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Transition Training Needed


TomC

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I'm in the process of closing on a CTSW. I'm transitioning from GA certified airplane experience. Insurance says I have to have 2 hrs of CFI and 1 hr solo. I'm thinking more like 5-10 CFI. What I would like is to find a CFI near me who can offer training in his/her FD or a rental before I get mine home. It's going to be a while before I take delivery. Anyone available in NE Arkansas, West Tennessee, NE Arkansas or Southeast Missouri. Thanks!

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An option might be a bit farther than you'd like to travel, contact Airtime Aviation in Tulsa OK.  I purchased my SW through them and needed to complete transition training hours, had 1.5 hours prior to arriving, enough to be familiar with bird but far from comfortable.  Instructor (Carl) tuned me up in one outing of a couple hours, super nice fella too.

He may be willing to fly over to you and work in your plane, if you can take delivery and have it local, also they do travel with clients for deliveries as well providing instruction on the route home.  All at cost but sharing they are very flexible in helping delivery and instruction on aircraft they broker /sell, and instructor is independent of business so if his schedule works is likely willing to assist you.

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Familiarization with enroute operations would doubtless be quite valuable.  What other skills would one want to develop and how are they best trained?  Based on discussions on this forum, one might think take-off and landing characteristics are a key difference between conventional GA aircraft and the CTSW.  In fact, I helped a pilot do transition training by letting him be PIC enroute, but still handed him off to a good instructor who did a lot of pattern work with him before he was fully comfortable with the CTSW.

Bottom line - the enroute training is fine but in my opinion does not necessarily complete the job.  The OPs idea of 5-10 hours mostly in the pattern with a CFI seems to be well placed.

 

AC 90-109A has some suggestions.

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Pattern work is a must with these airplanes, but it can be worked into a long country and it would help to do some pattern work at different types of airports on the way. Start off with a fair amount of pattern work, take a break and start the cross country. Pick a handful of airports on the way to do 3 laps around the pattern.  This may be more relevant to pilots like me. When I bought mine, I was in the “Very rusty” pilots group. I got checked out where I purchased it, along with a bfr. I then flew it from Iowa to California. Had to learn a lot on my own, and each airport provided a new challenge. I wasn’t a new pilot and had 1300 hours, mostly cross country, but I was rusty, in a new plane, over new routes and airports.

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I agree with what others have said.  The CT is pretty easy to fly, but not so easy to land well.  If I were designing a training syllabus, it would be almost entirely pattern work. I think you're smart to budget 5-10 hours of CFI time as you mentioned.

Once you get the airplane home and your insurance requirements taken care of, I'd spend a lot of additional time just doing landings.  It's cheap enough to do in these airplanes.  It seems like the largest number of pilots that come to grief in LSA in general and CTs in particular, are pilots transitioning from heavier certified airplanes.  LSA just handle differently...they run out of energy really quickly in the round out to landing, even relatively light winds can kick them around, and the CT can feel a bit skittish rolling out after landing if you are not gentle on the pedals.

Good luck, if you are like most of us you'll love your CT. 

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I saw an article or video a month or so ago. It showed the accident rate for the CT as being four times worse than a C-172.

I insure through Falcon. At last years renewal I had a talk with my agent about why my hull insurance has been going up. There were 3 reasons:

1. the market  is hardening. Fewer players. Big losses.

2. my age. He came right out and said it, you're getting old. Seventy-seven now. Wait until you turn 80. He said they probably won't refuse to insure me, just price me out of the market.

3. My aircraft. Especially the CTSW vs the CTLS. They don't like the CT. Too many landing accidents.

Number 3 is why you need  thorough transition training, from someone who knows CT's, with emphasis on pattern work. While picking up the plane and flying home with a CFI will be great experience, it is not enough. It sounds like you know this. That attitude puts you ahead of those with and ego and type A problems.

You'll have fun. Let us know how it goes.

 

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23 hours ago, sandpiper said:

I saw an article or video a month or so ago. It showed the accident rate for the CT as being four times worse than a C-172.

 A guy I trained with, who had about 10hrs in a CTSW, went up with a CFI in a 172 to get some additional experience.  He called me and said "man, landing a 172 is literally easy mode compared to a CTSW!"

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You're comparing a station wagon (172) heavier, longer and needs more control input to a Farrari (CT) that is lighter, smaller and lighter controls.

