Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler - An idea concerning Greased landings

Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | DVA2006 | An idea concerning Greased landings

DVA2018
Chief Pilot, ERJ-170
OLP, 737-ATP

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Ralston, NE

11,933 legs, 26,928.0 hours
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Posted onPost created on November 24 2005 09:05 ET by Matthew Whitaker

Luke,
I was wondering if maybe there could be a way for DVA to produce an average landing rate to complemement the greased landings section. Like the average hours per flight or average miles per flight, have an average landing FPM rate as well. So instead of just seeing who got lucky once in a while (LOL) lets see who has the best landings consistently. Just an idea that i thought would add to the fun on the website.

Matthew Whitaker

Chief Pilot, ERJ-170

DVA2253
Senior Captain, DC-8-61
COMM

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Church Hill, TN USA

862 legs, 1,344.5 hours
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299 legs, 485.1 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on November 24 2005 09:34 ET by George Lewis

I for one question the greased landing rates of 1 ft/min - at that rate flying at 120 knots, you'd need to be about 1 foot off the runway 2 miles before you touch down...

George Lewis (DVA2253)

DVA2482
Chief Pilot, B777-200

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Posted onPost created on November 24 2005 18:06 ET by Oliver McRae

that 1 FPM is the rate at the instant the wheels touch the ground and so you could have been coming down at 700FPM but when you flare and the rate is cut down all it is saying is that at that instant the rate is 1 FPM.

Oliver McRae (DVA2482)

DVA1267
Senior Captain, B777-200

Joined on July 09 2003
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Colorado Springs, CO USA

368 legs, 1,943.8 hours
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Posted onPost created on November 24 2005 21:09 ET by Matt Reamy

I think the Greased Landings are sort of bunk anyway... some of those are at 80% N1, which doesn't really speak of skill, but luck. Opinion.

Matt Reamy (DVA1267)

Posted onPost created on November 24 2005 23:32 ET by Matthew Whitaker

I agree with you Matt, i feel that a -1 FPM is mostly luck. Thats the reason i suggested this....if you have an average landing rate shown, it will prove how good you really are, not just one time, but throughout your VA career.

Matthew Whitaker

Chief Pilot, ERJ-170

DVA1910
Senior Captain, B777-200

Joined on September 18 2004
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Northeastern United States

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Posted onPost created on November 25 2005 09:07 ET by Ryan Wilson

Thats a great Idea Matt! Ive never gotten a -1 FPM landing (or so I think) frown

Oliver is right though how I could be going at a really high angle of attack and then pull up to graze the ground when landing. An average would indeed show who is really making the great landings all of the time. Not just once of of luck.

Ryan

Ryan Wilson (DVA1910)

DVA2001
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Fort Mitchell, KY

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Posted onPost created on November 25 2005 09:52 ET by Randy Bauer

I would use average with standard deviations listed as a better measure. Reason: Average can get skewed in a hurry. Example: if you have one really bad landing, it can bias all your good landings to the bad side. Or vice versa.

If you use average + list out 2 standard deviations. This will show the variation about the mean in your total distribution for 95 % of the landings, assuming a normal distribution.

Review: Mode is the measure happening most frequently.
Median is the middle of the distribution.(pack).
Mean or Average - Arithmetic mean
Standard Deviation - how tightly spaced the landings are about the mean.

If you have a perfect "normal" or Gaussian distribution, mean, median and mode are all equal.

If this sounds overly complicated, stick with Mode and a tolerance for example, -50 ft/min +/- 15 ft/min.
This would say the landings occurring most of the time are between -35 and -65 ft/min.

Sorry Luke, I am probably driving you crazy with all the suggested changes. rolleyes

Randy Bauer

Senior Captain, B777-200

Posted onPost created on November 25 2005 09:52 ET by Randy Bauer

Guess I need to learn how to use Emoticons -

Randy Bauer

Senior Captain, B777-200

Posted onPost created on November 25 2005 10:04 ET by George Lewis

Randy, I think you're right - most landings will occur well above the -1 ft/min mark - the limit should probably cut off somehwere around -20 ft/min or something. maybe instead of numbers we have categories of landing types that they fall into based upon the ft/min and we leave the numbers out - therefore anything under -100 ft/min is a greaser, and between -100 ft/min and 250 ft/min is another category, etc.

Autolands should be thrown out, as pilots aren't landing the airplane

George Lewis (DVA2253)

Posted onPost created on November 25 2005 11:06 ET by Matthew Whitaker

I agree with the autoland being thrown out, of course so far i have never had an autoland land with anything under 100 FPM. And yeah Randy i understand what you mean. That would work too, just to keep it level. I hope this goes through though....it would be a nice way to really see who has it and who just got lucky...lol

Matthew Whitaker

Chief Pilot, ERJ-170

DVA1855
Senior Captain, B777-200
OLP

Joined on August 28 2004
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Posted onPost created on November 25 2005 13:20 ET by Andrew Rogers

IF we want this stuff to be added we should add an issue in the traker, thats how the SELCALs came about

Andrew Rogers (DVA1855)

Posted onPost created on November 25 2005 13:23 ET by Andrew Rogers

I added an Issue Issue #737

Andrew Rogers (DVA1855)

DVA043
Senior Captain, MD-11
OLP

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Posted onPost created on November 25 2005 19:11 ET by Luke Kolin

Thanks for the discussion and the ideas. The entire Greased Landing page was the result of me saying "we have all this data, what can we do with it?" A lot of what we do in the new site (especially the mapping stuff) has been looking at interesting technologies that make use of data we're already collecting.

When I get 1.0 of the ACARS client done (which hopefully Build 59 will be) then I'm going to start looking at making enhancements to 1.1 to fix the Greased Landings. Part of the problem we face is that the flight data timer only runs every 200ms (basically at 5fps) and for accurate touchdown metrics it needs to run a wee bit faster. The problem I face is that I don't want to do two dozen FSUIPC calls every few seconds. I might add a seperate touchdown timer that will run every 80-100ms that will track VSPEED and nothing more.

Please be aware, however, that our frentic pace of development activity has been constrained by another "release date", which is going to be any day now.

Cheers!

Luke Kolin

Senior Captain, MD-11

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