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Takeoff and Landing
Are you rested and fresh from Lesson 3? Is the weather cooperating? Even a slight breeze can make this lesson unnecessarily difficult, as you’ll have trouble telling what you’re controlling versus what the wind is controlling. If the wind is no higher than the maximum allowable for Lesson 3, it is possible to do this lesson (although unnecessarily difficult). If it’s higher, do this lesson some other time. At certain times of the year it may take days or even weeks for the wind to cooperate. Be patient and wait for better conditions.
G to your training site with your assistant, set up your aircraft and pre-flight it. Fill up the fuel tank, put on your helmet and other apparel. You are now ready for Lesson 4.
Do a review of Lesson 3. Not only read it, do it. Make sure you still remember how it’s done. If you have any difficulty controlling on the ground, stay with the review until high speed taxiing is controlled, smooth and natural.
This run will be just like a high speed taxi except for one thing. You’re not going to decrease throttle just before reaching takeoff speed, you’re going to continue to slowly accelerate until you are airborne.
On your first flight you should climb to a minimum of 500-700 feet and fly for 20-30 minutes getting used to the throttle, and how by adding power you climb and decreasing power you descend, pushing the right foot bar you turn right, pushing the left foot bar you turn left…stay in pattern around your air field. Try flying level looking at what rpm it takes to maintain level flight and make a mental note to the level flight rpm. Don’t be in a hurry to come down, you have a full tank of fuel and a cruise rpm, you will have plenty of time to relax. Remember to stay within safe landing distance of your runway.
During this step you’ll find that the throttle (which controlled speed on the ground) doesn’t control speed any more. It controls altitude. The power parachute takes off, climbs, cruises, descends and lands at one set speed. If you add power, it will go up, if you reduce power, it will come down. To keep a precise altitude requires precise and gentle throttle control. The exceptions to the single speed flight envelope are in turns, where centrifugal force adds load and increase speed and in a flared landing, where speed is reduced by pushing both foot steering bars.
The throttle is your complete control over climbing and descending. Unlike your car, you must have enough power to control your descent. Pushing the throttle all the way forward to idle you will descend at a high rate of speed. The speed you come down is completely controlled by your throttle setting. Use an amount that gives you a reasonable descent rate. Normally, a good rule is 300-500 rpm less than that of level flight.
Try flying straight down the runway while maintaining a constant 50’ altitude. Next fly down the runway at a constant 40’ altitude, then 30’ then 20’. Do not fly over the runway lower than 20’. You do not have enough throttle control at this time to try flying lower than 20’, but with practice you will be able to fly 12” off the ground straight down the runway.
Setup your landing approach several hundred feet before you actually get to the runway. You need to clear obstacles that are at the end of the runway such as trees, power lines, fences, etc. by a minimum of 50’. Hold the throttle at 300-500 rpm less than that of level flight rpm. (By doing this, you have a controlled descent rate, which will give you more forgiving landings until you have more experience). Keep the powered parachute over the center of the runway using the left and right foot bars. As you lose altitude and approach the runway (about 5-6’ above the ground) push a smooth 3-2-1 full flare with the foot bars and hold out until you feel the rear wheels touch the ground. Release the foot bars, push the throttle forward to idle, shut the engine off, grab the steering lines and pull to drop the parachute behind you.
Congratulations! You have just made your first solo flight. You may have felt that the earth seemed to be coming at you very fast that last 5-6’ and then when you pushed the full flare it felt as though you stopped in mid air. The flare has tremendous ability of slowing down your descent rate and it is a very important part of flying the powered parachute safely.
To review the process that you are going through, the throttle may be viewed as the coarse control for descending, the flare is your brakes. In normal flight the throttle is used entirely to control altitude. In a normal landing the throttle is used to control our descent until you are ready to land. At this point, the throttle is used to set a reasonable (slow) descent rate and the flare is used (as breaks) to modify the descent rate. Landing with just the throttle is harder because there is always a lag until the power takes effect. The flare is instantaneous and will increase lift as soon as you push the foot bars. If you decrease throttle too much and are descending too fast you may not have enough time to put more throttle in before landing. The total range of travel with the foot bars will give you more than enough brakes to do a normal landing. The worst case is if the engine quits. In this case the only way to modify your rate of descent is to use the flare to do a normal landing. Example: In a power off situation you are coming down faster therefore, you will need to flare higher above the ground (about 10’) at ½ throttle you are descending slower therefore you would flare closer to the ground (5-6’).
Put a marker on the landing area (a bright colored spray painted spot is good). Try to set your glide path so that you can land close to your mark. It’s much easier said than done, but by the time you leave this step you should be landing within 10’ of the mark. Note: the marker is only used as a landing reference. Don’t get so involved with hitting the mark directly, that you forget about more important things like landing safely.
This will give you glide slope control and teach you to handle distraction. It is important because you’ll be going around the pattern tomorrow and you’ll have a lot to think about. You may find that concentrating on target practice makes your altitude control get sloppy.
If you are going to fly safely, you must remember the next two paragraphs.
The landing process ends up at a zero descent rate at the ground no matter what the starting descent rate is. If you are descending at a high rate speed you will contact the ground and very suddenly decelerate to zero. When you are coming down for a landing you will want to put power back on to reduce the descent rate to zero several feet above the ground and then fly along parallel to the ground. Now you only have to descend a couple feet at a slow rate and glide down. Use the foot bars to fine tune descent rate. The instant the wheels touch down you must pull the power back to an idle. If you leave the power on you will bounce. Don’t be in a hurry to get on the ground if there is a lot of runway left. If you are running out of room, power up and fly around and try again.
Do not be in a hurry to land. No prizes are awarded for touching down in the first 100’ of the runway. Leave plenty of clearance over obstacles. You should never hit the ground hard. No matter how fast you are coming down initially, put more power back in and fly parallel to the ground and very slowly descend the last foot until you touch down so easy you don’t realize that you are on the ground. Hold pressure on the foot bars and use flare to modify if necessary. If you balloon up a little, back off the foot bars a little to compensate. If you are descending too fast, add a little foot bar to compensate.
Reminder: the air should be very still for these lessons. In this step you will be high enough to thoroughly kill yourself (mind you, you can do it from 20’ too, it’s just harder) so you’ll want to double check that the wind won’t give you trouble.
During every step to this point you have been over and close to the runway. In the next step you will leave the runway and actually fly over something. Be sure that you are ready to do this by mastering everything up to this point.
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