I was just reading some suggested practice activities to improve landing skills, and one of the suggestions was to practice touch and gos without letting the nose wheel touch the runway.  This article was directed to GA training, I was wondering if this would be practical for a 777 or not? 

 

Richard

Surely you can! 777 is still "just" an airplane, though you'll probably have the nose gear on the runway because it takes a bit more work to "reset" the 777: Land without spoilers, reversers, and autobrake. At touchdown set flaps 15, push throttles up, rotate at VREF, climb out as normal like a flaps 15 takeoff.

 

Some might also reset the stab trims during the rollout but as long as it's in the green band it's good to go anyway.

 

Doing all of this is much easier with 2 crew, of course

I was just reading some suggested practice activities to improve landing skills, and one of the suggestions was to practice touch and gos without letting the nose wheel touch the runway.  This article was directed to GA training, I was wondering if this would be practical for a 777 or not? 

 

Richard

I was just reading some suggested practice activities to improve landing skills, and one of the suggestions was to practice touch and gos without letting the nose wheel touch the runway.  This article was directed to GA training, I was wondering if this would be practical for a 777 or not? 

 

Richard

 

Yes of course, this is done on all commercial aircraft as part of the final training before line flying.  

 

though you'll probably have the nose gear on the runway because it takes a bit more work to "reset" the 777

 

That was my main concern - how to keep the nose gear "flying" while waiting for the flaps and trim to reconfigure.  I guess like most things, it's a practice, practice, and then practice again sort of skill...

 

Richard

 

 

how to keep the nose gear "flying" while waiting for the flaps and trim to reconfigure.

There's no point to do that in a 777 though. Just put her down like you would normally. Holding up the nose isn't going to make the rotation come any quicker.

The writer of the article was saying that doing touch and gos without letting the nose wheel touch would help toward achieving smoother landings, that was the motivation.  I had never heard of this training technique before and it caught my eye.

 

Richard

Just saw your post Flex, thnx

 

Richard

I am not sure if doing touch and goes without letting the nose down is the correct method for base training (circuit training) on the 777. Because if you hold the nose up during your ground run, and then you set TO thrust, the pitching moment generated by the engines will pitch the nose up and increase the risk of having a tailstrike. Let alone the added complexity on directional control when doing crosswind circuits. Because the idea of base training is to practice "normal" Take off and landing technique. So it will be weird in an attempt to modify the general technique. However this is flight sim so feel free to try whatever that is fun, because in a way this also help us to "feel" the airplane.

 

Normally you fly the approach as a usual preferably in raw data without ILS, so that you train yourself to land relying on the outside picture not the PFD command, except that you did not arm the spoilers and autobrakes. And don't pull reverse after touch down.

 

After you touch down on the runway fly the nose on the ground as usual. Once it touches down.

 

1) Set the flaps to 20

2) set thrust to about 50% N1

3) once the thrust is stabilized, set about 85%-90% N1 ( for 240TONs gross weight )

when the speed reaches the bug speed, initiate a normal rotation.

4) normally people do circuiting training on raw data after turning on base. So getting airborne again if you wish to get the auto pilot modes back just press TOGA then switch on the Flight Directors. Or just continue fly in raw data in a circuit which is more fun and beneficial.

 

Just find a 10000ft runway with no terrain around the airport to do it. You may increase the difficulty by varying the weather condition like add some cross wind to 38kts, reduce the visibility to 5-8km, or do a 1000ft circuit instead of 1500ftAGL etc etc.

 

In my opinion it's a lot harder to do base training in flight sim than in the real airplane or in a level D sim because it lacks the ability to look to the side unless with a mulitple monitor setup. But a perfect circuit can still be done by referencing to the ND a bit more until you can see the runway.

 

Happy flying.

I am not sure if doing touch and goes without letting the nose down is the correct method for base training (circuit training) on the 777.

Yes you are sure :-).....and so am I, totally silly to be holding the nose off the ground!

