Plastic Pilot

1 - Evaluate
If you read this post, you’re concerned with your landings. They’re probably good, just because you care. The first step towards bad landings (replace it with any word…) is not caring about…

If after a long landing you just say “er… the runway is plenty long…” or “er… there was tailwind” or “er… the runway is plenty long and there was tailwind…”, you’re on a dangerous trend. The runway was may be long, and, ok, there could have been tailwind, but you knew it ! You know, ATC or windsock… or don’t you care enough for that ?

2 - Practice
Even if your landings are good, continue training. And if they’re getting “not so good”, train more ! There is no shame in flying circuits. It could seem boring to fly circuits alone and land seven times in a row, and it is boring… but that’s the best way to improve. Flying to a remote destination with a passenger distracting you won’t help to focus on landing…

If a good series of solo circuits don’t help improving your landings, consider taking an instructor in the right seat. Once again, no shame… at least less than in a crash landing !

3 - Stop thinking - start landing
I’m a technical guy. I love looking at instruments, checking parameters, cross-checking, and think about everything. During my initial PPL training, my landings got acceptable only when I stopped thinking ! If you land instinctively instead of mentalizing everything, it has better chances to be smooth, at correct speed, and on the numbers !

If you have to think your corrective actions, you will take them too late… then you will need massive corrections instead of micro corrections… here comes the over correction… and you start oscillating !

Feel your plane, feel your approach, don’t even try to think ! Trust yourself: you know how to do it, you know you can do it, so do it !

3.5 - Stabilised approach gives good landing
This one is so obvious that it’s only half a tip !