I’m doing lots of short flights with NeoFly in a loaded Kodiak (previously) or C208 (now) to practise my hand flying and I’m consistently getting a comment from the NeoFly dispatcher that my landing was rough. I’m not denying it… most of the time I’m coming in too high and too fast. I’ve even tried circling the pattern to bleed off some altitude and speed. Still not good. My wife said maybe I should switch to helicopters LOL.  

I think two things would help…

1. A way to review my landings from outside to get a better feel for my approach. Can I do that in 2024 now? Or do I need a third party utility?

2. I could use some tips… How far out and how fast should I be at 1000 feet? And 500’? Sometimes I’m crossing the airport property line at 500’ and that’s just too high as I’ll be lucky to catch the end of a regional runway doing that. What should I be shooting for?

Thanks for any advice. 

Cheers, 
-Chris 

50 ft over the runway threshold, and fully configured for landing at 300 ft on final (all AGL).

Use a reference point around 1000 feet from the threshold or the two thick white rectangles, and keep a constant distance from a point chosen in your front cockpit window(s) to this reference point, adjusting power as required (add if the distance decreases, take if it increases). 

As you get around 20 ft over the runway, start your flare and use the far extreme of the runway as your reference.

IRL I've never done it with power since I only fly gliders, but the same principles apply, only instead of the throttle you have speed-brakes or spoilers, the only important nuance being that unlike throttle, if you apply too much spoiler / speedbrake, there's no way to recover by adding power 🙂 

As a side note, I still defend any pilot should start as a glider pilot... 

Edited July 23, 2025Jul 23 by jcomm

I'm also struggling with the excessive Neofly landing penalties. However - more often than not, the audio doesn't match the actual penalty (if any).

I use something called "Landing Monitor":

The only problem is - that I can't find out where I downloaded it from!!!

If you're searching, you don't want landing analysis (that rates your landing after touchdown) .. just something that shows you info on final approach.

I find I usually have to go in a lot flatter than normal.

This is also available.

As for the outside views: https://flightsim.to/file/9067/sky-dolly

59 minutes ago, Virtual-Chris said:

I’m doing lots of short flights with NeoFly in a loaded Kodiak (previously) or C208 (now) to practise my hand flying and I’m consistently getting a comment from the NeoFly dispatcher that my landing was rough. I’m not denying it… most of the time I’m coming in too high and too fast. I’ve even tried circling the pattern to bleed off some altitude and speed. Still not good. My wife said maybe I should switch to helicopters LOL.  

I think two things would help…

1. A way to review my landings from outside to get a better feel for my approach. Can I do that in 2024 now? Or do I need a third party utility?

2. I could use some tips… How far out and how fast should I be at 1000 feet? And 500’? Sometimes I’m crossing the airport property line at 500’ and that’s just too high as I’ll be lucky to catch the end of a regional runway doing that. What should I be shooting for?

Thanks for any advice. 

Cheers, 
-Chris 

From your second point I gather you are remaining to long at cruise. Rule of thumb is altitude times 3 (and devided by 1000)is about the distance to start descending at 800-1000ft/m so if you are at 12.000ft and your field is at 2.00ft than it would be 10.000*3 is 30.000 /1000 is about 30nm out of the field you should start descending. When still to high just extend the down wind leg until you are correctly on the PAPI (or tune in the ILS if available). 

Another trick is let the autopilot fly an ILS. Let the AP trim out the plane and get it stable. Next is find that stable power setting (remember what setting this is, for next aproaches). With turboprops your are less manipulating a throttle in the final approach than for instanse an airliner. 

Also try pull-in back the power only when you think the wheels are would be touching the runway. the C208 has a tendency to really sink if you pull the power to early. 

Don't know about external views but this would provide some good examples: https://youtu.be/ahxXQPKOVlg?si=S0lFngfBylsWbZsw

 

The right place at the right speed are what’s important, all the emphasis on ROD at touchdown will get you into trouble and really isn’t important.

Found it!

https://github.com/hallidave/landing-monitor

Try

https://github.com/hallidave/landing-monitor

A couple rules of thumb I try to apply (I'm not a real-life pilot) :

- The longer the final the easier it is to correct. Turn into final early and far away. Prepare early, make sure the lights, mixture, initial flaps, etc. are all ready in advance so you can spend the last minute or more only dealing with the landing proper.

- Instruments are good to get you to the final. Within a mile or two of the threshold your gaze should stay on the runway.

- Don't cut the throttle at once. Be deliberate when reducing power in the flare. Fly the plane until the end.

- If at anytime, even inches over the runway, you feel something is wrong, abort and go around.

- Practice flying circuits on long runways with light guidance. Learn you aircraft parameters, which regime works best for which phase. Plus flying circuits is fun :)

- Be honest with yourself. Review your performance. What went well ? what went wrong ? How can you improve ? Then do another circuit and see if you can do better.