Normally you fly the approach as a usual preferably in raw data without ILS, so that you train yourself to land relying on the outside picture not the PFD command, except that you did not arm the spoilers and autobrakes. And don't pull reverse after touch down.

After you touch down on the runway fly the nose on the ground as usual. Once it touches down.

1) Set the flaps to 20

2) set thrust to about 50% N1

3) once the thrust is stabilized, set about 85%-90% N1 ( for 240TONs gross weight )

when the speed reaches the bug speed, initiate a normal rotation.

4) normally people do circuiting training on raw data after turning on base. So getting airborne again if you wish to get the auto pilot modes back just press TOGA then switch on the Flight Directors. Or just continue fly in raw data in a circuit which is more fun and beneficial.

Just find a 10000ft runway with no terrain around the airport to do it. You may increase the difficulty by varying the weather condition like add some cross wind to 38kts, reduce the visibility to 5-8km, or do a 1000ft circuit instead of 1500ftAGL etc etc.

 

Good info, that is what I would do too.

In my opinion it's a lot harder to do base training in flight sim than in the real airplane or in a level D sim because it lacks the ability to look to the side unless with a mulitple monitor setup. But a perfect circuit can still be done by referencing to the ND a bit more until you can see the runway.

Happy flying.

totally agree.....which is why I use a 2nd and 3rd monitor for my PFD,ND,MCP,FMC,EICAS.

 

This way, if I look around at my environment in my main display (46"TV) I can allways maintain the proper pitch attitude and thrust setting because they are still in sight on my other displays :-)

Surely you can! 777 is still "just" an airplane, though you'll probably have the nose gear on the runway because it takes a bit more work to "reset" the 777: Land without spoilers, reversers, and autobrake. At touchdown set flaps 15, push throttles up, rotate at VREF, climb out as normal like a flaps 15 takeoff.

 

same good info also.

The spoilers should be armed.... They retract when you stand the thrust levers up

 

 

In my opinion it's a lot harder to do base training in flight sim than in the real airplane or in a level D sim because it lacks the ability to look to the side unless with a mulitple monitor setup. But a perfect circuit can still be done by referencing to the ND a bit more until you can see the runway.

Most things are harder in a sim, but in FSX you can always look to the side to see where you are in the circuit, you don't need a side window permanently there to know where the runway is. This is better than for most Level D sims as the minimum horizontal field of view was 150 deg, so you can't see directly abeam. Only newer ones have 180 deg FOV or more. So with regards to visual reference FSX is no worse than real life.

Rob:

 

Can you post a photo of the 46" monitor with FSX loaded - cockpit view.  I want to do the same - but I'd love to see how it looks first

I have seen VC-25 and E-4B doing this before. I asked a buddy about it and he said there was no reason, just the way they do it. I've never done that in the heavies I flew. We did have a maneuver in the KC-10A called the landing attitude demo. You would make instructor upgrade candidates perform it during instructor upgrade training. You would fly it down to a normal flare and landing but at 10 to 20ft, shortly after the 20ft call out, you would push the throttles up a knub to keep the jet around 10ft. The engineer would call out your altitude as you floated down the runway. You would maintain 7 to 8 degrees on the pitch and point out the landing and flare references. At about 1500 to 2000ft remaining, you commence the go around. The object was to show and talk a new guy through the landing picture since the DC10 had little references. You basically flared off the rad alt. The draw back was if you touched down and got into wheel spin up, you would get the spoiler disarm light since the nose would not touch in 10 seconds. You would have to discontinue ground spoilers use and adjust landing distance. I would acknowledge the restriction and then have my engineer pull and reset the spoiler control CB since I knew the cause of the caution light. Man, i miss flying big sexy.

 

 

Rob:

 

Can you post a photo of the 46" monitor with FSX loaded - cockpit view.  I want to do the same - but I'd love to see how it looks first

not that I would mind doing that.....but how is a pic of my TV going to help?

 

The resolution of my TV is 1920x1080 just like your monitor.

And on it I thus see the exact same thing as on you see on your monitor. Just bigger...46" large.