If you went from a 172 to helicopters you'd freak out. The handling is just different so you learn new lighter touch skill set. Neither is good or bad, JUST DIFFERENT.

The problem has been higher time pilots that come from larger aircraft think they can fly anything without some transition. That's just poor decision making and letting their ego stand in the way.

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An A320 pilot friend of mine was at a NC airport last week watching a CT doing touch and go's. Apparently he was dropping out of the flare a lot. This is one of the issues with the CT, you have to drive it on a bit to get a smooth touchdown. Extended flare will stall the tail. The vg's solved the issue for me but I wouldn't expect others to go modify their CT's. 

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I think you guys should forget the word flare and learn to just fly it to touch. That way there is no dropping. Why even let yourself get to a dropping speed. Jets and other aircraft fly it on all the time and they don't have dropping issues. There is zero reason not to have some rpm in and some additional speed. In 2K hours I have never dropped a CT. Maybe a couple firm landings, but never a drop.

There is more than one way to land and saying that's not traditional is the problem. Different planes needs different styles. Too many CFI's think there is only one way to land and that's all they teach and in lies the problem. Not all flying machines are the same.

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I don't think you can compare a CT to larger aircraft with much higher stall speeds for landing configuration. Also if a go around is required turbines have spool up time of which some are rather lengthy. The are advantages to slow touchdown speeds, shorter distances , soft fields. I agree you just can't do this in a CT very easily so you use a different technique. 

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 Landing my CTSW on my grass strip, usually the uphill runway, I nearly always use 40° flaps and virtually never less than 30°.  I very seldom use any power after I'm abeam the numbers except to adjust the glide path - virtually never on touchdown.  I aim for spot landings and will slip as necessary till the last minute to hit the spot if need be.  I have a very narrow landing window on my grass strips.

I was taught to land light jets, twin engine turboprops and twin piston aircraft with no power.  We'd carry 60% power on the jets till over the threshhold and then reduce to idle as we transitioned to a flare.  And gliders, but I guess they don't count.  :)

On hard runways I usually use 30° flaps on the CT unless there is a very strong, gusty  crosswind, when I'll reluctantly use 15°.With bigger aircraft I used full flaps.

My objective is to touch down softly as slowly as I can.

Again, the FAA Aircraft Flying Handbook is pretty good at landings, including in light airplanes.

Yes, you can fly many airplanes on, but it is seldom necessary.

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14 minutes ago, Jim Meade said:

 Landing my CTSW on my grass strip, usually the uphill runway, I nearly always use 40° flaps and virtually never less than 30°.  I very seldom use any power after I'm abeam the numbers except to adjust the glide path - virtually never on touchdown.  I aim for spot landings and will slip as necessary till the last minute to hit the spot if need be.  I have a very narrow landing window on my grass strips.

I was taught to land light jets, twin engine turboprops and twin piston aircraft with no power.  We'd carry 60% power on the jets till over the threshhold and then reduce to idle as we transitioned to a flare.  And gliders, but I guess they don't count.  :)

On hard runways I usually use 30° flaps on the CT unless there is a very strong, gusty  crosswind, when I'll reluctantly use 15°.With bigger aircraft I used full flaps.

My objective is to touch down softly as slowly as I can.

Again, the FAA Aircraft Flying Handbook is pretty good at landings, including in light airplanes.

Yes, you can fly many airplanes on, but it is seldom necessary.

I agree higher flap settings lead to slower softer landings.  Even if you don't get it just right, you are moving so slow and with low energy so it's less of a problem.  I always use 30° flaps on grass, even when it's windy.  I personally almost never use 40°, I find it to be harder to hand well and the speed is virtually identical, maybe a knot slower.  I do practice those landings and I'd probably use 40° if I had to stuff in into a field with a dead engine.

Roger...the "fly it on" technique works, but unless you are landing in a three-point touchdown, at some point in the landing you are power off and increasing AoA with aft stick like in all landings.  That's where the drop in usually occurs, the pilot mis-times or over controls that back stick input and the airplane balloons, then runs out of energy and drops the few inches (or feet if you really get it wrong) to the runway.  It's usually not a big deal, just "firm" as you say...but definitely not a greaser.