Do you know how the runway shape should look when on a proper 3 degree path towards the threshold? If you learn to spot that, you will have a rather easy way of nailing visual approaches, regardless acft type.

For some numbers....Rule of thumb, for a 3 degree glide, expect 300ft altitude for every 1NM. 

Ergo, a 5NM final will have you roughly at 1.500ft above aerodrome elevation.

Speed, this is probably the most important variable, and for that I would simply look at the flight manual. If you are unable to find specific speeds, check stall speed at idle power and multiple it by 1.3 (if stall speed is 60kts, cross threshold at 78kts, etc).

Again, general pointers, but works well for most planes. Especially GA with rather small spread of landing speeds vs weight)

3 hours ago, Virtual-Chris said:

most of the time I’m coming in too high and too fast.

Some part of the solution are already in the diagnosis 😉 You may try to stick to the manual/PoH speed ?

It's (one of) the simmer bias to look for kiss landing. We'd better focused on the centerline and the touchzone.

Edited July 23, 2025Jul 23 by vbazillio

What I do is fly patterns like real pilots in training do.  Start your aircraft on a calm day somewhere and just fly patterns.  When things aren't looking correct, go around.  I am not familiar with the 208, but check youtube for either sim or real pilots.  

As a sim only pilot, I realized back in 2020 that I really couldn't fly a proper pattern.  I've been working on that and finally am getting a little better.  It was comical how much I was struggling to fly a pattern in a DA40.  

The common mistake is too fast in the pattern, which will leave you too high (as you've seen).  The more powerful the plane, the easier it is to fall behind.  

Also, I was flying my patterns far too wide.  I would easily lose sight of the runway.  Patterns should be tight and slow.  

There's all sorts of good videos on youtube from both simmers and real pilots.  Just go do patterns over and over until it starts to feel natural.  On actual flights, you have to start thinking about slowing and descending early so that you are not too fast.  Don't wait for the ATC to tell you to descent, either ignore them or ask them for lower altitudes as you apprach.  They'll have you coming down at a high rate and you're never going to bleed that speed off.  

If your downwind is too fast, you are going to struggle to slow down.  

As for utilities, Gees will tell you how your landing is.  The basic features of the freeware version do work in 2024, but the replay and other features of the payware don't work in 2024 yet.  Just grab the freeware version:

https://flightsim.to/file/1415/gees-in-game-landing-analysis

It will tell you how hard you hit and a bunch of other important things.  

2 hours ago, kerosene31 said:

What I do is fly patterns like real pilots in training do.  Start your aircraft on a calm day somewhere and just fly patterns.  When things aren't looking correct, go around.  I am not familiar with the 208, but check youtube for either sim or real pilots.  

As a sim only pilot, I realized back in 2020 that I really couldn't fly a proper pattern.  I've been working on that and finally am getting a little better.  It was comical how much I was struggling to fly a pattern in a DA40.  

The common mistake is too fast in the pattern, which will leave you too high (as you've seen).  The more powerful the plane, the easier it is to fall behind.  

Also, I was flying my patterns far too wide.  I would easily lose sight of the runway.  Patterns should be tight and slow.  

There's all sorts of good videos on youtube from both simmers and real pilots.  Just go do patterns over and over until it starts to feel natural.  On actual flights, you have to start thinking about slowing and descending early so that you are not too fast.  Don't wait for the ATC to tell you to descent, either ignore them or ask them for lower altitudes as you apprach.  They'll have you coming down at a high rate and you're never going to bleed that speed off.  

If your downwind is too fast, you are going to struggle to slow down.  

As for utilities, Gees will tell you how your landing is.  The basic features of the freeware version do work in 2024, but the replay and other features of the payware don't work in 2024 yet.  Just grab the freeware version:

https://flightsim.to/file/1415/gees-in-game-landing-analysis

It will tell you how hard you hit and a bunch of other important things.  

Thanks. Will try some patterns. 

In the sim (2024), there’s some kind of video recording option in the toolbar. Can I use that?

8 hours ago, SAS443 said:

Do you know how the runway shape should look when on a proper 3 degree path towards the threshold? If you learn to spot that, you will have a rather easy way of nailing visual approaches, regardless acft type.

For some numbers....Rule of thumb, for a 3 degree glide, expect 300ft altitude for every 1NM. 

Ergo, a 5NM final will have you roughly at 1.500ft above aerodrome elevation.

Speed, this is probably the most important variable, and for that I would simply look at the flight manual. If you are unable to find specific speeds, check stall speed at idle power and multiple it by 1.3 (if stall speed is 60kts, cross threshold at 78kts, etc).

Again, general pointers, but works well for most planes. Especially GA with rather small spread of landing speeds vs weight)

Thanks. Those rules of thumbs will help. I could try a couple of ILS approaches to get familiar with how a proper glide slope approach looks. 

Thanks everyone! Lots of good tips and tools here. I’ll be trying these out and will report back how it goes.