Should I Use PITCH or POWER?

so you want to make better Landings but for some reason you're struggling to control the airplane and that's keeping you from making a stable approach you may actually be using the wrong controls on Final and that's the real reason why you're struggling should you be using pitch or power to control your SB what about to control your altitude those answers coming [Music] up by now you probably already know that the key to making a good Landing is to make a stable approach but what's the key to making a stable approach well I'd say that the key to making a stable approach is understanding how to control the airplane I decided to make this video because it seems like there's quite a bit of confusion when it comes to this topic and it seems like there's actually two separate opinions on how you should control your airplane when you're descending towards a Runway so before I explain my opinion on the subject I want to get your thoughts when I'm descending towards the runway and I want to control my air speed how do you think I should do it should I use power to control my air speed or should I use pitch to control it what about altitude how should I control that should I use pitch to control my altitude or should I use power comment below I'd love to hear your thoughts now I'd love to say that there's no wrong answer but I've been doing quite a bit of studying and after you hear this I think you'll agree that one method is more effective than the other in order to completely understand how to control the airplane you really need to have a basic understanding of energy management but if you're like me and you turn over to the energy management chapter of the airplane flying handbook you get even more confused by all the stupid equations and meaningless charts in there but it doesn't have to be that way energy management is actually a pretty simple concept as you may remember from your high school science classes there are basically two types of energy kinetic energy and potential energy kinetic energy is the energy that an object has if it is already in motion for example if I'm flying at 200 knots in my C130 here I've got a lot of kinetic energy but this air plane that's just sitting here has no kinetic energy so when it comes to Flying the more air speed we have the more kinetic energy we have then you've got potential energy this is the ability of an object to create kinetic energy based on its position for example our airplane sitting on the ground here doesn't have a ton of potential energy if we release the parking brake it might roll away and produce a little kinetic energy but there's really no way for it to produce much energy right here where it's sitting on the other hand if I'm way up here at altitude and I start descending I've got the potential to build up a ton of air speed or kinetic energy in fact this is one of the most important things for you to know about when it comes to energy management at any point in time if you have potential energy available you can trade that for kinetic energy by pitching down and gaining air speed and the more altitude you have the more potential energy you have that you can use to trade for kinetic energy or air speed with that in mind if you have an excess of kinetic energy in other words you're flying super fast you can also trade some of that kinetic energy for potential energy by pitching up and trading that air speed for altitude that's why if you ever fly closer to the ground it's actually way safer to fly at high air speeds because air speed gives you the ability to gain altitude or potential energy if you ever need it now believe it or not now you know half of what it takes to control your airplane when you're descending towards a Runway but let's talk about how to use this information and then we'll talk about the other half and that's going to really tie all this together let's say that you're descending towards a Runway based only on the information I just told you what do you think's going to happen if you pitch down and try to lose altitude that's right you're going to trade potential energy for kinetic energy in other words the airplane will speed up now don't get mad at me yet we still haven't talked about the other half of our controls but before I go there I just wanted you to see that pitching down will gain air speed because you're trading altitude for air speed or potential energy for kinetic energy okay so the first thing we can do to control our airplane is to trade energy the other way is to increase our energy or reduce our energy and we have two tools that we can use to do that thrust and drag thrust gives us the ability to speed up or gain kinetic energy and drag gives us the ability to slow down or bleed off kinetic energy take that in for just a second I think this is super important thrust and drag are tools that we can use to affect our kinetic energy State okay so if that's true and we want to gain energy or air speed we can do a combination of two things we can increase our thrust or we can reduce our drag either one of these can affect our air speed then if we want to reduce our energy or air speed we can decrease our thrust or we can increase our drag and this is why Pilots argue over how to control the airplane when they're making an approach it's true both thrust and drag can be used to control air speed but the real question is what's the most effective way to control air speed in order to answer this question we need to take a closer look at how drag affects an airplane as you may remember from past lessons there are two types of drag parasite drag and induced drag have you ever stuck your hand out of a moving vehicle if so you know how the wind can yank your hand back that's basically what parasite drag is and every piece of the aircraft that's exposed to the wind can cause more drag on the airplane and what happens if you speed up and your hand is sticking out the window does that wind get better or worse yeah it gets worse doesn't it and just like that parasite drag gets worse as air speed increases in fact parasite drag increases exponentially with air speed then we have induced drag and this type of drag is a direct byproduct of lift induced drag is greatest at slow air speeds and induc drag actually decreases exponentially with air speed because of that if we were to add both types of drag what you'd find is that there's actually a specific air speed that we can fly where we can achieve the least amount of drag on the airplane most Pilots refer to this as LD Max and on most airplanes this is also the best air speed to fly if you want to Glide the longest distance possible during an engine out scenario hold on just a minute don't look at me like that I promise I'm going somewhere with this you'll see what I'm getting at more when we take a look at the relationship between thrust and drag you'll find this chart in the energy management section of the airplane flying handbook I know it might look complicated but it's really not here we have the line that indicates the total drag on the airplane now remember in steady unaccelerated flight thrust and drag are equal that means in order to maintain a specific air speed our engine must create an equal amount of thrust that's why this line is labeled power required in order to maintain a specific air speed our engine must produce at least this much thrust but if we want to increase our air speed we need extra thrust to do that assuming we can't trade altitude for air speed like we talked about earlier now take a look here at this dotted line at the top of our chart this line represents the power we have available in our airplane and what you'll notice is that at really slow air speeds and at high air speeds we do not have enough power to overcome the drag on the airplane and this is extremely important to keep in mind but notice right here at LD Max we have a