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5 hours ago, FlyingMonkey said:

Roger...the "fly it on" technique works, but unless you are landing in a three-point touchdown, at some point in the landing you are power off and increasing AoA with aft stick like in all landings.  That's where the drop in usually occurs, the pilot mis-times or over controls that back stick input and the airplane balloons, then runs out of energy and drops the few inches (or feet if you really get it wrong) to the runway.  It's usually not a big deal, just "firm" as you say...but definitely not a greaser.

With power on you can land at the same speed as power off and the only difference is the stick is slightly back further, but with power on you also have a slightly slower descent and far better control over the tail especially in high winds. So the mains touch and the nose wheel instantly touches down too. So what. If the nose wheel instantly touches down and especially in high winds you have better steering control if all wheels are FIRMLY on the ground. I can land in 25-35 crosswinds all day long like this and I've never lost control. Over controlling the stick is a pilot issue that pilots should train themselves out of. I get pilots that over control to place their hand on their thigh and don't lift it to help from the pumping action and over controlling. We did this in helicopters until you got a more steady hand.  Plus with power on if you need to do a save because you screwed the landing up you slap that throttle forward and have instant high rpm that keeps the nose or plane from dropping provided you haven't done something foolish like pulling the stick back even further vs leveling out. I've saved several pilots that were dropping the plane and or getting ready to put the nose in the ground this way.

 

You fly any plane the way it needs to be flown and not just the way you want to fly it. Tradition doesn't fit all planes especially now days.

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12 hours ago, Roger Lee said:

With power on you can land at the same speed as power off and the only difference is the stick is slightly back further, but with power on you also have a slightly slower descent and far better control over the tail especially in high winds. So the mains touch and the nose wheel instantly touches down too. So what. If the nose wheel instantly touches down and especially in high winds you have better steering control if all wheels are FIRMLY on the ground. I can land in 25-35 crosswinds all day long like this and I've never lost control. Over controlling the stick is a pilot issue that pilots should train themselves out of. I get pilots that over control to place their hand on their thigh and don't lift it to help from the pumping action and over controlling. We did this in helicopters until you got a more steady hand.  Plus with power on if you need to do a save because you screwed the landing up you slap that throttle forward and have instant high rpm that keeps the nose or plane from dropping provided you haven't done something foolish like pulling the stick back even further vs leveling out. I've saved several pilots that were dropping the plane and or getting ready to put the nose in the ground this way.

 

You fly any plane the way it needs to be flown and not just the way you want to fly it. Tradition doesn't fit all planes especially now days.

Sure, I don't want you to think I was down on your technique, I was just trying to understand.  It sounds like you you are not really advocating flying on at higher speed, but more carrying some RPM "behind the curve", which does indeed give you more tail authority.  I do this myself quite a bit, it's especially useful the slower you are trying to land.

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I seldom get into these conversations but I have taught people how to fly in CT’s, Hu-16’s, King Airs, C130’s, MD 80’s and 727’s just to name a few. My personal opinion is landing the CT is most like landing a 727. I think if you Just think a little back pressure in your landing, you will be just fine. I think where people have problems is when they try to”flare” the CT. If you are carrying any extra airspeed, all the flare does is cause you to balloon and we all know that is not a good thing. I think if you get down to the proper altitude and just barely bring the stick back for the landing, you will have a good landing whether you are attempting a power off or power on landing. The power off or power on scenario just determines how far down the runway you will touchdown. I think that technique will hold true for any flap setting you choose. 
 

Having said that, for all you newbies out there, the CTLS or SW are not nearly as Docile to land as a piper or Cessna so Don’t expect to master the landings the first day or so….

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14 minutes ago, Duane Jefts said:

I seldom get into these conversations but I have taught people how to fly in CT’s, Hu-16’s, King Airs, C130’s, MD 80’s and 727’s just to name a few. My personal opinion is landing the CT is most like landing a 727. I think if you Just think a little back pressure in your landing, you will be just fine. I think where people have problems is when they try to”flare” the CT. If you are carrying any extra airspeed, all the flare does is cause you to balloon and we all know that is not a good thing. I think if you get down to the proper altitude and just barely bring the stick back for the landing, you will have a good landing whether you are attempting a power off or power on landing. The power off or power on scenario just determines how far down the runway you will touchdown. I think that technique will hold true for any flap setting you choose. 
 

Having said that, for all you newbies out there, the CTLS or SW are not nearly as Docile to land as a piper or Cessna so Don’t expect to master the landings the first day or so….

I agree.

 

p.s.

Aren't you supposed to be cutting the grass? :) 

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