wheels coming off when he lands crabbed like this? Only from the right see I get the illusion.
 
Maxnr said:
You know, I never thought of this as a problem until I logged on to this forum.
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I've figured out why I can't seem to appreciate this issue. I guess its my upbringing. Decade or so as a military pilot and a couple more decades as a working pilot. Most in cockpits six feet wide. It just never showed its head.
Probably because when preflighting, the question "What seat do you want today?" was usually asked. Left for a few days, right for a few more. You never got "locked in" to one sight picture. This practice was extended to low time newbies, so they built time in a flexible manner.
Stick with it, you'll get it.
 
Is it possible that even though they tracked the eyes focus point, there was peripheral vision involved? You can widen your vision to take in the sides as well as the over the cowl. Is it possible you who are experienced do that as well?

That students tend to get tunnel vision, but experienced pilots take more of the whole in?
 
LongRoadBob said:
Is it possible that even though they tracked the eyes focus point, there was peripheral vision involved? You can widen your vision to take in the sides as well as the over the cowl. Is it possible you who are experienced do that as well?

That students tend to get tunnel vision, but experienced pilots take more of the whole in?
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Hey longroad, have u solo’d yet?
 
This has been mentioned, but I’ll +1 the notion of looking out the side of the aircraft about 30 to 45 degrees, and then getting a sense of how far you need to be from the side. It’s something I learned when training in the Yak-52, which I was trained to land in an absurdly tail-down attitude.

This is particularly helpful in Tailwheel aircraft, which is most of what I fly.
 
eman1200 said:
Hey longroad, have u solo’d yet?
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Sadly no. I haven’t been well the last couple of years, and had to stop training. I’m still hoping to get well enough that I can start up, still a member in my flying club, but it’s been a long time since last.

I’m getting some better, and hope to start soon.
 
Drivers sit on the left side of the car and don't seem to have trouble centering the car in the parking spot.

Well, many don't. Some don't seem to care.

It just takes practice. Breaking it down into multiple little rules and suggestions and recommendations sometimes just overwhelms the student with information.

The roundout and flare take maybe 5 seconds or a bit more. If you get six landings in an hour, that's 30 seconds of practice. It's no wonder it takes time to learn. I often wished I had a 20-mile stretch of abandoned highway, with no wires around, for teaching this stuff. Land, take off and climb to 100 feet, do it again and again until you run out of road. Turn around and do it the other way if the wind is amenable to that.
 
Dan Thomas said:
Drivers sit on the left side of the car and don't seem to have trouble centering the car in the parking spot.
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My car doesn't crab or side slip without me doing it really wrong. Otoh, most landings are crosswind landings.
 
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