ton of thrust available that means if I'm flying at Best Glide and I mash the throttle in I will get some of my best acceleration right here in fact notice how my power available actually increases for a while that means that when I fly at these air speeds just above Best Glide I'm going to get some awesome acceleration when I use the throttle not only that but look at how gradually this parasite drag increases it's a lot more gradual than this back side where we're at slower air speeds this means that my power is a lot more effective in this area over here but over here it's a lot less effective remember this spot right here where we have the least amount of drag on the airplane is called LD Max and as you probably noticed the airplane flying handbook draws a line right here between what they call the front side and the back side of the drag curve on the front side of the drag curve you have a lot more extra power and because of that when you fly above LD Max when you increase the power it has a huge impact on your air speed and pitching for your altitude is also more effective because your elevator has a ton of authority at these high air speeds but over here at the back side of the drag curve drag increases a lot faster so thrust is less effective yes as long as you have power available it will have an effect on your air speed if you're getting slow and you push up the power but it's not nearly as effective as pitching down and reducing your angle of attack which reduces your drag in fact you're technically using two tools when you pitch for air speed not only are you reducing your drag but you're also converting potential energy to kinetic energy and because of that pitching for your air speed is twice as effective at slower air speeds okay so if you're back here at the back of the drag curve pitching for air speed is more effective because of drag but what happens if you lower the flaps well technically these charts are made with flaps up that means with flaps you have even less power available and in some cases you might not have enough power to climb at all supposedly that's one of the reasons why Cessna got rid of 40° of flaps on all their trainer planes people were going around and forgetting to raise the flaps and they didn't have enough power available to climb out and clear the trees anyway I say all that to say that when you're flying on the backside of the drag curve or you're flying below LD Max or Best Glide or when you have flaps in by far the most effective way to change your air speed is to pitch for your air speed now I've had people argue this with me and what I've noticed is that these people are typically the ones who fly airplanes with a lot more power well of course if you're flying a c130j with over 18,000 horsepower using power is obviously going to be just as effective because those aircraft have a ton of Excess power when they're light but even C130 pilots make a lot of tactical approaches where they pull the power to idle and then they pitch for the right air speed because they know that the most effective way to control air speed is by using that drag to their advantage so in aircraft that have a lot of Excess power it's fine to use pitch or power for air speed but in most aircraft pitching for air speed is best when you're on the back side of the drag curve or when you're in a high drag configuration like when you have all the flap down but how should we control our altitude when we're making an approach now you guys know that I'm not a huge equation guy but I want to show you an equation that I think you're going to find interesting this is called the lift equation don't worry you're not going to be expected to know how to use this as a pilot but I do think that you should understand a few of the ingredients in this equation that affect the lift that your airplane produces take a look at the V here in this equation this v stands for velocity this is specifically referring to the air speed of the relative wind going with the wings on your airplane so your air speed is directly related to how much lift your wings produce in fact you probably notice that the V is actually squared and that tells me that lift increases exponentially as air speed increases okay so if we pitch down during the approach and we trade potential energy for kinetic energy we know that this is going to increase our air speed well guess what that does yeah that's right it also increases the lift that our wings are producing but if that's true then airplanes would never be able to descend not necessarily let's take a look back at our lift equation I want you to notice another ingredient that has a huge impact on the lift that your wings produce notice this CL in our equation this stands for the lift coefficient now the lift coefficient can be a little bit of a confusing topic but in a nutshell this number tells us how much lift the wings on our aircraft are capable of producing the lift coefficient is determined by the camber of the wing the cord length and even the angle of attack and that's important to keep in mind because at high angle of attack our lift coefficient is much higher which means that our wings are capable of creating a lot more lift here's why that's important at slower air speeds when we're back here at the back of the drag curve we're flying at very high angles of attack and I personally believe that a huge majority of induced drag is mainly due to these high angles of attack and this is my personal opinion but I believe that the aircraft's angle of attack increases at the same rate that induc drag increases when your aircraft slows down if that's true then thrust has a tremendous effect on lift back here at the back of the drag curve and that's because our aircraft is already at a high angle of attack which we know affects the lift that our wings produce if I reduce the thrust on my aircraft back here the lift that my wings are producing will decrease as well because thrust is directly related to lift when the lift coefficient is high in addition to that at slower air speeds our flight controls have less Control Authority and this includes the elevator so when you pitch up or pitch down at slow air speeds the ele Ator will be less responsive flaps play a huge role in this as well you may not know this but most airplanes are designed so that the flaps create more lift than drag when the airplane's flap setting is at 50% or less above 50% flaps are designed to create more drag than lift and once again this reduces our excess thrust and this means that thrust by itself will have little effect on our air speed but reducing our thrust will still impact the lift that our wings are producing so how should we control our airplan plane when we're descending during an approach yes it is possible to use pitch or power to control both air speed or altitude and in some situations like when you're close to the ground you might want to use both together I mean you obviously don't want to pitch down into the ground if you're getting slow and you're also low on glide path just push that power up a little bit and you will speed up you'll have to hold your nose down to keep you from climbing but it will work if you have enough power available to overcome the drag on your airplane but the most effective way to control your air plane when you're below LD Max and or you're in a high drag configuration is to pitch for air speed and use power for altitude and this is going to allow you to have the most control over your airplane when you're flying slow or making an approach hey I hope you enjoyed this video if you did be sure to smash that like button for me and then check out all the other free pilot training videos I have on this channel see you

Channel: Free Pilot Training

Views: 38,201

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Id: MqxKJLQdcxM

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 10 2023